Videos capture two Salinas candidates shouting insults.

As a longtime Salinas business and commercial property owner, Frank Yasin has been through his share of elections. Some years, candidates reach out to ask permission to post campaign signs, including on his prominently located, large store, Las Palmas Furniture, on East Alisal Street.

This year was no exception, and he authorized campaign teams for City Councilmember Tony Barrera and Mayor Dennis Donohue, both seeking reelection in contested races, to put up signs on the Las Palmas property.

Then those signs disappeared, Yasin says, and a Daniel Muñoz for Mayor sign was erected in its place. He and his staff took down that sign—and it went up again. The cycle repeated four times, says Yasin, for a candidate he had never met.

That was until Friday, Oct. 16 when Muñoz entered the store and confronted Yasin about the removal. Their exchange was captured on cell phone video that was posted by citizen journalist Chris Cerney, then widely shared.

"He made a whole scene," Yasin says.

The video shows Muñoz yelling at Yasin (not pictured), calling the business owner "a coward" for removing his signs. As it escalates, Muñoz says to Yasin, "Move then. Move back where you're from…I'm from here. 

Yasin, it happens, is from Salinas, where he was born and raised, but what he heard in "where you came from" was a thinly veiled slur targeting his Palestinian immigrant parents.

Muñoz later posted a video apologizing. "I'm sorry for putting my signs on your property, and you had every right to destroy them," he says. (Muñoz, who is boycotting the Weekly and Salinas Valley Now and did not respond to a request for comment, said in the video that he misunderstood the property to be public.)

(He also asked to meet in person with Yasin, something the business owner declined to accept until after the election. "It's a weird time now," Yasin says, adding, "If you want to be mayor of a city, you have to know how to talk nicely to people.")

An entirely different incident, just over a mile down the road in the parking lot of the VCA pet hospital on East Alisal Street, was also captured on video showing a different political candidate, Jose Guerra, in a confrontation with maintenance workers. (Guerra is running for District 2 against Barrera.) 

The video, posted to social media by citizen journalist Miguel Pelayo, shows Guerra, heated, shouting at a landscaping worker who'd been using a leaf blower and telling him he should switch to using a broom. (Their exchange is mostly in Spanish.)

Guerra calls the unidentified worker, who is behind the camera and does not appear in the video, lazy. The worker, surprised, responds that he is surprised to be insulted like that by a fellow Latino of the same background. Guerra responds, “No, we are not the same, because you don’t understand.” ("No somos de la misma raza.")

Guerra tells the worker to remove his pile of blown debris, instead of moving it around—repeatedly the man responds, "This is my job." Another voice, a woman speaking in English, can then be heard explaining: "We make the pile right there, that's what we do." 

Guerra then switches from Spanish to English: "Then pick it up," he says harshly, then repeats it. 

By email, Guerra explains his account of events, starting with his state of mind at the time. "I was in the parking lot with several other people waiting for the veterinarian. Our family pet was very sick, the veterinarian had told all of us to wait outside until we were called," he writes.

"During that time, a landscaping crew was using blowers in the adjacent parking lot, which was separated from ours by a landscaping mound. I personally witnessed them blowing dirt, leaves, and debris into our parking lot and into the vehicles of those of us waiting for the veterinarian. An elderly lady parked next to me was very upset. That is what caused the disagreement."

Before it became confrontational, Guerra says he asked the landscaper with the leafblower to stop, and Guerra says the worker "responded aggressively in Spanish, saying he was only doing his job, and asking who I thought I was."

When Guerra returned to the parking lot after his vet appointment, he says he asked to speak to the man's supervisor, who appears to be the woman heard in English in the video.  

"I confronted them about what I had seen and told them they should rake the debris into piles and pick it up instead of blowing it onto the neighboring property," Guerra writes.

"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. They did not like being called out on it."