For Cyndi Niehaus of Ridgepointe Drive in Cold Spring, it's the vacant lots that blossom with signs, and the bus shelter she saw this week along U.S. 27 in Highland Heights that was plastered with signs for John Kerry.

When Trujillo saw people erecting a large Geoff Davis sign Saturday at the subdivision's Pleasant Valley entrance, the self-described Republican told them they weren't allowed to put up signs on Hearthstone's common areas, owned by the housing association.

"They said 'Well, you can just take it up with Ralph Drees,' " the Kenton County judge-executive whose Drees Co. developed the subdivision. Drees, like Geoff Davis, is a Republican.

Adam Davis of Harvest Home Drive, who describes himself as Republican-leaning, sees the signs as "two monsters" larger than Toyota Corollas. He called the subdivision's management company, Towne Properties, Monday and asked that the signs be removed, partly because they made it hard to see oncoming traffic.

When he heard no promise they would vanish, "I was like, 'Can we put them up for Nick Clooney then, same size?" he said, referring to Geoff Davis' Democrat opponent for Congress.

Adam Davis said he pays $480 yearly for upkeep of the subdivision's common areas, where signs are banned.

"I don't care who puts the signs up - Republican, Democrat, independent, Black United Front, the KKK," he said. "Those are the rules."

The signs were gone Wednesday morning.

"I'm a Davis supporter, and proud of it," said Drees, who said he told Davis' campaign signs could go up on Drees properties, although not that specific spot.

But when told there were complaints, "I said, 'Move the damn signs,'" Drees said. "If people are complaining about them being at the entrance, why not move them then?"

"Before we put up a sign, we have permission of the landowner, usually," said Geoff Davis spokesman Justin Brasell. But with volunteers helping, that's not always the case, he conceded.

When Cyndi Niehaus noticed a similar large Geoff Davis sign at the AA Highway entrance to her Drees-built Glenridge subdivision in Cold Spring, "My husband said, 'Well, that won't stay there long,'" she said.

The couple assumed their city's regulations about signs would put an end to it, and by Wednesday, the huge sign was gone, replaced by a smaller one, she said. But the city's clerk and police chief said they weren't the ones to make it disappear.

Niehaus has a small Bush/Cheney sign in her front yard, but finds it distasteful when signs populate vacant lots along busy streets. When she drove past the bus shelter plastered with Kerry signs, "I thought, 'That's interesting. Isn't that public property?'"