For past years, see the lawn sign roundups for 2007, 2009 (also 2009 websites), 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2023 (prelims, general), and the 2025 preliminary election.
City Councilor At-Large
Moe Bergman
Every year these signs look too Halloween when they appear late-summer, and every year they seem perfectly appropriate by Election Day in early November. The angled and compressed BERGMAN makes me feel tense, and in some of his recent campaign material they keep the angle but expand the font, which feels much better. But Bergman’s public image is not about being cool, it’s not about being relaxed, it’s about being focused, and this sign doesn’t do a bad job making you feel that. Bergman says this was inspired by a Kennedy/Johnson sign, perhaps the one below.
Donna Colorio
Colorio. Cool. Color. Soothing blues and sans serif goodness. (I used to think this was Helvetica, but it’s not, maybe ITC Avant Garde Gothic Paneuropean Bold?) The center stripe is desaturated, maintaining the mellow vibe. The tilted star over the “i” says “Somebody spent some time on this without being too fancy.” In contemporary American political iconography, blue is the color of the center left, but in Worcester political campaigns, that went out the window a long time ago.
Cayden Davis
I grew up in an area where my last name was odd and hard for people to spell or remember, so I am very interested in how these lawn signs handle unconventional names. This sign leans on the extremely conventional DAVIS and, while not shying away from the CAYDEN, lets it fade into the background. Likewise, the bands of color reflect those of the 2018 Progress Pride Flag, appropriate for a trans candidate, but those bands are also very thin, not shying away from the issue but not having it dominate the entire sign, either.
Jermoh Kamara
Sticking with the pink theme from previous runs, and sticking with having a photo of her, too. Here the unconventional first name is small, the unconventional last name is the branding. I appreciate that her clothes and earrings are white, thus keeping the color scheme simple. I’d be curious to hear from campaign staffers or candidates what inspires some to include URLs on yard signs, when so many candidates skip them.
Khrystian King
Everyone whose last name is 4-6 letters long is so lucky, they can print it on the sign nice and big. Here it’s in bold, all-caps slab serif, while his first name is mixed-case script. Seriousness and fun. This year I have wondered if making his first name actively hard to read is a mistake, are there people who find this sign a bit frustrating? The stars are nice, adding an extra color and keeping the sign loose.
Several people have told me this sign reminds them of the logo for the old TV show “Bewitched,” and although it’s not close enough to be an obvious tribute, it definitely has that feel.
I cannot think about “Bewitched” without being reminded of a magical moment, 25 years ago in Philly’s 30th Street Station, when someone came on the public address system saying “Doctor Bombay, paging Doctor Bombay…” (Presumably so as not to panic anyone or actually summon the good doctor, they did not complete the incantation with “Emergency, come right away.”)
Of course, like the “Dr.”s in this Council race, Doctor Bombay is not a board certified physician.
Man, I wish Worcester politics was a lot more like “Bewitched.” Like what if, rather than just disappearing from the scene, Councilors Gaffney or Nguyen had let themselves be replaced by Dick Sargent, and the Council proceeded with their business as though nothing had happened?
Dr. Satya Mitra
This is my favorite challenger sign, though I’m having trouble figuring out why. Maybe it’s just so darn readable? It even omits the hyphen from “AT-LARGE.” Who needs that visual clutter? This sign wants you to pay a bit more attention to his last name than his first, though there’s also that “Dr.” (biochemistry) in there. Anyone reading this who is a Ph.D., I am curious: when do you use “Dr.” as your title and when do you skip it?
Edson Montero
This is the only Montero sign I’ve seen this year, a leftover from his run for District Councilor last election. This color scheme, that drawing of hands, and the lack of a period at the end of the slogan, that’s three things about this sign that throw me. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and if you’re going to throw me, you might as well go whole hog.
Dr. Jessica Pepple
I like how some local pols are able to “own” a primary or secondary color in their branding, and here Dr. (educational leadership & policy studies) Pepple of course goes for purple, playing up her uncommon last name. When Kola Akindele ran, he had signs that played with the Coca-Cola logo, and it’s been suggested that Pepple could have done something similar with Dr. Pepper, but that seems too silly to me.
Joe Petty
A lawn sign that’s been around a long time, that basically gets the job done, that could be improved a lot if the candidate cared about things like graphic design, and hasn’t because he doesn’t. This remains a pretty good reflection of Petty’s political image.
