The First Amendment Applies To Everyone

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about Kevin Chambers, a local radio host in Bremerton, Washington, who is a Democrat.

The article reports:

While out of town in November, a Republican friend put up a Trump/Pence 2020 field sign in his yard as a joke. The sign got defaced with graffiti, so another sign took its place – this time on 15-foot stilts.

That’s when, Chambers says, things got a little weird. Two days before Christmas, he received a letter from the city of Bremerton informing him that the new sign violated city code concerning commercial signs. And that’s when he became defiant.

…He (Chambers) told me (Jeff Reynolds, who wrote the article) that some folks made comments in a Facebook group for the local community that they would come to his house to deface the sign, egg the sign, and damage his property. Chambers then said, with a chuckle, “At that point, I decided the sign was going to stay up. As much as I’m not a Trump fan, I’m even less of a fan of people threatening to come to my house and damage my property. I figured if I took the sign down, it would somehow allow them to think that they caused me to take it down.”

…The letter from the City of Bremerton gave Chambers until January 21 to take down the sign. He has reluctantly taken it down, but the story doesn’t end there. Chambers dug into the city’s commercial sign code and found a rather large loophole. The code does indeed say that a sign can only be six feet off the ground – however, if it’s a banner instead of a sign, it can be up to 25 feet off the ground.

The article explains the logic behind Chambers wanting to keep a sign up even though he is not a Trump supporter:

In our interview, Chambers told me that the larger issue around the sign is whether other people can tell him what to do with his property. “We can argue whether Trump is a good president or not,” he said, “or whether he’s a quality guy. I’ll have that conversation all day long. The larger issue for me is, why do we allow neighbors to tell other neighbors what they can do in their yard? The sign is not a safety issue. It doesn’t overhang into the sidewalk. You literally cannot see the sign unless you’re looking directly at my house as you drive by. And I honestly don’t believe that if this were a Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden sign, anyone would have complained.”

The article concludes:

As for the sign controversy with the city, Chambers tells me to stay tuned. The banner has been ordered, and it should be up this week – higher and more in your face than anything before. Despite not being a Trump supporter, he will continue to fight for his rights of free expression and property.

I wonder how long this man will remain a Democrat.