Politics

Giant Donald Trump Sign Attracts Attention in Iowa

January 28th 2016

This 8 foot by 4 foot poster of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stares sternly from a fence along a main roadway in Des Moines, Iowa, where people from across the state — which is currently inundated with candidates ahead of the all-important Iowa caucus — make their way out to catch a glimpse of the controversial sign. George Davey put it up there last November.

Trump poster/Kyle Jaeger

"I've been a Trump fan my whole life, even before he was on TV," Davey told me outside of a local grocery store a few miles away from his house. "When he said he was running, I was still kind of on the fence" — pun not intended — "because I'm an Independent so I vote either way."

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Like other caucus-goers I've met in the state, Davey expressed a deep distrust of establishment politics, of "corruption" in the federal government. And so he was initially torn between Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. "I want somebody who's not in the mainstream," he said.


"I was thinking a little bit about Bernie, but then he started talking too much socialism," Davey said. "That kind of scared me away a bit."

After deciding on Trump, Davey knew he wanted to support his campaign by putting up a sign — an election ritual that usually involves a much smaller sign with an official campaign logo that's stuck in the ground outside of supporters' homes — but rather than settle for the standard, he decided to create his own. The final product: a giant poster of Trump that has attracted a lot of attention from residents and the media.

Trump/Kyle Jaeger

"I was going to just call [Trump's] campaign and get [a sign]," Davey said. Then I thought, 'Ya know, I'm going to make one.' I started looking for photos, came across this one, and I didn't tell my wife. I just said 'I've got a Trump sign coming.' Once we set it out, I was like, 'This thing is going to get a lot of attention.'"

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While Davey's wife is a lifelong Democrat who recently switched her ticket to Independent in order to support Trump, not everybody has been so taken by his enthusiasm for the GOP front-runner. The poster has been vandalized twice; one of the times, somebody sprayed a bottle of chocolate syrup on Trump's super-sized face. Davey said it was pretty easy to wash off the syrup though, so no harm done.

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