Gary Rosen
Rosen, rose, the color red. Very simple and with some rough edges, a sign from a previous era, not quite cool enough to be retro, but in no way tacky. Some of the newer signs say “Gary” at the top in italics, some not. I think I saw one that said “Vote” at the top, but I don’t have any pictures of it. Long-time Worcesterites are going to see this sign and just think Rosen, but I wonder if younger voters are going to assume there is some MAGA connection.
Owura-Kwaku Sarkodieh
Red, white, and blue. And, like Montero’s sign, yellow for some reason. I’d like to see people with long (>6 letters) last names not use compressed text, in fact use bold text. You could argue making the letters tall and skinny makes it easier to read than short and normally-proportioned, or you could argue the reverse, but you can’t argue that compressed text doesn’t feel tense, at least on the lawn signs I’ve seen.
Kate Toomey
A little like the Lakers colors, but more navy blue and less purple. This is a very sunny sign, sunnier than some signs that contain an actual sun. TOOMEY is compressed but doesn’t bug me much here. Like Rosen’s sign, something from a previous era. Unlike Rosen’s sign (and most of the rest), omits the hyphen from “At-Large.”
District 1 City Councilor
Tony Economou
This is pretty much the same sign he used when successfully running for Council a decade ago, updated with the slogan “The Voice of Reason,” the first sign that makes explicit the framing many candidates are using this election—are you a flaky progressive who doesn’t understand the responsibilities and limits of being a City Councilor (i.e., ignoring “reason”), or are you an old stick-in-the-mud stubbornly refusing every opportunity to make people’s lives better, and who 50 years from now will have obviously been on the wrong side of history?
This was never a good sign, and it’s from an era of lawn sign graphic design that has not aged well. The simplified flag is just not good. Is he taking shelter under it? Is his name blocking it from being fully unfurled? Neither of these is a good implication. Maybe clean up the stripes at left so they are not joined on one edge, and run the stripes at right all the way to the blue field. Get rid of the little “Vote” for sure. Don’t make “The Voice of Reason” so short and wide compared to the “City Council ~ District 1” right below it.
Keith Linhares
This sign is just great, with distressed type that’s nothing like anything on any other sign, but somehow avoids feeling edgy. Black + white + yellow is a classic color scheme that ignores the whole red vs. blue thing. The word “progress” makes it clear which side of the progressive vs. non-progressive divide he falls on, while “beyond politics” says, “Yes, like you I find the spectacle of the Worcester City Council incredibly annoying.” Great job District 1 for having such great symbolism in your signs, one saying “here’s your Councilor from back in the day using his sign from back in the day,” the other saying “here’s a new guy, with a fresh sign that makes some polarizing (for a Worcester election) choices.”
District 2 City Councilor
Robert Bilotta
Shades of blue, vs. strong red for his opponent. The last name provides a firm foundation. The angled, serifed, italicized, and overlapping “Robert” adds some life. I miss the 2023 version that had a little heart in the “O,” fun not only on top of the foundation, but fun within the foundation. The implication is that, in 2025, playtime is over.
Candy Mero-Carlson
She’s the incumbent, she’s been in office for awhile, so she’s not afraid of the brick red offending anyone. A very sports look, like a little league team.
District 3 City Councilor
John P. Fresolo
Lawn sign 101. Red + white + blue. Large last name. All the other words as large/readable as possible. Give it some energy by putting everything at an angle. This sign doesn’t want to tell you anything about Fresolo, maybe because it’s confident you remember him from his State Rep days, when his district largely overlapped District 3.
Robert F. Pezzella
With or without a white border, this is very much a counterpart to Fresolo’s. That one was perhaps a bit tacky, this one is perhaps overly restrained. Just 2 colors rather than 3, and no angles, but you make the last name big, and everything else as large as possible within that context. Here you add a little energy by making one word lower-case. The message is something like, “Yes, you remember Fresolo, but do you really want to remember Fresolo? I am, at least relatively, the calm, low-drama choice.”
District 4 City Councilor
Ted Kostas
Here’s a candidate who’s not afraid of red, the American flag, awkward white space, or being a bit tacky. It has shadowy stars much like Roy’s below. I’m not sure if people take these stars as sneaky, or mysterious, or confident (“I don’t have to take out all my stars, just enough stars to beat you”), or as some color of ink running low at the print shop.
Luis A. Ojeda
I think this is a pretty effective bilingual sign—any English speaker is going to be able to guess what many of those Spanish words mean. Without making his name too much larger than the other text, he draws extra attention to it with an underline and some stars. The yellow doesn’t pop, but there’s already a lot going on here, subtle colors are a good idea. I appreciate putting “Vote!” in light blue to mute it a bit.
