John Jefferson
-
This is the second of three stories on the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election in Shasta county, a region of 180,000 people in northern California that has emerged as a center of the election denial movement and hotbed for far-right politics. Read the first one here.
Tim Garman is worried about Shasta county. His community has been in the midst of a dizzying lurch to the far right, gaining national attention for its rowdy and radical politics and full-throated embrace of election conspiracy theories.
Garman knows well enough. As an elected official on the county board of supervisors, he’s seen it firsthand in the hostility and vitriol that has become a normal part of public life. The region faces real issues, including the highest suicide rate in California, mental healthcare shortages and rising homelessness, but the political agenda has often focused on battling the state and attempts to remake the voting system.
“It’s sickening how much time we waste,” Garman lamented in an interview earlier this year.
In advance of a crucial and contentious election, the events in Shasta can be seen as a case study for how extremist politics can divide and corrode a community and create dysfunction in local government. The county has come to serve as an example for purveyors of disinformation about voting across the US. Whether or not Shasta can resist those efforts will offer lessons too.
“Old-fashioned Republicans are rising up and fighting back against the leanings of the conspiracy-theory more far-right minded 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 would have expected Garman to be among them. He was elected into office when the county ousted a longtime moderate Republican leader in 2022 – an effort promoted and celebrated by the area’s far right. Garman, then the president of a local school board who opposed vaccine and mask mandates, had the support of ultra conservatives and militia members.
But Garman has changed course – and become an object of scorn by some of his early supporters. When supervisors who falsely claimed that elections were being manipulated moved to get rid of the county voting machines and replace them with a hand-count system, he voted against the proposal. He later publicly endorsed the recall of a far-right colleague.
“The people who backed me when I ran for supervisor, had they researched me a little more, they probably would have never backed me,” he said in April. “Had I researched them a little more, I never would have wanted their backing.”
Shasta county was bracing for a transformation in 2022. The region had been in upheaval amid the pandemic as residents grew frustrated over school and business closures and what they viewed as missteps and overreach by the state. The turbulence was part of growing unrest and political extremism across the US that manifested in unruly school board meetings and city council sessions and threats against officials.
But in Shasta it was particularly acute. Covid-19 and the backlash that followed set this longtime conservative stronghold aflame, bolstering the county’s most extreme sects: militia groups and secessionists.
Residents had directed their rage at the most accessible targets: their county board of supervisors. Elected officials received death threats privately and at public meetings from residents who warned that “rope is reusable” and people “wouldn’t be peaceful much longer”.
With help from a wealthy Connecticut heir with a longstanding grudge against the county who poured money into the burgeoning anti-establishment movement, residents organized a recall of a county supervisor: Leonard Moty, a moderate Republican with decades of experience who suddenly found himself not conservative enough.
The recall organizers accused Moty of a “betrayal of public trust” for not pushing back against Covid-19 restrictions and suggested he was bought by Dominion Voting Systems, the company maligned by Donald Trump that supplied the county voting equipment.
In came Garman, the president of the Happy Valley Union school district board. Garman had spent six years on the school board. He was a journeyperson 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 started a local diabetes support group (two of their daughters have type one diabetes), and he eventually sought public office.
His conservative positions resonated with those seeking a change, he said to the Guardian. The school board that he served on was among the first to come out against a proposed vaccine mandate for students, he said.
Garman opposed vaccination and mask rules and on a campaign website said he believed in “local control, personal choice instead of mandates, and constitutional liberties”, the local outlet A News Cafe reported.
The recall gained traction and quickly sharpened divisions in the community among those seeking officials who would do away with politics as usual and defy state and federal law and those fearful of the radical new group seeking power.
At the time he ran for office, he rejected claims of a far-right takeover and told the Sacramento Bee that the recall was started by a group of mothers rather than extremists. Still, he pledged to represent all residents, even those opposed to the recall effort.
Once elected, he voted along with the far-right bloc to remove Karen Ramstrom, the county health officer. Ramstrom was responsible for the county’s Covid-19 response and had 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 that was behind these people, the amount of racism that’s there and present,” 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 used a racial slur during public comment and was allowed to re in the chambers while a Black man who protested was escorted out, the Redding Record Searchlight reported.
As the far right gained more seats on the board, Garman became a swing vote. He increasingly began siding 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-count system, Garman voted against it.
While conservatives in the county seemed eager to pick fights with California’s Democratic government, Garman was skeptical of such an approach. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things and when you break the law, that’s the wrong way.”
He broke ranks with conservatives when it came to hiring a new health officer, and received criticism from his colleagues. “I have a right to vote whichever way I want. You’re not going to push me into changing my mind,” he said in an October 2023 meeting. “I don’t just work for one person here or one person there. I work for the entire county.”
He also defended the former registrar of voters and her office, which the board majority frequently villainized. Garman visited the office after he became supervisor and looked closely at the issues people were concerned about, he said, and found nothing.
Depending on who you ask in Shasta county, Garman is either a turncoat or a man of ethics trying to make the best decision for the county he represents. Garman’s votes heartened some moderates and liberals, frustrated by the extreme rightwing turn of the board, but some observers have been skeptical.
“He made some really bad votes,” said Doni Chamberlain, the editor of the local publication A News Cafe. But along the way he shifted, said Chamberlain, who regularly chronicles the county’s tumultuous politics. “[But] I think he has a conscience.”
The ultra conservatives who threw their support behind him in the beginning weren’t happy – one described him as the “biggest disappointment” he’d ever seen. “You’ll tell people one thing and then do another. You ran on these things and then you turned around,” Terry Rapoza, who previously backed Garman, said at a public meeting in 2023. “I don’t think we can take much more of it, Tim.”
Garman reported receiving threats. But in his view, his decision-making hasn’t changed, his early supporters just didn’t know him. “All my decisions are well thought-out, well-researched and in my opinion, the best on behalf of our county. There’s nobody to sway my vote.”
Robert Sid, a Shasta county conservative and political observer, speculated that the people who backed Garman didn’t do a good job of vetting their candidate and supported him because of his opposition to Covid mandates. “They figured he’s gonna side with Jones. I think he let them down.”
Garman acknowledges that he is at odds with the board majority. 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 a “colossal shift” underway in Shasta county. Jones was “blown out of the water”, he said, and voters are tired of the dysfunction of local government and bullying from officials.
Garman is also on his way out of office. Due to redistricting in the county, he was no longer eligible for his current seat and will instead have to wait to run in 2026. He’s hopeful he has a shot, even without the support of the folks who initially backed him, and believes Shasta is headed for a more stable future.
“The people of Shasta county have spoken and said enough is enough,” he said.
Read the full article here