Shasta County voters have booted from office a key figure in the county's hard-right shift, even as the fate of a second far-right crusader on the powerful Board of Supervisors still hangs in the balance.
Patrick Jones, a former chair of the five-member board, was soundly defeated in the Super Tuesday election, according to results released by the county registrar Friday afternoon. With 98% of the vote counted, Jones' opponent, Matt Plummer, a nonprofit adviser, was winning outright with nearly 60% of the vote.
It marked a stunning turn for Jones, a gun store manager who in his one term in office has emerged as a leading voice in an ultraconservative insurgence that transformed this largely rural Northern California county into a national poster child for hard-right governance and election denialism.
In recent months, Jones led the conspiracy-laden charge to dump Dominion voting machines and return the county to hand-counting its ballots. He helped push through a county resolution pledging fealty to the 2nd Amendment and a measure to allow concealed weapons in local government buildings, in defiance of state law.
More broadly, he worked with militia members and secessionists on campaign efforts that dramatically reshaped governance in a county long run by mainstream Republicans.
In another closely watched primary race, Jones' political ally, Supervisor Kevin Crye, was surviving a recall election by just 46 votes. Crye made headlines last year when he enlisted support for nixing Dominion machines from Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive and pro-Trump election denier.
Meanwhile, Allen Long, a retired Redding police lieutenant and relative moderate, was the front-runner in a race to fill an open board seat representing western Shasta County. In a four-way race, Long had 50.3% of the vote on Friday and was narrowly avoiding a runoff.
On the campaign trail, Long said, many voters shared his horror at what they heard coming out of supervisors' meetings and felt "a desperation for change." The county government, he said, should focus on issues like homelessness and making local communities safer from wildfires.
"I was watching the politics here in our county, and I thought, 'Wow, this has really become extreme,'" he said. "I wanted to guide us back to the middle."
Running a distant second, with 19% of the vote, was Laura Hobbs, who said in her candidate statement she is a stay-at-home mom who is "100% MAGA and America First." She recently accused incumbent Supervisor Mary Rickert a moderate Republican who regularly opposes Jones and Crye of worshiping Satan because her license plate has the number "666" on it.
In her own reelection bid, Rickert led with 40.4% of the vote, but appears to be headed for a runoff against quarry owner Corkey Harmon. Win Carpenter, a prominent far-right voice in the State of Jefferson secessionist movement, was running third.
Taken as a whole, the election results could signal a shift toward the political center in Shasta County or at least a desire for a local government more focused on day-to-day life and operations.
"The last couple of years have been exhausting. And difficult," said Jenny O'Connell, a Redding resident who voted in favor of Crye's recall. "People are saying, 'I just need this to stop. I need just sanity and normalcy.'"
"Part of the problem of dealing with constant insanity," she added, "is that after awhile you forget how crazy it is."
Even if Crye survives the recall, Jones' loss is expected to upend leadership on the board, where ultraconservatives currently have a 3-2 majority.
For years, Jones directed his ire at the longtime registrar-recorder, Cathy Darling Allen, the only Democrat elected to countywide office, publicly accusing her of lying about voting machines.
Elections staffers have been harassed, and during a June 2022 election, someone hung a trail camera the kind hunters use to track wildlife in the alley behind the registrar's office. Darling Allen, 55, recently announced that she will retire this spring because she has been diagnosed with heart failure and needs to reduce her stress level.
Jones' opponent, Plummer, told The Times he had knocked on nearly 9,000 doors while campaigning and that people didn't want to talk about partisan politics but preferred to discuss issues integral to their daily lives like crime and roads.
"We disassociated politics from those everyday issues, because a lot of politics has become about rhetoric and ideology instead of the core issues," Plummer said.
Many residents have grown tired of the drama.
Last spring, after the Dominion vote, residents in Cryes district launched a recall just months after he took office in an election he won by 90 votes. Organizers said they were angered by his decision to upend the voting system, as well as his exploring the idea of hiring a California secessionist leader as the county's chief executive.
He hadnt told us that he was going to do all these things, said retired public defender Jeff Gorder, a leader of the recall effort. In our view, he lied about what he was going to do and he started pursuing this extremist agenda.
Crye did not respond to requests for comment. But he did talk about the recall on his radio show last month, saying the attacks on him have been painful. He called the people behind the recall flat-out liars.
Supervisor Kelstrom, a local chamber of commerce director whose 2022 campaign platform included a desire to bring the punishment back to crime and punishment, remains on the board as an ultraconservative member. He was not up for reelection and could not be reached for comment.
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