Backfire: Fear of 'extremists' is bolstering California Democrats in the state's MAGA-strong rural counties

Before the 1990s, California was very much a red state. Republicans carried California in every presidential election during the 1980s; Orange County south of Los Angeles was a major hotbed of GOP activism; and the Golden State was home to conservative Republican governors who included Ronald Reagan and George Deukmejian.

In 2023, however, California is a deep blue state.

California still has its GOP-leaning districts, including the one where House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has had no problem getting reelected. But according to reporting in the Sacramento Bee, Democrats have been making headway even in a rural Northern California area that favored former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020.

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"Rural north state Democrats have long understood that the real action for their party is in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Sacramento," the Bee explains in an article published on September 18. "Even though the region north of Sacramento is geographically enormous, its population and wealth simply aren't enough to influence state politics. But these days, rural Democrats, in Siskiyou especially, feel surrounded by increasingly empowered conspiracy theorists, separatists, and extremists. They sense that grassroots organizing is more important than ever."

In Northern California's rural Siskiyou County, the Bee reports, Democrats have "garnered some seemingly small, but consequential, wins by organizing at the grassroots level for local candidates."

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Read the Sacramento Bee's full report at this link.