Sid Miller

Police in Texas removed an anti-Republican political sign from a woman's yard Tuesday night last week, amid nationwide rancor over the Senate's vote on Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. The poster, made by Marion Stanford of Hamilton, Texas, and placed in her yard, shows an elephant painted in red, white, and blue with stars, a well-known symbol of the Republican Party. The elephant is sticking its trunk up the skirt of a young blonde girl with pigtails crying for help. Beside the image is the slogan "Your vote matters." Stanford told the Washington Post that she painted the sign in response to the testimony of Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused the judge of attempting to rape her when the two were in high school, reported. Kavanaugh was sworn in as the newest Supreme Court justice Saturday afternoon after a tight vote that drew major protests in Washington, DC, and other cities around the country.

Sid Miller

The Texas agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, wrote a Facebook post expressing disapproval of the sign Tuesday. "This is in Hamilton, Texas and is supposed to be Judge Kavanaugh's young daughter," he wrote. "Notice my opponent's sign in the background. The Democrat sleaze knows NO bounds!"

Miller's Democratic opponent, Kim Olson, also condemned the sign in an interview with the Dallas Morning News.



Stanford told the Morning News that police visited her house Tuesday night, asked her about the sign, and then confiscated it.

“Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,” Stanford said. “So I let them take the sign.”

The city manager of Hamilton has denied that the police seized the sign, telling the newspaper that Stanford gave it away. "A police member visited the owner’s home, and the owner asked the officer to take the sign,” he said.

The sign remains at the police station, according to the Morning News. Stanford said it was not, in fact, Kavanaugh's daughter depicted on the poster but a version of a Washington Post editorial cartoon. She added that she believed Miller's comments about the sign did not befit a politician of his stature. "This is not something a reputable, respected politician would do. There's nothing in my sign that remotely suggests it's Kavanaugh's daughter," she said.

New #GOP logo by Ann Telnaes, Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post..

Ann Telnaes, the Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist behind the original image, responded to the controversy on Twitter: "Good thing I'm not cartooning in Texas." She originally drew the cartoon in response to the Republican Party's support of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of making sexual advances toward underage girls.

Good thing I'm not cartooning in Texas---> Texas police confiscate political yard sign showing elephant with trunk up girl’s skirt https://t.co/eQClYqTII8