Supervisor candidates face off at League of Women Voters forum.
Greetings again, Shasta County voters! Welcome to Part 2 of the reasonable person’s guide to the upcoming primary election, which takes place on March 5. Part 2 covers the District 3 and District 4 supervisor contests, and Measures C and D.
Part 1 covers the recall of District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye, and the four-way contest for District 2. To restore Shasta County to sanity, A News Café endorsed voting yes on recalling District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye, and recommends voters choose either Allen Long or Susanne Baremore for the District 2 supervisor race.
As established in Part 1, “reasonable person” is meant in the broadest possible sense of the phrase. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, a third-party or a no-party-preference voter or candidate. Reasonable people believe in a shared objective reality. The earth is round and orbits the sun. Joe Biden is the current president of the United States. The shin bone is connected to the knee bone.
However, there are unreasonable people among us. Some of them, like Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones, believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, despite no supporting facts, and despite massive evidence to the contrary.
These MAGA cult members overlap with State of Jefferson devotees like Terry Rapoza, who falsely believes cordoning off northern California and southern Oregon from the civilized world will somehow benefit all of us.
Terry Rapoza speaks at a Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Shasta County’s MAGA/SOJ zealots have found a patron saint in Reverge Anselmo, a Connecticut multimillionaire who has a grudge against the county which he blames for a failed business venture more than a decade ago. The libertarian extremist has donated nearly $1.5 million to local right-wing candidates since 2019, far more than any other single donor.
Water Users Committee treasurer Mark Kent speaks at a Board of Supervisors meeting wearing a State of Jefferson shirt.
Anselmo donated $250,000 to the Water Users Committee for the presidential primary election cycle. The political action committee is headed by local self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Mark Kent. Full disclosure: Kent assaulted A News Café publisher Doni Chamberlain at a public meeting of so-called patriots last summer. Apparently, Chamberlain isn’t patriotic enough. Kent denies the allegation. Shasta County DA Stephanie Bridgett has until July to file charges.
Kent’s Anselmo-funded PAC donated $157,000 to the “Stop Newsome (sic) No on Crye Recall” campaign. It has also donated more than $30,000 in monetary, nonmonetary and direct expenditures to Win Carpenter’s campaign for the Shasta County District 3 Supervisor seat.
“Ready to serve,” is Carpenter’s slogan. “Ready to serve Reverge Anselmo!” is more like it.
Win Carpenter mailer: Ready to serve Reverge Anselmo. Paid for by the Water Users Committee.
Carpenter’s red, white and blue campaign signs have flooded the third district, swamping the efforts of his challengers, incumbent District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert, and local rancher/miner/contractor Corkey Harmon. If you’ve been wondering who the “Win Carpenter” on the signs is, he’s probably best known as Rapoza’s sidekick on the “Jefferson State of Mine” radio show broadcast Sunday on KCNR 1460 and available as a podcast from Mountain Top Media.
The Mountain Top Media team, from left: Mark Kent, Katie Gorman, Win Carpenter, Terry Rapoza, Leslie Sawyer, Woody Clenenden and Lyndia Kent (Mark’s sister).
That’s right. Win Carpenter, the Anselmo-backed candidate for District 3, literally wants Shasta County to secede from the state of California. In fact, Carpenter and Rapoza, along with Siskiyou County resident Mark Baird, have been at the forefront of the SOJ secessionist movement for more than a decade.
Current Shasta County District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom is also on Team SOJ. He’s not up for reelection until 2026.
District 4 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom; Bottom Left: Win Carpenter (second from left) and Kelstrom (right) at a State of Jefferson rally.
Funny thing about that team, though. You won’t find the State of Jefferson mentioned anywhere in Carpenter’s campaign materials. It’s not on his campaign signs. It’s not on his website. However, in his campaign statement on the ballot, he mentions hosting a radio show and podcast, but neglects to mention it’s called Jefferson State of Mine.
It’s almost as if Carpenter doesn’t want Shasta County District 3 voters to know he spends a great deal of his time promoting a radical secessionist movement that would lead to the county’s ruin if its agenda were ever implemented.
Too bad these guys like being photographed in their green-and-yellow garb so much.
This year’s model: Win Carpenter and Terry Rapoza show off SOJ duds while Reverge Anselmo (suit) drinks and smokes.
Step 3: Re-elect Shasta County District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert
As pointed out in Part 1, two steps were required to restore sanity to Shasta County. Step 1 is that District 1 voters must vote yes to recall Kevin Crye. Step 2 dictates that District 2 voters must choose either Allen Long or Susanne Baremore. Since Crye’s position probably won’t be filled until at least the November general election, that would supplant the MAGA board’s current 3-2 advantage with a 2-2 stalemate—but only if District 3 voters choose to re-elect two-term incumbent Mary Rickert.
Most people were astonished, and more than a few pleasantly surprised, when Rickert announced she was running for a third term. The past four years of board turmoil exacted a tremendous toll on Rickert, who was verbally crucified and threatened by anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers during COVID, and remains a target of the MAGA board majority and their mob fronted by Anselmo bagman Mark Kent and enforcer Rich “Mini Mussolini” Gallardo.
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- Mark Kent.
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- Richard Gallardo.
