Seattle’s primary election is just weeks away, and campaign signs are sprouting in people’s yards. With so much at stake in this election, you can bet some of those yard signs will get stolen.

That’s what happened to Lauris Bitners. He lives in a fancy neighborhood on North Capitol Hill. It’s not exactly ground zero for the debate on rent control. Bitners jokingly describes his neighborhood as “a bastion of white affluence.”

But Bitners was at this fund-raiser thrown by a friend, and City Councilmember Kshama Sawant was there. Bitners decided he liked her. So he put one of her campaign signs up in front of his house. It lasted less than a week.

“To my chagrin,” said Bitners, “I found the sign missing and the little metal ladder that supports it thrown into my bushes.”

Seattle police say that kind of crime has been uncommon so far in this campaign. But it is a crime, says Lauren Lovenhill of the Seattle Police Department.