Republican county supervisor recalled over pandemic mandates warns, 'Don't think this can't happen to you'

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

The militia that led the recall effort has a podcast with a nationwide audience (which in one episode compared journalists to Nazi war criminals, using misinformation to make its point), and has said they want other counties to follow their example in recalling local leaders.

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'."

"I did not enable 'crimes against humanity', I sought to protect citizens’ health in the face of a deadly virus," Nevada County Supervisor Dan Miller said in response to the recall effort. Anguiano reports, "Experts say extreme language is becoming increasingly common in local politics and public meetings, even those that have historically been staid and orderly affairs."