Was Robinson Stealing Signs Over the Weekend?

Dwight Robinson managed to determine in his own mind that Adam Nick was guilty of stealing campaign signs before there was ever any investigation and called for his resignation the following day.

Now, Robinson has his own sign controversy less than 72 hours before the election. In a campaign in which he is involved, unlike the 2014 incident involving Nick, Robinson was observed early Saturday morning skulking along Bake Parkway.

A Lake Forest resident noticed a man pulling up some campaign signs along Bake Parkway, apparently belonging to Adam Nick and Leah Basile, about 12:35 a.m.

The resident, identifying himself as "Richard" on Facebook, turned on his camera phone and then pulled up to the scene and confronted Robinson, who’s running for City Council against Nick and Basile. Robinson said he was putting his own signs up after they had been “pulled down.”

Based on what he saw, however, Richard wasn’t buying the excuse in his Facebook post:

"Was driving home from work and saw someone who I later found out was Dwight Robinson doing some very suspicious activity around the negative anti-Nick signs (I noticed some of Leah’s and Nick’s signs on the ground). I pulled up to him and he seemed very nervous and told me he was putting up his own signs (although Bake was already full of them as you all know). Caught red-handed, in my opinion. Dwight said he was going to play fair and he got caught putting up negative hateful signs and replacing Leah’s and Nick’s signs from what I could see when he was stopping all over Bake moving things around." (Text edited for spelling and punctuation)

Tom Cagley, who had placed many of the Nick and Basile signs on Bake Road between Jeronimo and the railroad overpass on Wednesday, said they were not there on Saturday afternoon.

Nick's Reaction

Nick said Saturday evening he saw the video but was unwilling to jump to any conclusions – and certainly would not treat Robinson the way Robinson treated Nick during the last election cycle with a rush to judgment calling for his immediate resignation. Nick wasn’t even a candidate at the time.

“I don’t know enough to have an opinion about what actually happened,” Nick said. “What I can say is that Dwight publicly said that he would run a clean campaign and yet he has resorted to using negative and foolish yard signs and citations of articles planted on Patch and other online outlets by his protégé Andrew Hamilton, who writes under multiple pseudonyms, mostly ‘James Ross.’ Hamilton’s articles contain nothing but fabrication, lies and half-truths, and Dwight is using pictures of them in the literature sent out to Lake Forest voters. He said he would not do such a thing and yet he is.”

There was never any doubt in Richard's mind what was taking place. As he approached Robinson’s SUV on the side of the road, he’s overheard on the video: “So I think I’m riding up here on a guy that’s stealing a bunch of signs.”

Here’s the conversation between the two once Richard pulls to the side of the road to confront Robinson, who pleads innocence. Some expletives have been removed from the dialogue. The video is too dark to see any Nick and Basile signs on the ground.

Richard: What are you doing bro? What’s up brother? What are you doing, are you the one taking signs downs?

Robinson: What’s that?

Richard: Oh that’s you, I thought you were the one taking all the signs down.

Robinson: No, I’m the one putting them back up. They’re getting pulled down.

Richard: Oh really?

Robinson: Yeah.

Richard: I thought it was somebody else that was like pulling them off right now. But no, that’s …

Robinson: I’m putting them back up.

Richard: OK, man.

Robinson: That’s me.

Richard: Oh, that’s right, you are Dwight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.

Robinson: Who are you?

Richard: My name’s Richard.

Robinson: Richard?

Richard: Yeah, I live in Lake Forest and was just driving by and I’m like who … is this guy, is this the one that everybody’s talking about?

Robinson: No, that’s Adam Nick.

Richard: Oh, OK I see.

Robinson: Yep.

Richard: All right man, you have a good night.

You can view the video at this link (it contains the expletives).

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.