Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)
October 28, 2000, Saturday
SECTION: News; Pg. P1A
LENGTH: 861 words
HEADLINE: Signs for Bush taken at rally, father, son say
BYLINE: SAM TRANUM
Phil Parlock didn't expect to need all 12 of the Bush-Cheney signs he and his son Louis smuggled in their socks and pockets into the rally for Vice President Al Gore.
But each time they raised a sign, someone would grab it out of their hands, the two Huntington residents said. And sometimes it got physical.
"I expected some people to take our signs," said Louis, 12. "But I did not expect people to practically attack us."
The two said they didn't go to the Friday morning rally to start trouble.
"I came to support Bush and try to change some people's minds," Louis said.
Gore's West Virginia campaign said Bush-Cheney signs were not welcome, but physical confrontations to eliminate them would not have been condoned.
Parlock, a real estate agent, thought it would be at least as educational for his son to spend the morning at the Gore rally as it would have been to spend the day at school. So the two got in the car and drove from Huntington, arriving in Charleston about 9 a.m.
Parlock said he was a volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign. He is listed on the West Virginia Bush-Cheney Web site as the Cabell County contact for the campaign.
But he said he came as a supporter, not a campaign worker. His visit to Charleston was "unencouraged and unsanctioned," he said. The idea was to show that there was another option besides Gore.
"My opinion of the press is it always shows the liberal viewpoint," he said. "And we have to struggle to show the other side exists."
He and Louis brought a supply of Bush-Cheney signs and smuggled them into the rally. They stuffed plastic ones in their socks and pockets and folded paper ones inside Gore-Lieberman signs.
Though tickets to the event specifically said no signs would be allowed in, Parlock said he walked right in with the Gore-Lieberman signs. He said people who carried Bush-Cheney signs openly were not allowed to bring them inside.
Parlock and his son, clad in white button-down shirts and ties, took their place in front of the Capitol steps and waited. As the rally got going, they started raising their signs and people immediately began stealing them, Parlock said.
"Three guys came up and squeezed me in and one grabbed my arms and pulled them down and another took the sign," Parlock said.
"Another guy came up and tried to grab the sign but I had a good hold of it and he stumbled and bumped into other people and started a ruckus," he said. Parlock said the police ejected the man from the rally.
Police said Friday evening they could not yet comment on any incidents at the rally.
Parlock said a group of people wearing T-shirts and jackets with the United Mine Workers of America logo took away many of their signs.
"I didn't see anything like that," said Ted Hapney, an international representative for the United Mine Workers. "I wouldn't do that. We don't condone any type of violence."
Another incident involved Louis and a teenage girl he and Parlock said they met at the rally. They said they didn't know who she was.
"She walked up and said 'I'll get on your shoulders and hold a sign,' " Louis said.
While she was sitting on Louis' shoulders waving a Bush-Cheney sign, a man who identified himself as a volunteer for the Gore campaign tried to pull the sign out of the girl's hands, Parlock said. He pulled so hard that Louis and the girl fell over.
"That sounds like an exaggeration," said Sarah Feinberg, spokeswoman for Gore's West Virginia campaign.
Parlock said the man was wearing a yellow pass around his neck. Feinberg said the color for a volunteer pass would be orange, while yellow passes were given to members of the press.
"We certainly don't have a policy of ripping signs out of people's hands," said Feinberg. "If someone brings a Bush-Cheney sign, we don't like it but we don't go to great lengths to obscure."
Parlock said after all his signs were stolen, he got some more from a group of Bush supporters who had not been allowed into the rally.
Though police said they were not ready to make official comment Friday evening, earlier Friday an officer said he had seen a scuffle during the rally.
Charleston Police Patrolman R.H. Vinyard said the incident involved people with Bush-Cheney signs, though he could not identify them by name. He said Gore supporters got into a fight with the Bush supporters about 10 minutes before the end of Gore's speech.
He said the altercation lasted about 45 seconds, was over before the police arrived to break it up and no one was treated for injuries. Afterward, he said, the Bush supporters tore up their own signs and left the area.
As workers cleaned up the debris from the rally in front of the Capitol after the rally, Parlock sat next to a pile of ripped up Bush-Cheney signs he had collected. He said he thought the people who took his signs went too far.
Still, he said he'd do it again.
And he thinks it was a good educational experience for Louis, too.
"You can't get this kind of a lesson in school," he said.
Writer Sam Tranum can be reached at 348-4872 or by e-mail at
[email protected] .
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