Drivers in Grand Junction will soon see two billboards comparing the Republican Party to the former Soviet Union after some complaints were raised about a single one.
The controversial red billboard that replaced the “O” in GOP with a Soviet-era hammer and sickle has been moved from its location on a digital billboard along U.S. Highway 6 to a traditional billboard on Colorado State Highway 340.
“The local billboard company has moved us to a regular, vinyl billboard,” said Anne Landman, a liberal blogger and author who paid to for the billboard. “The digital board rotated ads every eight seconds, and some of those advertisers complained.”
The Grand Junction resident expects to have the second vinyl sign — on the flip side of the one on Colorado 340 — printed and pasted before weekend visitors start driving to the Colorado National Monument.
They’ll see the original GOP sign on their way to the monument and a new billboard on their way back.
That one will feature President Donald Trump wearing a red tie that swirls around the same GOP image with the words “long red ties” written in all caps. The new image comes from the same place Landman got the first one, a Maryland-based liberal political action group called Mad Dog PAC. The group specializes in placing controversial billboard and banners around the country. Some of its other signs push for Trump’s impeachment and call the NRA a terrorist organization.
“Anybody who wants this artwork can do anything they want with it,” Mad Dog PAC Chair Claude Taylor said. “They can print it on a T-shirt, lawn sign, coffee mug, whatever.”
The first GOP billboard with the hammer and sickle went up in Indiana in April.Taylor thinks it’s in five states now, with plans to add two more to the list soon. Colorado will be the second state with Trump’s image.
Mad Dog bought the other side of the billboard partly because the company that owns the sign location expressed concerns about whether anyone would want the other side of a billboard comparing Republicans to communists.
Landman decided to buy an ad on the digital billboard after Trump’s July meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. She felt Trump capitulated to the Russian president and took his word “over the conclusions of all of our own country’s intelligence agencies.”
The reaction to her billboard has been largely positive, she said. “I just got a $1,000 donation from someone in Texas.”
She received enough money to keep the electronic billboard up through the election, but the vinyl billboard is more expensive. She has paid to keep up the GOP sign for a month and hopes to find the money to keep it through November.
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