Veterans group is attacking Ellen Beraud — here’s why you should ignore its smear

A political action committee is waging an ugly campaign aimed at turning voters — especially military veterans and their families — against San Luis Obispo County supervisor candidate Ellen Beraud, a progressive Democrat who is challenging incumbent Debbie Arnold.

Beraud’s offense?

Back in March 2007, when she was serving on the Atascadero City Council, she cast the lone vote against the Faces of Freedom veterans monument at the city’s Lake Park — but the story is more nuanced than you’re being told.

She fully supported the idea of a monument, she explained in casting her vote. But she didn’t believe it was her job as a city councilwoman to give an opinion on the artwork, which had drawn criticism for its design.

Rather than rubber-stamping the project as is, Beraud wanted to follow the recommendation of a city-appointed arts committee, which had voted 4-1 to reject the centerpiece sculpture. She suggested moving forward with the rest of the monument, which includes walls etched with names of fallen service members, but holding off on the statue and perhaps opening up the process to new ideas.

And for that she’s being targeted, 13 years later, by TV and radio ads and mailers accusing her of dishonoring veterans.

Who’s donating to the Friends of Veterans PAC

So far, the Friends of Veterans PAC has raised more than $60,000 to defeat Beraud, including $10,000 from the California Independent Petroleum Association; a collective $7,000 from North County wineries and vineyards, including Daou, Ancient Peaks and Margarita Vineyards; several large donations from car dealerships, including $5,000 from Michael Mullahey of Mullahey Ford; plus smaller donations from local businesses and individuals.

Local Republican leaders have kicked in as well, including District Attorney Dan Dow, who contributed $100, and is listed on the PAC’s executive committee, according to filings with the Federal Communications Commission.

“As a very patriotic American veteran, I have always been extremely proud of our Smithsonian-quality Faces of Freedom memorial in Atascadero for honoring the sacrifices of our nation’s warriors — and I am shocked that any elected official would have opposed its prominent display,” Dow told us via email. “After discussing with fellow veteran friends, we concluded that it was an important fact for the voters to consider when deciding who to entrust with the position of District 5 supervisor.”

You can critique art without being unpatriotic

People of good will often disagree about public monuments, including monuments to veterans.

Objecting to the design of a particular sculpture honoring vets does not make you an unpatriotic pariah, unfit to hold public office.

Just look at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It incited a huge backlash from veterans and civilians alike who called it a “monument to defeat,” a “black gash of shame,” and “wailing wall for draft dodgers.”

Those critics weren’t disrespecting veterans. They were sharing their opinions.

That’s what we do in America — at least, that’s what we used to do.

But now, instead of focusing on real issues affecting voters today — like water and housing and the closure of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant — this Friends of Veterans PAC is cynically attempting to manipulate voters by rewriting the history of a solitary vote, abusing its context and shoveling it out to an electorate as thinly veiled emotional fearmongering.

What gets lost in the retelling is this:

While there was widespread support for the Faces of Freedom Monument — including from The Tribune — not everyone was in love with that statue.

Those who weighed in at the time included a National Guard member who called it a “mess”; a mom who worried that kids would climb on it; and a letter writer who opined that the statue “would not be a piece of pride for Atascadero residents.”

Tracy Di Vita Baas, a member of the ad-hoc arts committee that reviewed it, shared this critique in The Tribune: “The proposed statue has no cohesive design aspects, it looks like everyone on the committee said, oh, oh ... put in a soldier, don’t forget the flag, what about faces of everyone from different wars, and we need a wounded soldier, and a 50-foot wall with flags, and descriptions of each war, and let’s add an eagle while we are at it.”

A synopsis of an arts committee meeting states this: “Some found the half man disturbing and also felt that the faces in the flag did not work for them.”

On top of that, mistakes were made in the processing of the application.

City staff didn’t realize Atascadero had an official arts policy until the veterans’ project was well advanced. The ad-hoc review committee was brought in at practically the last minute to comply with the city mandate — which left the veterans committee feeling like they were getting the run-around.

Other accusations

According to Beraud’s detractors, voting against the project wasn’t her only act of disrespect to veterans.

She’s criticized for not attending events at the memorial until recently.

Just last week, Al Fonzi, a veteran with 35 years of military service, accused her of “slandering” the Veterans Foundation back in 2007 by claiming that its members used “intimidation tactics” to push the project through the city.

“That was a lie ... ” Fonzi wrote in a recent letter to the editor.

Here’s what Beraud said at that 2007 council meeting: “I ... have been shocked by the insinuations and tactics of intimidation by members of the Atascadero Veterans Memorial Committee to label citizens as unpatriotic if they didn’t like their plans for a memorial.”

Yes, she could have sugarcoated it a little more, but she wasn’t wrong. There were efforts to shame people into supporting the project.

For instance, here’s how Fonzi ended his speech to the council at the 2007 meeting: “If you do (deny the project), you’re basically saying you don’t want to honor the veterans.”

Using that same logic, someone who objects to the design of a proposed statue of a mother and child — maybe they think it’s uninspired, or ill proportioned — must have no respect for motherhood.

Fonzi’s statement was nothing more than a crass public guilt trip meant to muscle the project through, debate be damned. Beraud refused to fall for it.

Enough. This happened 13 years ago. It’s time to give it a rest.

The members of Friends of Veterans have chosen Debbie Arnold as their candidate. That’s fine. This is a close contest, and there’s bound to be some scrappy campaigning.

But branding a candidate an enemy of veterans because she would not immediately sign off on one element of a public art monument goes way too far.

That’s frightening, and it’s not who we should be as a community.

Supporters of Debbie Arnold would be well-advised to stop trying to tar-and-feather Ellen Beraud with a transparently meritless charge and concentrate instead on building up their own candidate, based on issues that are of actual significance to District 5 today.

And voters, for their part, should give this smear what it deserves — zero attention. Throw the mailers in the trash and ignore the ads completely.

This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 5:00 AM.