by Leslie Layton
posted Oct. 22
It cost the political action committee (PAC) A Better Chico some $14,000 to taint election season with a bitter mood by sending out four mailers that attack two City Council candidates who are running for the District 3 and 7 seats.
The two women, candidates Monica McDaniel and Bryce Goldstein, were each targeted with two mailers that make misleading and false statements that exploit the issue of homelessness by showing pictures of tent encampments, piles of litter and needles.
District 3 candidate McDaniel, who is running against Dale Bennett, the incumbent councilmember supported by A Better Chico, is frustrated. McDaniel calls the mailers “hate-spewing” and says they’re full of “straight-up lies.”
Jim Parrott, who is listed as the principal officer of the PAC and is a retired Chico police detective, was contacted for comment on the mailers. “I don’t have any comment to make and nothing to say to ChicoSol,” Parrott said and then hung up.
One of the mailers refers to McDaniel as a “Homeless Advocate” and another demands voters reject her “homeless plan” and calls her an “appointed homeless advocate.”
“I’m not a homeless advocate and I never was a homeless advocate,” McDaniel told ChicoSol in an Oct. 21 phone interview. “I never signed up to be a homeless advocate.”
McDaniel says she joined the Police Community Advisory Board as a “parent and educator” and was given the title of liaison to the unhoused population without her consent.
McDaniel also said that neither she nor the Council have a plan for homelessness, which is precisely Chico’s problem. She said she wants a seat on the Council to work with “other council members who are present” in developing a plan.
One mailer claims that Goldstein, a Climate Action commissioner, is part of “the same team that created Chico’s Homeless crisis” — even though there are surveys and studies documenting the complexity of the roots of the crisis.
Goldstein, the District 7 candidate running against incumbent Councilmember Deepika Tandon, responded by posting a video on YouTube and calling the attack ads “multiple, slanderous glossy mailers.” Goldstein said the ads featured “other cities’ homeless encampments.”
The mailers targeting the District 3 and 7 candidates had by the end of last week drawn considerable press attention because of their inflammatory character and prompted letters to the editor of the daily newspaper.
A Better Chico has raised more than $133,000 this year, according to campaign disclosure filings with the City Clerk’s office. It raised a great deal of its money during the first six months of this year, when there were multiple donations of $5,000 or more and a golf event in Lake Almanor that cost the PAC almost $17,000.
Throughout the year it’s received donations from Chico businesses like C.G. Development, from members of the farming community like Bryce Lundberg, and from conservative elected leaders like Mayor Andrew Coolidge or their families and Assemblyman James Gallagher and Supervisor Tod Kimmelshue and their campaign committees.
The PAC has financed mailers and other advertising in support of its slate, Mike O’Brien, Bennett, Tandon and Melissa Lopez-Mora. The slate is also endorsed by the police union, the Chico Police Officers’ Association.
Some of the largest donations during the first part of the year came from Councilmember Tom van Overbeek ($6,125); the police officers’ union, ($5,000); and a property management company AAA Properties ($5,000.) Donations were also made in the names of Fast Cabinet Doors ($7,800) and its owner, Sam MacNeill ($10,040.) More donations came from Oak Ridge Cabinets ($10,200) and Shawn MacNeill of Oak Ridge Cabinets ($1,100).
Shawn MacNeill is one of four of the PAC’s board members.
Campaign finance laws limit direct contributions to candidates to $500, but donations to PACs that aren’t run by the candidates are virtually unlimited. “The laws are all about candidates’ campaigns,” said Charley Turner, a Chico State political science professor, “but none of these limits touch uncoordinated money.”
“All the PAC stuff can be traced to Citizens United; there’s been a huge spike. It’s all non-connected, non-traceable money.”
Turner noted that money has been flowing into Chico council races for the past two decades from parties with vested interests. “People who stand to gain economically through developing lands and building stuff have a vested interest in who’s on the City Council because that’s who’s ultimately going to approve new subdivisions,” he noted.
Turner said attack mailers can be “somewhat effective” in the short term or in a particular election. But too much negativity, he said, is “bad for our collective psyche. They also have this broader effect of souring people on politics.”
Leslie Layton is editor of ChicoSol.