www.montereycountynow.com OCTOBER 22-28, 2026 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 Even when it works beautifully, local government is messy. But in this election season, it’s taken a turn for the nasty—and the immature. One of the beautiful, if messy things: Anyone gets to speak at the microphone during public comment periods. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue opened the public comment period with the usual guidelines: Each speaker has two minutes, and must not make any threatening remarks toward others. Things started out pretty normally. One speaker advocated for reducing pesticide use, another announced upcoming Veterans Day activities. Jose Guerra, a candidate for City Council District 2 (see Squid Fry, right), had some choice words for the incumbent, Tony Barrera, and other incumbents: “Que vergüenza, you guys are embarrassing…You guys up there, you need to be replaced.” This all is captured on video, creating a public record of the comments. It’s easy to hear on the City of Salinas’ YouTube channel, but the camera shows the speakers’ backs, rather than their faces—atypical. At one point, while mayoral candidate Daniel Muñoz is standing in line, another mayoral candidate, Peter Szalai, can be seen whispering to him. Szalai says he was concerned about the camera direction because Muñoz and several supporters arrived wearing Muñoz for Mayor T-shirts. Back in March, after Szalai first announced his candidacy at the podium, he was called into a meeting with City Manager René Mendez, City Attorney Chris Callihan and City Clerk Patricia Serratos. In Szalai’s telling, they directed him not to use the public lectern for his campaign activity, with directions that he says included a prohibition on wearing any political clothing. I did not get to ask city officials about this, because they seem to have an allergy to responding to media inquiries these days. Sophia Rome, the city’s public information officer, ignored repeated text messages and voicemails and emails. Muñoz showed up wearing a campaign T-shirt specifically to challenge this supposed rule. “I went to the meeting to watch the spectacle,” Szalai says. Instead, he became the spectacle. He thought it was odd that the cameras were not showing the front of the Muñoz for Mayor T-shirts (so did I). But he took matters into his own hands, walking up to the IT control room and swinging the door open, seeming to startle the worker inside, he says—and clearly crossing a line. I would have asked Muñoz about his intention, but just like Salinas City Hall, I didn’t get a chance. In his case, it’s not just lack of responsiveness—he’s holding a grudge against the Weekly (and our affiliated digital outlets Monterey County Now and Salinas Valley Now) and will not speak to our staff because he doesn’t agree with our editorial board’s endorsement of Measure H. Before telling me he would no longer talk to me, Muñoz said, “I am boycotting the Weekly, and telling everyone I know to boycott the Weekly… We’re going to shut down fake news like the Weekly.” A few things: We are not “fake news,” even though I’m fully aware that many readers of this very column disagree with me, and with our paper more generally—this is not a propaganda machine. Muñoz seems to think that because our editorial board arrived at a different conclusion than he did, we are “fake.” (Ironically, a lot of what the No on Measure H proponents are talking about now is coming from information reported in our news section by Staff Writer Celia Jiménez. For an example, see p. 15.) This is immature at best, but it’s behavior that fits right into these times during President Donald Trump’s presidency. If you don’t like the press coverage, you insult and diminish the press. In Monterey, mayoral candidate Vince Malfitano took it a step further, serving a subpoena on Staff Writer Aric Sleeper seeking suspected source communications. (That subpoena is now moot after Malfitano reached a settlement agreement over a pending restraining order case against him, and the case was dismissed.) Often, we feel insulated from the antics of Washington, D.C. here at a local newspaper covering local government. But increasingly, it appears to be trickling down. Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com. Cone of Silence It’s a nasty political season in Salinas with insults and media boycotts. By Sara Rubin TRAIN WRECK…After staring at Squid’s computer screen for far too long, Squid decided to get some fresh air and take an amble down the Monterey Rec Trail with Squid’s trusty canine companion, Rosco P. Coltrane. While oozing along, Squid noticed that the iconic red caboose on Cannery Row was still resting at its longtime home, despite news in May about its sale and inevitable removal. The caboose’s owner for nearly a decade, Ed Ciliberti, had put the historic vehicle up for sale in May for $75,000 after the City of Monterey terminated his lease and ordered him to move it. A buyer had offered to purchase the caboose, but the deal apparently fell through, according to Ciliberti, who posted on social media about the failed sale. Ciliberti followed up to report that the caboose had been sold again, this time to Ciliberti’s friend Richard “Pepe” Pepe, the Carmel restaurateur of Little Napoli and Vesuvio fame. The plan is for Pepe to rest the caboose on one of his properties rent-free. Ciliberti gives his heartfelt thanks to restaurateur and urges fans to patronize his businesses. Even if Squid cannot ride the caboose, it prompted Squid to ooze down to Carmel Bakery to see if they took Squid’s suggestion to bake up some shrimp-flavored scones. FIGHTING WORDS…It seems that every election season, human conflicts get as heated as they do undersea in Squid’s lair, where the apex predators always seem to win. But this season feels even more tense, especially in Salinas. A video posted on social media shows District 2 City Council candidate Jose Guerra encountering a worker with a leaf blower in an Alisal Street veterinary office parking lot, where Guerra confronts him in Spanish about his choice of tool. The worker, behind the camera, expresses outrage that he’s getting yelled at by a fellow-Latino for doing his job. Guerra retorts, also in Spanish: “No, we are not the same, because you don’t understand.” Yikes. Guerra—still heated—yells at the worker to pick up a broom to sweep instead. (By email, Guerra says, “My reason for calling them lazy was that they were blowing the debris into another parking lot instead of gathering it into piles and picking it up…We were waiting with sick animals in our vehicles, and the landscaping crew did not care.”) Meanwhile, another video circulating online shows mayoral candidate Daniel Muñoz melting down at a business owner for removing one of Muñoz’s signs from his business. “Move then—move back where you’re from,” Muñoz says. More yikes—especially in times like these, with deportations soaring, those are threatening words. Muñoz later apologized in another video, but the temperature does not seem to have gotten any cooler. THE LOCAL SPIN SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. “I went to the meeting to watch the spectacle.” SEND SQUID A TIP: squid@montereycountynow.com
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