WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The note David Bridges sent Tuesday evening came with a single photo and this subject line: “Our garage door and driveway after West Lafayette Antifa activists had finished with it.”

The photo showed the damage done Nov. 18 to the home Bridges, a member of Purdue University’s biology department, shares with his wife, Vicki Burch, a Tippecanoe County Council member and former West Lafayette City Council member.

Red paint or dye covered the driveway, which is set back from North River Road.

White spray paint letters on a garage door read: “Nazi lives here.”

More than a week later – after a report was filed with the West Lafayette Police Department and after Bridges scrubbed the message from the steel garage door with gasoline and washed the water-soluble paint from the concrete – Bridges said he and Burch were mystified and without suspects beyond the thought that some sort of left-wing radicals were to blame. (See: The Antifa reference in the subject line.)

“The first question the police asked was, ‘Are you involved in politics?’” Bridges said. “Well, yes. … But we don’t understand. If there was a triggering event, we don’t know what it was.”

Bridges said the first thought was that it might be tied to Burch’s run for re-election to the Tippecanoe County Council. Burch, a Republican, lost that campaign to Democrat Lisa Dullum, in a race that both sides agreed this week was far removed from anything personal enough or incendiary enough to generate targeted vandalism.

“That’s terrible that that happened to their home,” Dullum said Wednesday, when told about the graffiti.

Bridges also is faculty adviser to the Purdue University College Republicans.

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In the week leading up to the Nov. 6 election, Bridges’ role with the student GOP organization came up on social media sites as people dissected the symbols of a poster found scattered across campus and attributed to @PurdueGOP, the Twitter handle of the College Republicans.

The red-and-blue posters – which started to appear on kiosks and outside lecture halls at Purdue on Oct. 30 and outlined reasons to vote Republican – was titled, “Jobs, Not Mobs,” taken from a line President Donald Trump offered as a hashtag in an election-season tweet.

On the red side of the poster, marked “Jobs,” a GOP elephant was superimposed on the wrist of a white hand giving the “OK” hand gesture – one appropriated in recent years as a symbol by white supremacists. The blue side, marked “Not Mobs,” a Democratic donkey was on the wrist of a brown-skinned fist.

Bridges said this week that the posters, now four weeks old and mostly gone, were news to him. If the Purdue GOP had, indeed, produced them, the students had not run the posters past him. And he said he was unaware that his name had come up in connection with them in social media discussions concerned about the overtones.

Once he saw them this week, he said he understood why there was concern on campus.

“My opinion is, this sort of thing is totally inappropriate,” Bridges said about the fliers. “You don’t go putting things up that say, ‘White power,’ and then go sticking a Republican logo next to it. I find it pretty offensive, and I certainly would not have approved it if it had ever come to me. … I honestly can’t see that it’s defensible. I really can’t.”

Gytis Kriauciunas, president of the Purdue GOP, did not immediately respond this week to questions for this story. When asked in late October and early November over Twitter whether the Purdue College Republicans were responsible for the posters, someone at @PurdueGOP responded: “Yes,” with a meme of Donald Trump in 8-bit sunglasses and the phrase, “Deal with it.” (J&C attempts to discuss the posters with a named source within the group before the election were not successful.)

By Wednesday afternoon, Bridges had confirmed that the group he advises put up the poster, “with the lame excuse that they meant it as an OK sign.” He said he’s reconsidering his post as faculty adviser for the College Republicans.

“Unfortunately, the use of that gesture as being an OK signal has declined, and it has been adopted by many as a symbol of white power,” Bridges said. “It is used in that sense by social media trolls. Of course, its ambiguity is very convenient, but I am afraid that excuse does not hold much water given the context.”

As for whether the fliers inspired vandals to return fire at his home? Bridges said: “I’m still not sure there’s a 100 percent connection.”

The “Jobs, Not Mobs” poster came amid a wave of pre-election complaints about other fliers found on the West Lafayette campus.

On Nov. 1, Purdue’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors issued a statement condemning a series of fliers, all unsigned, that the group attributed to white nationalists and that were “intended to frighten members of the Purdue community.” (Among them: A plain white, 8½-by-11 sheet that read, “It’s Okay To Be White” – which was similar to fliers found on nine American campuses in that particular week, according to a report in Inside Higher Ed.) The professors called on Purdue President Mitch Daniels to join them in publicly condemning the fliers.

Harry Targ, a political science professor, said the Purdue University College Republicans’ flier was not part of the American Association of University Professors chapter’s conversation. He said he was taken aback by the vandalism Bridges and Burch reported.

“I can’t imagine anyone I associate with would defend that sort of vandalism, because it’s so wrong,” Targ said. “In fact, it has the potential of fueling that side of the fence to sort of respond in kind. Then you have an ugly escalation beyond discussion and debate. It doesn’t make sense. … I’m sorry to hear this happened to Bridges.”

Lt. Jon Eager, a West Lafayette Police Department detective, said police had no suspects in the case.

Bridges, who was a boy in England during World War II, said he’s still trying to make sense of the message scrawled on the garage and the paint splattered on the driveway.

“I grew up in a country fighting the Nazis,” Bridges said. “It’s a little tough to be called one. No one should have to put up with this.”

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.