District 5 City Councilor
Etel Haxhiaj
I empathize with anyone with an unwieldy last name. We should all be so lucky as Etel to have a distinctive and wieldy first name, the sign doesn’t shy away from “Haxhiaj” but it knows the “ETEL” is what you’re going to recognize. A green field and blue sky, either a symbol of progressivism, farming, or living on the planet earth. Not bad colors in any case.
Jose A. Rivera
Here’s how to balance red and yellow with a much darker blue. He used to be a boxer, so you have the gloves and the slogan. That explosion is great, no sign has the action of this sign. It’s fun to get in the habit of reading this sign too fast, so that for a moment you think the slogan is “I WILL FIGHT YOU”. This is probably just me being a contrarian, but I am not a fan of signs that tell me to vote, so I appreciate that some of what I take to be his newer signs omit that suggestion.
School Committee At-Large
Maureen F. Binienda
Maximum impact here, the red of the sign, the wavy lines, script in two spots, the apple making clear this is a school race, the little credential under her last name. Even a check mark! A confrontational candidate, a confrontational sign.
Susan M. Mailman
Here’s a solution for the compound surname problem: just run the whole thing, really big. The festive orange at the top and the bottom is a total surprise.
Adwoa A. Sakyi-Lamptey
So much going on here, I appreciate a challenger who doesn’t shy away from graphical risks. A photo, gradients, minimizing the long last name, a slogan, “Vote” with a checkmark. And that pin is great, we can wonder whether a sign reflects the candidate’s tastes or that of a campaign worker, but a piece of clothing feels a lot more personal. Huge contrast in the three signs in this race, busy and confrontational vs. clean/old school vs. busy but fancy.
District A School Committee
Molly O. McCullough
One of a number of uncontested races. I appreciate the candidate putting at least one sign out there for me to photograph, for the uncontested District B race I couldn’t find a single Vanessa Alvarez sign. This is such a simple sign. You can read her name, it does the job, end of story.
District C School Committee
Dianna Biancheria
Very similar to McCullough’s, so how does it end up noticeably less readable? Both of them have ten-letter surnames, but Biancheria tries to make them bigger by making them taller, which really just makes the sign look worse.
Feanna S. Jattan-Singh
Let’s compare this with her 2023 Council sign (below). We again have a photo of her, in a pretty similar outfit, and again have the focus on “Vote Feanna.” But whereas I called her previous sign “Admirably restrained,” this one is admirably unrestrained. Now she has glasses, the photo is implied to be a selfie, her first name is on the sign twice, her last name is on the sign twice, she has a slogan, there’s a faint photo behind her photo, we are reminded to vote twice, she uses “4” for “for” and is not even in District 4, there’s a border around her name and that decoration is itself decorated with a star. I don’t need to go on, writing about this sign is like dancing about architecture.
District D School Committee
Alex Guardiola
Our third uncontested School Committee race. More of that clean, contemporary graphic design. The red part at the bottom is a visual surprise, especially as the margin above Worcester is so tiny. The rare sign that feels really organized, like “This part is the candidate name, this part is everything else.”
District E School Committee
Nelly Medina
This remains a pleasant and sunny sign, red + white + blue, with a lot of whitespace and slightly desaturated colors. The hyphens around “Nelly” don’t add much for me, and the collision of the “y” with the “N” actively annoys me. If you are going to use something like that as a fun element, I want you to use several other fun elements on the sign, otherwise this is just going to look like a misprint.
Kathy Roy
Why, in a country where “blue” tends to connote “center-left,” does everyone who sees this ask me, “Does this have something to do with the police?” It probably has to do with the dark blue at the top and bottom, and the light blue cueing you into seeing the dark blue as blue rather than black. Combined with the all-caps serifed lettering that feels official or at least formal. Combined especially with the giant field of stars at the bottom, which you might believe are subtle enough that you are the only one to notice them at a glance, but believe me, everyone notices them. Like Montero’s sign, this not only has janky elements, it has lots of janky elements. The double outlines, the color gradient, the mystery of why “District” is the only word not all-caps, this is a sign I will remember seeing all day, whether I want to or not.
District F School Committee
Jermaine L. Johnson
Our fourth and final uncontested School Committee race. The same first-name-in-script idea as King’s sign, but this sign does a better job of it. This candidate is running unopposed and only has a few signs out there, but great job repurposing the old ones by covering “Vote November 2” with a “RE-ELECT” sticker.
