Honk If You Voted for Poway’s Snesko

On a busy Poway street corner Thursday, B. Tony Snesko was waving a sign and savoring the fruits of victory. His sign said simply: “Thank you.”

The sound of motorists’ horns honking a hello sounded like trumpets to him and the waving shouts of passers-by were music to his ears. He let out a hearty “har, har, har” reminiscent of St. Nicholas and waved his thank-you sign in response.

Snesko, 44, a self-proclaimed born-again Christian and anti-abortionist, tossed his 10-gallon hat in the ring for a Poway City Council seat last summer and devoted all of his time and energy, and a little bit of money, to his first political campaign.

For weeks, Snesko rose before dawn and was out on one of Poway’s busy streets by 5:30 each morning, setting out his rhyming Burma Shave-style signs, then positioning himself in a prominent place to wave a poster urging people to “Vote for Tony Snesko.”

“Sometimes I’d take four hours off in the middle of the day to attend to other campaign matters,” he confessed. “But I was out there every day on the street, dawn to dusk.”

He used his Burma Shave signs to sum up the issues. One of his favorites: “Traffic bad?” “Development, too?” “Promises broken” “Got you blue?” “Vote Tony Snesko.”

Why did he take to the streets to get his campaign message across? Because Poway is a commuter community, and Snesko knew he could get more name and face recognition on one of the three main streets than he could knocking on doors.

Mayor-elect Jan Goldsmith paid him an oblique compliment after the election: “The face of politics in Poway has been changed forever,” Goldsmith said of Snesko’s cowboy attire and street-corner campaigning.

Traffic congestion, Poway’s main gripe, was Snesko’s main campaign theme. He started off in July by announcing his candidacy for Poway City Council in front of the barricades placed across a popular Poway “shortcut” to San Diego--Pomerado Road--and blasting incumbent council members for “taking a wait-and-see attitude toward problems of growth, traffic, the city’s youth and housing for the elderly.” He criticized the council for not filing suit against San Diego City Council to force reopening of Pomerado Road.

After his unexpected victory in Tuesday’s election, Snesko was back on his street corner, this time with his thank-you sign.

“When I was out early this morning it was so cold that the breeze from the passing cars brought tears to my eyes, which froze on my cheeks,” he said, “but I had to say thank you to my friends who voted for me.”