Nassau Co. School Board candidates shelling out dollars on campaign signs

Signs don’t win elections, the sages of politics say, but that doesn’t stop candidates from spending thousands of dollars every campaign cycle. With some smaller races, expenditures on yard signs constitutes the biggest slice of the spending pie.

That’s being proven true again in the Nassau County School Board runoffs, in which four candidates competing for two seats have put much of their late campaign spending into signs.

The runoff between School Board member Jamie Deonas and educator Shannon Hogue is certainly going in that direction. While Deonas pulled $17,500 into his campaign account since it started, his in-kind contributions and expenditures are more than $7,500, while Hogue’s is at more than $9,000 so far, despite having raised less cash.

They’re both spending on signs.

Deonas gave his campaign more than $2,100 in signs in late September, listed as an in-kind contribution. Between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4, Hogue spent a combined $774 in two sign purchases with Island Signs of Fernandina Beach, bought an additional $615 in signs from Big B’s Yard Signs in Fernandina, and added to that $64 in sign frames from Lowe’s.

Deonas, the current member from District 3, is running in the District 1 open seat.

The situation is not much different in the other runoff between Curtis Gaus and Albert Wagner for the District 3 seat vacated by Deonas. Going into the second week of October, Gaus had raised $8,550 and spent more than $8,200, while Wagner showed $9,350 raised and more than $7,500 spent.

Gaus, a former West Nassau High School principal, gave his campaign $2,000 on Sept. 24 and turned it around with $1,125 spent with Florida Sun Printing in Callahan for signs, and $600 with Buzz Town Media of Callahan for newspaper ads.

Wagner, a former Yulee Elementary School teacher, hasn’t spent much campaign money since early September, but that expenditure was also to Florida Sun Printing for $1,556 for signs.