An exclusive update tonight in the case of Portsmouth’s vanished Democratic bench: the mystery is solved, the culprit confronted, and the 400-pound seat has been recovered.
The owner of Courtesy Advertising, which owns and maintains the advertising benches, told SCDN he personally retrieved his stolen property this week from the local businessman who made off with it.
A Promise Broken, a Confrontation Made
As we first reported, the Courtesy owner gave the culprit a chance to quietly return the bench before involving police. The man had promised to Courtesy last Monday but never followed through.
By Tuesday morning, the Courtesy owner had had enough. He drove to the suspect’s home, confronted him, and retrieved the bench himself. When the bench was recovered, the political message was missing. The suspect had torn off the Scioto County Democratic Party’s ad sign and tossed it in the trash. Fortunately, Courtesy managed to salvage the sign intact.
A New Home for the Bench and the Message
The recovered concrete bench has now been relocated from its longtime spot on Eighth Street to Wheelersburg—this time without the Democratic Party advertisement. As for the ad? Courtesy remounted it on a different bench, now sitting along Gallia Street near Jim Dandy restaurant.
There are currently no plans to place a new bench back on Eighth Street.
Politics, Fallout, and Fundraising
The Courtesy owner said he still believes the theft was politically motivated, but emphasized the damage went far beyond party lines.
“This did not do the Republican Party any good considering the environment we are in right now,” he told SCDN. He said all it did was serve as a tremendous fundraiser for the Democrats in a Republican-dominated County, and it hurt a small business by stealing its property.
What Comes Next
For now, the bench is back, the ad is re-mounted, and the city’s strangest political theft has reached a kind of resolution. But in a place where party politics are never far from the surface, this concrete caper may leave cracks in Portsmouth’s political scene long after the bench has found its new seat. To be clear, no theft report was ever filed in this case, so there was no police investigation, and no charges were pressed.