Elephant or Donkey

This rather colourful display at the Reston metro station is designed to draw attention to the new luxury high-rise apartments that are being built there. 

It also offers photo opportunities to portray yourself either as Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty, or to have your photo taken with one of two colourful creatures. (No willing volunteers to hand on Saturday when we passed by, unfortunately!).

The featured creatures are the work of local artists and they represent the two political parties contesting the November presidential election.

The elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party, also known as the 'Grand Old Party' or GOP.

The cartoonist Thomas Nast first made the association in 1874 in a cartoon in Harper's Weekly of a donkey in a lion skin, scaring away the other zoo animals.  One animal was the elephant, labeled in the cartoon as 'The Republican Vote'.  Henceforth the elephant was associated with the Republican Party.

The donkey is the symbol of the Democratic Party.  In 1828 the opponents of presidential candidate Andrew Jackson called him a jackass because of his beliefs that the people should rule.  Although it was intended as an insult, he adopted the animal in campaign posters and this was the donkey's first connection to the party.

Thomas Nast is also credited with establishing the donkey as a symbol.   In 1870 he used the donkey to represent the Democratic Party in a political cartoon in Harper's Weekly and by 1880 it had been adopted as the unofficial symbol for the party.