One of California’s most conservative counties is on track to be controlled by a group aligned with local militia members.
Shasta County Supervisor Leonard Moty, a Reagan Republican who has been in public service for decades, was ousted by voters in a recall election on Tuesday.
In the two years leading up to the recall, Mr Moty faced an increasing number of threats along with his moderate colleagues on the board of supervisors in response to Covid-19 health measures.
The two leading candidates to replace Mr Moty both attended a celebration on Tuesday alongside members of a local militia group, The Sacramento Bee reported.
While the end result of the recall vote isn’t yet clear, it’s a win for the far-right in northern California Shasta County, where they have battled with more moderate Republican officials.
Experts have warned that the pandemic and declining trust in US institutions is leading to extremists getting a foothold in local politics.
“I think it’s going to be a change in our politics. I think we’re going to shift more to the alt-right side of things,” Mr Moty told The Guardian on Wednesday. “I really thought my community would step up to the plate and they didn’t and that’s very discouraging.”
The area has long been a conservative stronghold, and many adhere to the State of Jefferson movement that advocates for secession from California. But Mr Moty, who had been a county supervisor since 2009, also said that the county used to be a place where people could work out their differences.
But as the pandemic took over American life in the spring of 2020, and Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom began putting restrictions in place, many in the county were furious at local officials for not resisting the state government forcefully enough.
Mr Moty said that Shasta County was one of the least restricted areas in the state, but residents began appearing at meetings to voice their outrage at state regulations and mask rules.
He added that county officials were quickly facing the level of fury that used to be aimed only at state authorities.
Rural law expert at the University of California, Davis, Lara Pruitt told The Guardian that “there’s a lot of pent-up anger by a lot of people in rural and quasi-rural places that they’re not getting a fair shake from the government”.
“Most of that has been directed at state government. The anger at state officials is now trickling down at local officials because people think ‘my local officials aren’t doing enough’,” she said.
Local militia member Carlos Zapata helped organise the recall. He told the county board of supervisors in 2020 that there would be blood in the streets if more wasn’t done to push back against public health rules coming from the state government.
“This is a warning for what’s coming. It’s not going to be peaceful much longer. It’s going to be real … I’ve been in combat and I never wanted to go back again, but I’m telling you what ... If it has to be against our own citizens, it will happen. And there’s a million people like me, and you won’t stop us,” he said.
“This is not the community I grew up in, I was surprised people would make [those sorts] of veiled threats toward public officials and push the envelope,” Mr Moty told The Guardian.
Public meetings for local governments and school boards across the country have seen an uptick in threats and violent rhetoric.
Terrorism expert Colin Clarke told the paper that “distrust in government has permeated the most local levels”.
“I’m familiar with the indicators of extremism and radicalization. I see them in places I never expected to see them. If you had told me as terrorism expert I’d be talking about school boards, I’d have said you’re crazy,” he added.
Mr Clarke said extremists have used the pandemic to recruit people to their cause. “The whole pandemic was really tailor-made to far-right extremists and they’re getting a lot of mileage out of it,” he said.
Patrick Jones was elected as a new supervisor in 2020. He had been critical of Mr Moty as well as other supervisors. Mr Jones and fellow supervisor Les Baugh opened the doors to residents to attend what was supposed to have been a virtual meeting to restrict the spread of Covid-19 in January 2020.
Mr Moty has said that Mr Jones, who has been supportive of unseating his colleague, has been inflaming members of the public.
“We’ve been demonized as radicals and various things like this. We are not. We are just simply business owners,” Mr Jones told KQED. “We’re mothers, we’re fathers, we’re grandmothers, we’re grandfathers – and we want to return to a county where we grew up – a safe, prosperous county that we can be proud of.”
Last month, the board chose to have a virtual meeting in the face of rising Covid cases and credible threats against supervisors, including Mr Moty, who has reportedly been told that while bullets are expensive, “ropes are reusable”.
Wednesday polling showed that 52 per cent of voters chose to support the recall of Mr Moty. Ms Pruitt told The Guardian that the success of the recall will probably lead to more conflict between the local and state government.
Mr Moty said his time in politics is over and that while he plans to stay in Shasta County “for now”, he worries the region may become a refuge for extremists.
“We want true conservatives, this is a conservative county and the government should reflect that. And are no longer going to accept RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) in elected local office here,” Mr Jones told The Sacramento Bee.
“We have the means and the ability to affect that change,” he added. “Leonard [Moty] is no conservative and anybody that backs him is a staunch liberal. That’s a fact.”
Mr Moty told the paper that the change in local government will be a “rude awakening for the county”.
“I’m concerned that county business will no longer be conducted in an orderly fashion, and that there will be a lot of misinformation being spread, suggestions that we can do things that we don’t have the right to do,” he added. “Counties are part of the state, we are a subset of the state government, we have to follow the state constitution, and they think you can somehow just ignore all that.”
“I think they’re going to find that the authority they think they have is not really there,” he added.
