Official election results have confirmed that a far-right militia successfully ousted a Republican county supervisor this month in Shasta County, California. "It was a ballot-box success for ultra-conservatives, one that could be repeated in local elections this year as well as primaries and the midterms as Republicans decide whether to skew right with former President Donald Trump or hew to a more traditional course," CNN reports.
Leonard Moty, who lost the recall vote, is a former law-enforcement officer, and fiscal conservative who supports the Second Amendment, but the militia went against him and two other supervisors after they wouldn't defy mandatory shut-down restrictions imposed by the governor for the pandemic.
Moty "says his loss is a win for extremists and warns other Republicans that the rage of the far right is driving them to take on local governments," CNN reports. "I think it's the Republican Party falling apart," Moty said. "Don't think it's just going to go away. Don't think this can't happen to you."
Shasta County in pink, Nevada County in red on adapted Wikipedia map |
A group in rural Nevada County, in the Sierra Nevada southeast of Shasta County, appears to be doing just that. It "is seeking to recall five county supervisors, saying that contact tracing efforts and the promotion of lockdowns and vaccines violate 'religious freedoms and individual liberty'," Dani Anguiano reports for The Guardian. The campaign has also "accused supervisors of 'promoting corruption' and enabling 'crimes against humanity'."
1 comment:
I read the Guardian article, in part because I lived in Grass Valley and worked for the local newspaper from 1986-89. The county was a mixture of people whose families date to the Gold Rush and refugees from big cities who included environmentalists, aging hippies, musicians, peace activists and hardcore Republicans. The article makes Nevada County sound more like rural Arizona.
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