Wiscasset selectman’s candidate Kim Andersson reported in an email to the Wiscasset Newspaper Monday morning, all of her missing campaign signs were returned overnight. Anderson wrote: “Someone has a conscience!”

All were found in the backyards of the properties where the signs had been posted, Andersson wrote in a followup email response to a question. “Someone must have decided to do the right thing!! So glad.”

Original post: Wiscasset selectman’s candidate Kim Andersson said three of her red-painted, plywood campaign signs went missing over Memorial Day weekend. She was surprised, because the signs are big – barely fitting in her car; disappointed, on a number of levels; and heartened, at the response she received to posts on her personal and campaign Facebook pages.

Friends and strangers offered to let her put signs on their properties after reading her posts about the missing signs, Andersson said in a phone interview Sunday. “It makes me be able to focus more on the positive, and it eases the sting,” she said.

Andersson said she contacted police about the missing signs late Sunday morning. She was still holding out hope there was a rational explanation, she said. All three were on private property, two of them with the owners’ permission, on Route 27 and Fowle Hill Road; the third was on Route One at the Maine Craft Shack property opposite the Wiscasset welcome sign, Andersson and Jason Putnam said. Putnam donated the plywood and helped make the signs.

“It’s very frustrating,” Putnam, interviewed separately, said.

Andersson said her disappointment was due not only to the loss of the signs in those visible spots, but because Putnam could have reused the signs for other purposes after the campaign; and because he worked so hard on them.

Putnam was surprised signs would go missing in a selectmen’s race. He put the Andersson sign at his house inside after hearing about the others going missing; but he plans to keep it outside during the day. “Hell, yeah,” he said.

Shortly after Andersson notified police, Wiscasset Police Officer Levon Travis told the Wiscasset Newspaper the matter was under investigation.

The newspaper also contacted the other four candidates to see if they had had any sign problems. Bob Blagden did not put out signs and does not plan to. Regarding Andersson’s missing signs, Blagden said, “I’m sorry that happened.”

Responding by email, David Cherry and Glen Craig said they have not displayed any campaign signs, either. Commenting on Andersson’s missing ones, Craig wrote: “I can’t understand what motivates anyone to do these things but when discovered who(m) it is they need to be confronted so the public knows the perpetrators.”

Katharine Martin-Savage, also via email, said a friend put up a sandwich board campaign sign for her near Hooper Street, and that one is missing. “Sandwich board signs are expensive so (I) am in hopes it will turn up soon.”

Andersson, Craig, Blagden, Martin-Savage and Cherry are in a five-way race for two select board seats. The election is June 13.