Squid noms popcorn as Bill Monning goes Hulk on supes candidate Dennis Donohue.

Monning Smash!…Squid spent a cold and drizzly Friday night snuggled deep into a movie theater seat, jamming shrimp-flavored popcorn into Squid’s gullet and watching Captain America: Civil War. The action! The conspiracies! The injustices! The cute action heroes jammed into tight T-shirts! Except for the cute action heroes and tight T-shirt part, it’s a lot like the District 4 race for the Monterey County Board of Supervisors—action- and injustice- and conspiracy-wise.

Throughout the movie, Squid kept waiting for Bruce Banner, aka, The Hulk, to show up. Spider Man was there, and Black Widow and Ant Man and Hawkeye. But Squid loves watching a good guy totally lose his mind and smash things when his sense of justice is violated—and with all the injustice involved in Capt. America, Hulk was really needed.

Ah, but Squid only needed to check Squid’s mailbox to find a real-life Hulk.

The usually mild-mannered state Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, went all out to deliver a can of whoopass-style justice to District 4 candidate Dennis Donohue, who put out a campaign mailer about incumbent Jane Parker and her involvement with the Central Coast Veterans Cemetery that was so full of mistruths and deceptions and lying lies that—arrghhh—Monning Smash!

It started late last week when Donohue, a radicchio dealer and former mayor of Salinas (for more on those halcyon days, check out this post on the blog Monterey Bay Partisan), sent out a campaign mailer with the giant headline “Jane Parker says ‘No’ to Veterans & Monterey County.”

“Jane Parker has claimed to support a veterans’ cemetery, yet voted against it in line with her special interest campaign contributors and needlessly delayed the project,” the flier reads. It goes on to say that only one vote stands between veterans and the Veterans Cemetery—and that vote is Jane Parker. Donohue, the flier says, supports the plan and will stand with veterans to get it done.

Here’s the problem. The plan is not only well underway, but the first phase of the Veterans Cemetery is already under construction and scheduled for opening in August or September of this year.

And Jane Parker, never, not once—not in this dimension nor in any other, not in this lifetime nor the next—got in the way of the Veterans Cemetery. And Monning knows this because he, along with congressional candidate Jimmy Panetta, former Carmel Mayor Jason Burnett and a bunch of other electeds and interested parties, were busting ass to raise the funding for the project.

“It’s such an appalling set of untruths, especially since I consistently voted for the Veterans Cemetery and in favor of veterans,” Parker says.

It’s a rare occasion for an elected to send out a press release blasting a candidate in a race in which he or she isn’t involved, but blast Monning did. With both barrels. On a Saturday afternoon, in a press release sent out to local media.

"I just saw the Donohue hit piece against Supervisor Parker," stated Monning. "This is so erroneous and inaccurate that I hardly know where to start.”

The greatest hits from Monning's press release include:

• "For Dennis Donohue to vilify Jane as somehow not supporting the veterans cemetery is false and misleading and intentionally designed to deceive the voters.”

• "I am disappointed to see a candidate initiate a campaign based on lies and deception instead of advancing an honest portrayal of what he might aspire to do as a supervisor. If this is how Donohue runs his campaign, would he also throw truth and ethics to the winds if elected?"

• "For Donohue to suggest that establishment of the Veterans Cemetery only awaits his affirmative vote to come to fruition is not only false, it is disrespectful and dismissive of all of us who have worked to establish the cemetery."

Monning also points out that Parker has supported the Veterans Cemetery "every step of the way" with affirmative votes on the Fort Ord Reuse Authority board and the Board of Supervisors related to authorizing language, land conveyances, and title conveyance to the state of California—all necessary steps to make the cemetery happen.

And in the grand finish, Monning writes that since being elected, he has worked with the County Board of Supervisors, including Parker, along with Congressman Sam Farr, D-Carmel, and former and current assemblymembers Fred Keeley, John Laird, Luis Alejo and Mark Stone, the FORA board, the city of Seaside and veterans’ organizations on the cemetery project. Their combined efforts—along with Monning’s legislative and budget success in the California Legislature—have secured over $2 million for what will become the Central Coast Veterans Cemetery.

Squid’s colleagues reached out to Camp Donohue to get a response. Steve Thomas, Donohue’s campaign manager, said he hadn’t seen or received a copy of Monning’s press release, then added he would review it after Squid’s colleague sent a copy. And from Donohue, there was only radio silence.

Still no word from either Thomas or Donohue as of Squid's deadline, but District 4 residents heard more: A fresh mailer from Donohue had starting appearing in today's mail, again invoking the veterans cemetery, again claiming Parker had attempted to block it.

"Standing in the way of a Veterans Cemetery," this header reads. As a source, a citation takes voters to the July 14-20, 2011 issue of the Monterey County Weekly. So Squid rummaged through the archives and perused that old issue, where Squid found nothing about the veterans cemetery. 

What Squid did find was a piece of paper in Donohue's candidate file—a voluntary pledge candidates can sign on to, promising they won't play dirty in their campaigns. Donohue signed.

"There are basic principles of decency, honesty and fair play which every candidate for public office in the State of California has a moral obligation to observe and uphold," the pledge reads in part.

When Bruce Banner morphs into Hulk, his skin turns green and his clothes get torn. Squid’s not sure what happened to Monning—did he turn red? Does he need to buy a new suit?—but Squid guesses this: Donohue should consider hiring a fact-checker to examine all future campaign materials, lest Monning go hulk on him again. Or even, perhaps, voters get turned off by all the negative campaigning.