Shasta County Ultraconservatives Back Off Election Recount Demand

I simultaneously gave myself whiplash and déjà vu watching the House January 6th Committee Hearing and the Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting in tandem on Tuesday.

In the former live-stream, the House committee attempted to hold Donald “Big Lie” Trump accountable for allegedly scheming with white Christian nationalist groups the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys to overturn a free and fair election a year-and-a-half ago.

In the latter live-streamed broadcast, Shasta County’s own white Christian nationalists tried and failed in real time to pull the same election fraud shenanigans on the solid majority of voters who rejected every rightwing candidate that ran in last month’s primary election.

From left: Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones prematurely congratulates The Liberty Committee’s slate of “anti-establishment” candidates: Bryan Caples, John Greene, Chris Kelstrom, Eric Jensen and Bob Holsinger on election night, June 7, 2022. (Not pictured: District 1 candidate Kevin Crye.)

The idea that I’d seen all of this unfold before was as inescapable as the pain in my neck. My eyeballs are still gyrating.

It all started last week when local Tea Party provocateur Mark Kent, principal officer of The Liberty Committee, the political action committee that financed the slate of six far-right candidates who were soundly defeated in the primary, demanded a recount from the Shasta County Elections department. Kent did so “on behalf of candidates Kevin Crye, Chris Kelstrom, Bryan Caples, Bob Holsinger, Erik Jensen and John Greene.”

Kent’s declaration was a clarion call to the small group of rightwing crazies who have made Shasta County’s board of supervisor meetings the shame of the nation for the past two years, summoning them to the board’s official certification of the primary election results at Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting.

We’re “moving mountains and slaying giants” Patty Plumb claimed at the meeting, in language familiar to any rightwing evangelical.

Patty Plumb, a New California devotee and frequent commenter at Shasta County Board of Supervisors meetings.

“Goliath is before us,” Plumb said. “David knew when it was time to put down his harp, put down his staff and pick up five smooth stones to slay the giant.”

By the giant Goliath, she means the majority of Shasta County voters who sent the fascist slate of entitled middle-aged white male trolls packing. By David, she means she wants to stone their eyes out.

Fake journalists Lori Bridgeford and Rich Gallardo made repeat performative appearances at the dais, where, as usual, they inserted themselves in the limelight with no news to report. They should be banned from speaking in public for the numerous lies and innuendos they’ve spread at board meetings and beyond.

Star-spangled SOJ secessionist Terry Rapoza wept about non-existent election anomalies, an imaginary lack of transparency and a return to the good old days when … what? Shasta County was a timber town dominated by labor unions and Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s?

Tying together the House January 6th Committee and rightwing rejection of local election results was Northern Roots grow-store knucklehead Jon Knight. Knight heeded his master Trump’s call and attended the January 6th insurrection last year, although he apparently balked at storming Congress with his fascist brethren and settled for flashing white power hand signs from the outskirts of the riot.

Red, White and Blueprint producer Jon Knight cuts it up with a white pride sign in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 2, 2021.

Knight showed no such reservations on primary election night in Shasta County, openly admitting at Tuesday’s BOS meeting that he “bullied” Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen into letting him in the building to more or less obstruct the vote.

Jon Knight, far right in olive-green T-shirt, joined others on election night last month who came in through the back door of the elections department to demand answers from Cathy Darling Allen, County Clerk/Registrar of Voters.

This was apparent to anyone who witnessed the videos of this anti-social behavior on YouTube. Shasta County Sheriff deputies responded to the scene and should have removed Knight and his militia-aligned rightwing election-disruption squad.

Authur Gorman confronts Cathy Darling Allen, Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters in the alley behind the Elections Department on election night, June 7, 2022. Photo by Doni Chamberlain.

They’re a menace to society.

When Kent’s first turn to speak came up for his allowed 8 minutes, he spoke briefly and then held his phone to the microphone and played a recording of a message supposedly from election-conspiracy theorist Jovan Pulitzer. The  widely debunked Pulitzer is one of the Cyber Ninja grifters who conducted the bogus presidential election recount in Maricopa County, Arizona, last year.

In total, Kent’s 8-minute allotted speech time dragged on for nearly 15 minutes.

The recording was irrelevant, but as has become the norm, board chair Les Baugh did nothing to stem the cascading tide of bullshit flowing from this small band of science-denying, reality-defying anti-democratic malcontents.

The end of Baugh’s four-term tenure on Dec. 31 can’t come soon enough. An incurable narcissist, he can’t stop moaning about his “legacy.” He did everything he could to encourage the election denialists at Tuesday’s meeting, even when it became clear the denialists themselves didn’t have the appetite for yet more defeat.

That’s because at some point during the meeting, it was revealed that Tea-Party Kent was unaware that the person filing the election complaint must pay for the recount when their candidates have been blown out so decisively. Darling Allen calculated that the recount-requesters would need to submit on Tuesday $11,000, an amount pseudo-insurrectionist weed guy Knight volunteered to pay.

Red, White and Blueprint producer Jon Knight offered to fund the recount.

But at Tuesday’s meeting, Kent got cold feet and withdrew his complaint.

Nevertheless, Kent contended that the primary election results are fraudulent. There’s no cure for this virus, which happily is no longer spreading faster than COVID-19 or monkeypox.

Here’s the thing that Kent and his ilk can’t wrap their heads around: Shasta County’s electorate is roughly comprised of 50 percent Republican voters, 25 percent Democratic voters, 20 percent no-party-preference voters and a smattering of various third-party voters. In order for the Liberty Committee’s slate of rightwing candidates to lose by the double-digit margins they did, Kent estimates 50 percent of the Republican voters voted against them; an amount he finds inconceivable.

