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This is the second of three stories about the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Shasta County, a region of 180,000 people. people in Northern California who have emerged as A center of the election denial movement and a hotbed for extreme right-wing politics. Read the first one here.
Tim Garman is concerned about Shasta County. His community is in the midst of a staggering move toward the far right and has gained national attention for its loud and radical politics and its full embrace of election conspiracy theories.
Garman knows it well enough. As an elected official on the county Board of Supervisors, he has seen it firsthand in the hostility and vitriol that has become a normal part of public life. The region faces real problems, including California’s highest suicide rate, mental health shortages and rising homelessness, but the political agenda often focuses on fighting the state and efforts to redesign the voting system.
“It’s sickening how much time we’re wasting,” Garman complained in an interview earlier this year.
Ahead of a crucial and contentious election, the events in Shasta can be seen as a case study in how extremist politics can divide and erode a community and cause dysfunction in local government. The county has become a model for spreaders of disinformation about voting in the US. Whether or not Shasta can withstand these efforts will also provide lessons.
“Old-fashioned Republicans are rising up and fighting back against the tendencies of the more far-right factions,” said Lisa Pruitt, a rural law expert at the University of California, Davis. “The question is: will they succeed?”
Two years ago, no one expected Garman to be among them. He was elected as the county ousted a moderate Republican leader in 2022 — an effort promoted and celebrated by the area’s far right. Garman, then chairman of a local school board who opposed vaccine and mask mandates, drew support from ultraconservatives and militia members.
But Garman has changed course — and has become an object of scorn by some of his early supporters. When supervisors, falsely claiming that elections were being rigged, moved to abolish county voting machines and replace them with a hand-counting system, he voted against the proposal. He later publicly supported the recall of a far-right colleague.
“The people who supported me when I ran for supervisor, if they had done a little more research on me, they probably would never have supported me,” he said in April. “If I had researched them a little more, I would never have wanted their support.”
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Shasta County was preparing for a transformation in 2022. The region has been in turmoil during the pandemic as residents grew frustrated over the closure of schools and businesses and what they viewed as missteps and overreach by the state. The turbulence was part of growing unrest and political extremism in the US, manifested in unruly school board and city council meetings and threats against officials.
But in Shasta it was particularly acute. Covid-19 and the subsequent response are inflaming this old conservative stronghold and strengthening the country’s most extreme sects: militias and secessionists.
Residents had focused their anger on the most accessible targets: their county Board of Supervisors. Elected officials received death threats both privately and at public meetings from residents warning that “rope is reusable” and that people “would not be peaceful much longer.”
With the help of a wealthy Connecticut heir who had long harbored a grudge against the county and pumped money into the nascent anti-establishment movement, residents organized a recall of a county supervisor: Leonard Moty, a moderate Republican with decades of experience who suddenly noticed that he was not conservative. enough.
Related: How an ultra-right majority in far northern California chose a newcomer to lead the elections
Recall organizers accused Moty of “betraying the public trust” for not opposing Covid-19 restrictions and suggested he had been bought by Dominion Voting Systems, the Donald Trump-maligned company that made the voting equipment of the province supplied.
Enter Garman, the chairman of the Happy Valley Union school district board. Garman had served on the school board for six years. He was a roofer by trade before knee injuries abruptly ended his career and he developed an interest in public service. The father of five and his wife founded a local diabetes support group (two of their daughters have Type 1 diabetes) and eventually sought public office.
His conservative views resonated with those seeking change, he told the Guardian. The school board he served on was among the first to speak out against a proposed vaccine mandate for students, he said.
Garman opposed vaccination and mask rules, saying on a campaign website that he believed in “local control, personal choice rather than mandates, and constitutional freedoms,” local outlet A News Cafe reported.
The recall gained traction and soon sharpened divisions in the community among those looking for officials who would abolish politics as usual and defy state and federal law, and among those who feared the radical new group seeking power.
When he declared his candidacy, he rejected claims of a far-right takeover, telling the Sacramento Bee that the recall was started by a group of mothers, not extremists. Still, he promised to represent all residents, even those who opposed the recall.
Once elected, he voted with the far-right bloc to oust Karen Ramstrom, the county’s health officer. Ramstrom was responsible for the county’s response to Covid-19 and faced threats from angry residents for following the state’s pandemic rules.
But about six months into his term, Garman said, something happened that changed his perspective. A public speaker at a board meeting came and openly expressed racism. “It floored me – the hatred and racism that came out of her mouth.
“I didn’t realize the level of hatred behind these people, how much racism there is,” he said. “They’re just mean people and that’s not who I am.”
It wouldn’t be the last time: Last year, a man uttered racist comments during public comments and was allowed to remain in the chambers while a black man protesting was escorted out, the Redding Record Searchlight reported.
As the far right gained more seats on the board, Garman became a decisive voice. He increasingly began to side with Mary Rickert, the only moderate left on the board.
When the Board of Supervisors moved to cut ties with Dominion without a replacement and ordered the creation of a hand counting system, Garman voted against it.
While conservatives in the district were eager to take on California’s Democratic administration, Garman was skeptical of such an approach. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, and if you break the law, that’s the wrong way.”
He broke ranks with Conservatives when it came to hiring a new health officer, drawing criticism from his colleagues. “I have the right to vote the way I want. You’re not going to make me change my mind,” he said at a meeting in October 2023. “I don’t just work for one person here or one person there. I work for the entire province.”
He also defended the former registrar of voters and her office, which was often reviled by the majority of the board. Garman visited the office after becoming supervisor and looked closely at the issues people were concerned about, he said, and found nothing.
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Depending on who you ask in Shasta County, Garman is either a turncoat or an ethical man trying to make the best decision for the county he represents. Garman’s votes encouraged some moderates and liberals frustrated by the far-right turn in the administration, but some observers were skeptical.
“He cast some really bad votes,” said Doni Chamberlain, the editor of local publication A News Cafe. But along the way he changed, said Chamberlain, who regularly chronicles the province’s tumultuous politics. “[But] I think he has a conscience.”
The ultraconservatives who supported him early on were not happy; one person described him as the “biggest disappointment” he had ever seen. “You tell people one thing and then do another. You walked into these things and then you turned around,” Terry Rapoza, who previously supported Garman, said at a public meeting in 2023. “I don’t think we can stand much more of it, Tim.”
Garman reported receiving threats. But he says his decision-making hasn’t changed; his early supporters simply didn’t know him. “All my decisions have been well thought out, well-researched and, in my opinion, the best on behalf of our province. There is no one who can influence my vote.”
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Robert Sid, a conservative and political observer from Shasta County, speculated that the people who supported Garman had not properly vetted their candidate and supported him because of his opposition to Covid mandates. “They thought he was going to side with Jones. I think he let them down.”
Garman acknowledges that he is at odds with the majority on the board. Last summer, conservatives heavily criticized him for wearing a shirt endorsing the recall of fellow Supervisor Kevin Crye.
While Crye managed to hold on to his seat, Garman still saw “colossal change” happening in Shasta County. Jones was “blown out of the water,” he said, and voters are tired of local government dysfunction and bullying of officials.
Garman is also on his way to resigning. Due to a redistricting in the province, he was no longer eligible for his current seat and will instead have to wait until he can run for office in 2026. He is hopeful that he has a chance even without the support of the people who initially supported him, and believes Shasta is. towards a more stable future.
“The people of Shasta County have spoken and said enough is enough,” he said.
