The Abridged version:
- The Lincoln Police Department is investigating an incident involving City Councilmember Holly Andreatta and a local business owner, who filed a report alleging she assaulted him at Lincoln’s State of the City event last week.
- Footage of the incident shows Andreatta and the business owner having a heated conversation, during which Andreatta holds and touches his arms.
- Andreatta claims that her political opponents are sensationalizing the incident to damage her November re-election campaign.
The Lincoln police department has released footage of an incident involving City Councilmember Holly Andreatta and a local business owner, stirring heated discussion in the community ahead of the upcoming election.
Video of the Oct. 20 incident shows a tense and, at times, combative conversation between Andreatta and Steve Pagano, who is affiliated with the Lincoln Event Center. Andreatta touched and held Pagano’s arms several times throughout their discussion, the video shows. The two have offered vastly different characterizations of this conduct and the nature of the conversation.
Lincoln police chief Zach Eaton said the department is investigating the incident, which Pagano described in his police statement as a potential assault.
Andreatta, who is currently running a reelection campaign for her District 2 seat, disputed claims that she acted with physical hostility, saying she was attempting to explain herself and express to Pagano that she supports him. She told Abridged by PBS KVIE that those opposed to her political campaign are spreading false characterizations of the incident to hurt her reputation.
“I’m very sad that all of this division has been created for political and personal gain,” Andreatta told Abridged, referring to political critics who have weighed in. “It’s all political retribution and trying to unseat me.”
Pagano said that his police report and choice to publicly discuss the incident is not political. He said he believes Andreatta should be investigated and held to account.
“The law applies to everybody the same,” Pagano told Abridged.
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The incident
Those involved said the incident was triggered by a dispute over a planned Lincoln City Council candidate forum Oct. 19, which was canceled after Andreatta and councilmember Ben Brown announced they could not attend. A text message thread prior to the event shows that Andreatta told a candidate forum organizer she’d be available on that day.
But Andreatta and Pagano disagree over what that message actually meant. While Andreatta has said that it wasn’t a commitment to attend, Pagano said he believes otherwise. The two offered conflicting accounts of subsequent communications about rescheduling or relocating the event, with Andreatta adding that she’d unsuccessfully suggested other options.
Pagano carried this disagreement to the State of the City event, where he confronted Andreatta over this and comments from people who criticized local business owners on her Facebook page. In Pagano’s account, tension escalated after he showed Andreatta the text conversation.
“She lost her cool because of what I showed her, and that was just the truth,” Pagano said.
Footage of the event shows Pagano approaching Andreatta and a group of people, including other City Council members, in the lobby. Pagano touches Brown’s arm as he speaks to Andreatta, and as the conversation between them continues, it grows intense.
Pagano told Abridged that he accused Andreatta of lying after showing her the screenshot, which Andreatta took issue with. Meanwhile, Andreatta said she was only trying to address accusations related to the forum and assure Pagano that she wasn’t against him or his business.
Both Andreatta and Pagano often gesticulate as they speak passionately, and about three minutes into the conversation, Andreatta steps closer to Pagano and puts her hands on his arms. She lets go after about 20 seconds, and as they continue to talk, she touches his arms a few more times and later takes his arm again. Eventually, the conversation cools down and Pagano steps away to speak with Brown.
Pagano and Andreatta eventually bid each other farewell as Andreatta reaches for a handshake. They both gesture toward each other with “L” hand signs, which Pagano said they’d established as a signal for their mutual support of the Lincoln community.
Reviewing the tape
There are several cuts in the footage released by Lincoln police. Pagano claimed that during one of these cuts, Andreatta shook his shoulders and a witness attempted to intervene — two things Andreatta said never happened. She told Abridged that she and Pagano exchanged a handshake toward the end of the incident.
Though Andreatta said the conversation was not overly heated, Pagano characterized the incident as aggressive, accusing Andreatta of unwanted touching.
“The hardest part about all of it is for her to act like that wasn’t an aggressive discussion,” Pagano said.
Andreatta disagreed with such characterizations of her behavior, noting that Pagano does not appear to move away from her after she touches him in the footage. She pointed out that he also touched Brown and others who passed by during the conversation, so her behavior touching him was not out of the ordinary.
“He approached me, and there was a lot of back and forth,” Andreatta said. “I did reach out and shake his hand, he put his hand on mine, and then there was at the end some laughter and banter. We walked away, and that was that.”
Brown expressed support of Andreatta’s version of events to Abridged.
Eaton said that the police department offered to take a report from Pagano multiple times after they learned of the incident, but that Pagano repeatedly declined until Oct. 26. Before that, Pagano filed a report with the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, though the full investigation has since been transferred to Lincoln police.
Pagano told Abridged that he originally went to county law enforcement because his business’ lawyer advised him to do so with concerns about the relationship between City Council and Lincoln police.
Pagano asked the department to investigate the incident as an assault, Eaton said. The investigation is ongoing.
A looming election
Shortly after the incident, the Lincoln News-Messenger published an Op-Ed by Placer County supervisor Shanti Landon criticizing Andreatta’s conduct toward Pagano.
Landon and Andreatta previously ran against each other for a supervisor seat earlier this year, where the competition often turned contentious. During that race, Landon filed a police report accusing Andreatta of throwing papers in her face during an altercation, though no criminal charges or censure ever came of it.
The released footage has not changed Landon’s mind about Andreatta and the recent incident. She told Abridged that Andreatta has a pattern of aggressive behavior toward those who disagree with her, which Andreatta has disputed repeatedly.
“There’s never a case where an elected official should be putting their hands on someone in an aggressive manner, which I think is displayed pretty clearly in the video,” Landon said. “I know that some people are looking at it and have completely different perspectives, which is crazy to me.”
She added that if a male elected official had touched a female community member in a similar way, many people would see things differently.
Andreatta expressed displeasure with Landon’s choice to weigh in on the incident, accusing her of using it to sow division and influence the race. Landon has endorsed Andreatta’s opponent Christine Colvin Treshchuk in the ongoing election.
“My goal is always to bring people together in unity and cooperation to the best of our ability, and it breaks my heart that supervisor Landon has created division in our community for no reason,” Andreatta said.
But Landon and Pagano stated that this wasn’t about politics.
“We’re just a small business that tries hard in this community. Why would we want any of this to dissuade voters from her?” Pagano said.
To learn more about the District 2 race, check out Abridged by PBS KVIE’s voter guide.
Correction: This story was corrected at 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, to clarify that the text message exchange referenced during the confrontation was between Holly Andreatta and a candidate forum organizer.
Update: This story was updated at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, to include comment from Steve Pagano.