Tuesday morning at the Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting The Liberty Committee head Mark Kent withdrew his request for an election recount.

Kent’s estimate that 50 percent of local Republicans voted against the fascist slate is probably in the ballpark, but it’s by no means unimaginable. The Republican rank-and-file hasn’t gone full fascist, even if the party has, and they haven’t all gone blind. The candidates offered up by The Liberty Committee were objectively the most unskilled, inexperienced, uncouth nominees ever put to the vote in Shasta County, at least since the 19th century, and they got the severe beating they deserved, just for insulting our intelligence.

Think about that. It means that a large percentage of local Christians voted against the Christian nationalist takeover of Shasta County. That’s encouraging in a county where secularists often feel outnumbered by expansionist evangelicals. Apparently, many of us — religious and secular alike — still believe in some of the same things that actually make America great, such as the separation between church and state, the right to free and fair elections and meritocracy, and the notion that the person most qualified for the job naturally rises to the top.

At the end of the day, despite Baugh’s relentless both-siderisms, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors certified the 2022 primary election, which means that incumbents Darling Allen, District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett, Superintendent of Schools Judy Flores and Sheriff Michael Johnson will remain at their posts for the next four years.

The fact that Baugh voted with supervisors Joe Chimenti and Mary Rickert demonstrates that he is indeed concerned about his legacy.

Supervisors Tim “Long COVID” Garman and lying Patrick Jones made for a lonely couple Tuesday. Garman’s congested argument that things in Shasta County are just going to get uglier and uglier and uglier if we don’t question the unambiguous election results is easily the most stupid thing I heard all day between both hearings, in Washington, D.C., and Shasta County.

But Jones takes the cake. When Darling Allen was at the dais making her presentation and fielding questions, a vengeful-sounding Jones reminded her that 20 years ago, when he was running for Redding City Council the first time and she was supervising her first election, she’d call him to explain the results had changed in his favor as the votes came in and he’d won.

Somehow Jones had taken the fact that he hadn’t been automatically elected on the first count as a mortal insult. He asked Darling Allen if she remembered the call.

Darling Allen said she didn’t, but it was no big deal. She said that as County Clerk, she’s officiated thousands of marriages, and although she can’t remember every couple, they all remember her.

Dist. 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones

It seems impossible, but Jones’ neck, already receded from years of daring people to knock the chip off of his shoulder, coiled even further into his hard shell-like body Tuesday.

What exactly do those guys do, anyway?

District 4 Supervisor Jones and District 5 supervisor candidate Chris Kelstrom are old school chums. On the campaign trail, both Jones and Kelstrom have been touting their alleged transparency. So has District 1 supervisor candidate Kevin Crye, who’s running against Dutch Bros co-owner and Redding City Councilwoman Erin Resner.

I’m here to tell you that Kelstrom and Crye’s campaigns won’t survive the transparency they fallaciously advocate.

Patrick Jones dressed up for the campaign trail.

Then there’s Jones. After two years in office Jones has yet to declare the income he makes as manager of the family gun store, Jones Fort, on his declaration of economic interests, otherwise known as the Form 700.

District 4 Shasta County Supervisor Patrick Jones at Jones Fort, as seen in RW&B Episode 5.

Neither has Jones listed the $50,000 loan he paid off last year for a 165-acre property on the Millville plains, presumably the location of his long-dreamed-of shooting range.

Tuesday I went through all of the Form 700 economic disclosure forms for the current sitting supervisors and the candidates for the two open seats in November. I did so while simultaneously watching the hearings in Washington, D.C., and Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors meeting. That’s the story I was working on as this unlikely confluence of two allegedly stolen elections — the presidential contest in 2020 and the local primary election last month — played out on the screen.

Crye’s claims to fame, the Ninja Coalition gym at the Mt. Shasta Mall and his alleged stable of celebrity athletes/motivational speakers, aren’t listed on his one-page Form 700. Instead, he checked the box indicating “no reportable interests on any schedule.”

Kelstrom, a former grocery store manager and current State of Jefferson proselytizer, claims he makes $10,000 to $100,000 as a salesman for Cintas, which provides uniforms, floor care, restroom supplies, first aid and safety products to corporate clients. The national company’s closest regional office is in Santa Rosa.

Do those sound like real jobs? Sounds more like these gentlemen need permanent work, and what could be better than a four-year $50,000 county supervisor post? It’s hard not to feel sorry for them.

The irony of all this is that the policies Jones, Garman, Crye and Kelstrom would advocate on a board in which they enjoyed a 4-1 majority would be exactly counter to what beleaguered working people need in Shasta County.

Los Tres Pendejos, the unholy trinity of Jones, Baugh and Garman — formed after February’s recall election — have already crippled Health and Human Services, even as the Omicron BA.5 subvariant surges in Shasta County. That’s bad for everybody. Nobody wants more of the same.

Shasta County voters aren’t dummies. The first chance they got to choose they rejected such policies. A lot of people criticize Shasta County for being behind the curve. It’s easy to write us off as a rural backwater region. But suppose we’re actually ahead of the curve, having dealt with the fascist menace on a more intimate level than the rest of the state?

I predict Crye and Kelstrom won’t make it to November. But I’m reminded of Gus, an ancient Greek machinist I met back in my shipyard days in the 1980s.

“Don’t fuck with a snake,” Gus used to say. “You fuck with a snake, it fucks you!”

“So, what do you do, Gus?” I’d ask.

“Put your foot on its neck and don’t let up.”

Wise advice.

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