Kansas billboard taunts officials, calls them communists — all because of a mask order?

Three city commissioners in Manhattan, Kansas, can look up and see their faces on a giant highway billboard calling them commies and other things, presumably because they voted for a local mask ordinance, which passed 3-2 this summer. And because public servants who care about public health are now public enemies to some.

That’s getting to be standard, unfortunately. But residents of the “Little Apple,” home of Kansas State University, can be proud of the grown-up response of their elected officials to this taunting.

Mayor Usha Reddi, who is labeled “Radical Reddi” on the sign on Interstate 70, tweeted, “We’re on a billboard. I guess someone had enough disposable income to let us know they don’t like the face mask ordinance. #maskup.”

The billboard also pictures “Alcohol Aaron” Estabrook, “Lost Linda” Morse and several random communist hammer and sickle symbols. It calls the trio “Karen State’s puppets,” maybe because they’ve shown they care about the welfare of K-State students. And it refers to them as the “Little Apple’s Commiefornia’s Most Useless Commissioners.”

Previous sign called Obama a Marxist dictator

To whom do they owe this honor? “Paid for by Ron Ford & others,” the sign says. Ford, who owns the land the billboard is on, has sponsored other insulting messages on it in the past, though he didn’t answer calls and has refused to speak with local reporters about his earlier signs, one of which called Manhattan “the next best thing to communism.” (The Manhattan Mercury notes that Ford’s signs are “unrelated to a billboard in the same area along I-70 a few years back that called President Obama a Marxist dictator.”)

Ford’s son, John Ford, is a Republican commissioner in surrounding Riley County. City officials had to act on masks when county commissioners failed to mandate them, Morse said.

But John Ford has said he doesn’t agree with any of his dad’s signs — or for that matter, with the views of his fellow commissioner Marvin Rodriguez, who said in March that the county didn’t have to worry about COVID-19 because there aren’t many Chinese people in the area.

In interviews about the new billboard, Reddi joked, “I feel like I have status now. And honestly, there will be more things I’m going to do that they’re not going to like” if that becomes necessary to keep people safe. “I’ve been called worse things.”

She said that about 60% of the hundreds of messages the city has received on the mask order have been supportive, though there have also been complaints about the terrible overreaching of enforcement efforts.

Enforcement? Brace yourself: Cops are handing out free face masks to those who don’t have one. “They’re just gently reminding them,” Reddi said. No wonder the hammer and sickle.

Afghanistan vet target appreciates First Amendment

Estabrook, who must have been referred to as “Alcohol Aaron” because he got a DUI last year, said that, “For the record, I’ve been sober 486 days, and I’m not a communist.” He served in Afghanistan and said that his four years in the U.S. Army only made him more appreciative of our First Amendment rights. “I value the right to dissent,” he said, “even when it’s nasty.”

“The rhetoric is so charged,” during this election year in particular, that “we’re a nonpartisan city commission, not even on the ballot” and yet are still targets. “It all filters down to the level of a silly billboard.”

He did have one complaint: “I think Linda got the better picture.”

“Lost Linda” Morse seconded that. On the up side, she said, “the photo was decent.” Still, she did find the display sad: “It’s just a reflection of the disruption in our lives right now, an indication of the increased tension.” But “a central responsibility of a local elected official has to be the health and safety of the citizenry,” including those who call you names for doing your job.

Not all of their colleagues feel that way, including Mark Hatesohl, who said back in April that “I’m almost to the point where it’s like, let’s everybody get the damn thing and get it over with.”

But in this one college town in central Kansas, the mask order still passed and good sense is still winning, most of the time, anyway. And well, “Ron Ford & others,” — if there are any others — if making the commissioners you targeted as angry as you seem to be was the goal, you wasted your money on that sign. If anything, their attitude is a pretty good advertisement for Manhattan, Kansas.

This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM.