Yard signs supporting the presidential bids of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have started to go missing in Isle of Wight County.

Robbie Younger said she’d placed signs supporting Trump and incumbent U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., and Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao on property she owns at the corner of Brewers Neck Boulevard and Campbells Chapel Road in Carrollton. By Oct. 7, only the Cao sign, which is larger and more difficult to remove, remained.

Bill Yoakum, chairman of the county’s Republican Party chapter, said he’s aware of a few small signs having gone missing from local roadsides, though he hasn’t reported any incidents to law enforcement to date.

The alleged thefts aren’t exclusive to Republican candidates. Greg Brown, treasurer of the Isle of Wight County Democratic Party, said Harris signs at the corner of Battery Park and Nike Park roads just outside Smithfield, along Route 10 through Rushmere and in the median along the stretch of Carrollton Boulevard from its intersection with Brewers Neck to the Suffolk city line have also disappeared.

“Two different people … have contacted me to let me know they have had signs stolen from their yard,” Brown said, though he said he personally hasn’t had signs stolen from his yard.

Brown said signs supporting other candidates at the Battery Park and Nike Park location, including ones supporting Smithfield Town Council candidates, were left untouched, while only the Harris signs disappeared.

The same is true, he said, of the signs he’d placed along Carrollton Boulevard.

“I drive that route every day. They were up one day and then the next day they were gone,” Brown said. “Even the (Sen.) Tim Kaine (D-Va.) signs are still up.”

The Smithfield Police Department and the Isle of Wight County Sheriff’s Office each say that no one has officially reported any thefts. Smithfield Police Chief Alonzo Howell said the only incident reported to his department was one of vandalism of a campaign sign.

Brown said the vandalism incident concerned a Harris sign at the corner of Benns Church Boulevard and Turner Drive that someone spray-painted with the image of male genitalia.

Theft of political yard signs is punishable as larceny, a Class 1 misdemeanor. But the challenge is catching the culprits in the act.

An instance of prosecution for sign theft occurred last year when Smithfield Police charged Isle of Wight County Supervisor Renee Rountree, who was at the time serving on Smithfield’s Town Council and seeking her county seat, with receiving stolen property after campaign volunteers for her write-in opponent, Chris Torre, used Apple AirTag tracking devices to trace Torre signs stolen from two separate locations to Rountree’s address. 

Rountree’s son-in-law, Jesse Hanson, pleaded guilty at his December trial to taking two Torre signs and loading them into the back of his pickup truck on Oct. 8 of last year. Isle of Wight General District Court Judge Nicole Belote strongly rebuked Rountree but stopped short of declaring her guilty during a same-day trial and instead took the charge “under advisement,” which will allow Rountree to avoid a criminal record if she completes 250 hours of community service by Dec. 12 of this year. Rountree, in a Sept. 25 thread in the Smithfield Isle of Wight County 411 Facebook group, said she’d completed her service hours with seven separate organizations as of that date.

Joe Puglisi, the former chairman of the Isle of Wight County Democratic Party, said he and his son Dillon, the current chairman, have discussed the missing Harris signs with Yoakum, who “assures us all of his committee has been instructed not to remove or deface any signs.”

“The Isle of Wight Republican Party officially opposes the theft or vandalism of any political sign regardless of party affiliation,” Yoakum said.

At least one county resident has also complained of a profanity-laced homemade anti-Harris sign above a Trump sign on Smiths Neck Road, but according to Deputy 1st. Class Alecia Paul, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, political signs, even ones with profanity, are protected under free-speech rights under the First Amendment.