A Tennessee woman says a massive sign supporting President Joe Biden has hurt her business.
“I had so many people commenting saying, ‘I’ll never step foot in that business,’” said Angie Monahan, who owns and operates Honey Blossom Boutique in Lenoir City, according to a Tuesday report by WVLT-TV in Knoxville.
“This is how I make my livelihood. This is how my manager makes her livelihood, and I’ve spent seven years building this business. I can’t let one sign tear it apart,” she said.
Monahan leases space from the building’s owner, who put up the sign and has so far not spoken to the media about it. Monahan, however, has plenty to say.
“Shopping is supposed to be fun and relaxing. It’s not supposed to be political,” she told WVLT. “I just don’t make a stance one way or the other. If someone wants to ask my personal opinion, I don’t mind telling them, but that’s not good business.”
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Although the area is a largely conservative part Tennessee, Monahan said her feelings are not driven by partisanship.
“We don’t need politics in business. It brings down the whole vibe of downtown,” she said, according to a New York Post report published Friday. “I would feel the same way if it was a Trump sign.”
She even put up her own sign in her shop windows, adorned with American flags with arrows pointing upward at the Biden-Harris banner declaring, “This business did not hang this sign.”
Should this sign be taken down?
She said she has asked the property owner to remove the sign, but he “adamantly, adamantly refuses to take it down.”
City officials said their hands are tied, according to WVLT.
“There’s really not much we can do as far as our election sign regulation ordinance,” City Administrator Amber Kelso told the station.
“We want to be careful because we don’t want to impede on someone’s constitutional rights for freedom of speech. That would go for whether it’s a Biden sign or a Trump sign or whether it’s some other political sign,” she said.
According to the Post, Monana said she was puzzled at first.
“I kept wondering why groups of women were intentionally walking beyond the store, and now I know why,” she said.
After she began speaking out against the sign, she said, she received so many “nasty” and “threatening” messages from Biden backers that she started carrying her gun.
“I do feel threatened. I’m protecting myself,” she said. “I’m not parking in front of the store … I make sure I’m not followed home at night.”
A customer identified as Janette Collier said she went to the store to show support as much as to make a purchase.
“I feel for her because the sign is imposing on her,” she told the Post. “She’s here to run a store, not a political campaign.”