Both Jones and Crye have abused Rickert in subtle and unsubtle ways. When Crye became board chair this year, he ensured Rickert had 22 committee assignments, compared to his 12, Jones’ 10 and Kelstrom’s 9. Last year when Jones was chair, he screamed that Rickert was “a liar!” in open chambers, perhaps the purest instance of psychological projection ever witnessed from the endlessly dissembling District 4 supervisor. In a similar fashion, a few meetings ago Crye called Rickert a “socialist”.
At a recent board meeting during public comment period, Kent read aloud from racist Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s letter to President Biden about the Texas and Mexico border. Abbot threated to secede from the United States if Biden won’t permit Texans to kill undocumented immigrants with razor wire wrapped buoys in the Rio Grande.
Apparently, Kent is quite shaken up about the border. When the belligerent blowhard was finally done bellowing, a bemused Rickert asked chair Crye the obvious question.
“How does this pertain to the jurisdiction of the board?”
Shasta County District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert.
The correct answer is, “It doesn’t pertain to the jurisdiction of the board one iota.” If Chair Crye really wanted to aim for transparency, as he continually claims he does, he should have answered, “Kent is the treasurer/controller of the Water Users Committee, which has donated $157,000 to the campaign against my recall, so he gets to say whatever he damn pleases.”
Crye said none of those things. Instead of telling the truth, he turned slippery as an eel. He employed a tactic he frequently uses, blaming the issue at hand on someone not in the room, in this case Sheriff Mike Johnson.
“This is how it pertains to [the jurisdiction of the board] because if you’ve met with Sheriff Johnson since he went down to the border,” the supervisor sputtered. “The reason this applies … you need to meet with Sheriff Johnson and ask him about the time he spent on the border and what is coming to Shasta County.”
Crye stopped short of screaming, “The Mexicans are coming! The Mexicans are coming!”
Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye faces recall on March 5.
For Rickert, who has been subjected to mountains of misogyny, ageism and verbal abuse from her supposed colleagues and their mob the past several years, it was just another day at an office that has grown increasingly hostile.
Asked if she would accept money from Reverge Anselmo, Rickert didn’t hesitate to finger the conservative Connecticut curmudgeon as the source of the toxicity.
“I have not ever nor will I ever accept money from the Water Users Committee/Reverge Anslemo,” Rickert told A News Café. “I do believe his interference in our county government has been devastating to this county. I believe in local control, not being bought and paid for by an east coast millionaire.”
She also believes decorum needs to be restored to the board chambers.
“I believe in decorum and civility when conducting the business of the people,” Rickert told A News Café. “I also believe working collaboratively with the cities and rural communities is imperative to be effective and constructive for the county.”
Husband Jim Rickert hanging campaign signs for wife Mary Rickert.
Rickert and her husband Jim have been ranching and farming in Shasta County for 50 years, and the two-term District 3 supervisor has a wide background in numerous areas including water usage, agriculture, forestry, fire protection and mental health. As a supervisor, she’s made many contacts in Sacramento, which in turn allows her to serve her constituents better.
For an example that might appeal to rural voters, during the pandemic, Rickert worked with the director of the state 4-H program to enable 4-H and FFA kids to show and sell their market animals at fair time. Shasta County was the first in the state to do so and provided the template for other ag counties to follow.
Shasta County District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert answers question at the League of Women Voters’ forum as candidates Laura Hobbs, Patrick Jones and Win Carpenter await their turns to speak.
Rickert said she’s voting “no” on measure C, the initiative put on the ballot by the MAGA board majority that would establish a two-term limit for county supervisors. Rickert attempted to recruit a sane candidate to run in her stead this time around, but ultimately chose to run for a third term because she saw no one running or on the current board who has her skill set and expertise.
“After witnessing our local political environment for the last four years, I now believe that a person should be able to run if they want to,” Rickert told A News Cafe. “The institutional knowledge and experience with county government is lacking with our current board and continuity and understanding of past history are important for context and stability.”
Rickert, a fiscally conservative Republican, has continually criticized the MAGA board for creating conditions that are driving away Shasta County’s workforce and making it difficult to hire replacements. She opposed the board’s firing of Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Ramstrom in 2022 and its continuous harassment of Registrar of Voters Cathy Darling Allen. Darling Allen recently announced she’s retiring in May to recuperate from heart failure, caused in part by the on-the-job stress.
District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones chats with his enforcer Rich Gallardo prior to the start of a supervisors meeting. Photo by Doni Chamberlain.
The MAGA mob sees things differently. Gallardo, who apparently has Jones’ ear, recently speculated during the general comment period at a board meeting that 20 to 30 percent of Health and Human Services staff could be cut. Any loose ends can be replaced by private medical providers, Gallardo insisted.
Win Carpenter comes from the same paranoid MAGA school. County supervisors depend on county staff to implement new polices and deliver services to the county. It seems counterintuitive to attack those administrators and employees before a single vote has been cast, but that’s exactly what Carpenter did at the recent League of Women Voters candidate forum.
Shasta County District 3 challenger Win Carpenter.
“We’ll find the money, it’s there, we all know it’s there,” Carpenter said conspiratorially in answer to a question about the shortage of public safety funding. He then accused departing county employees of looting the treasury on the way out.
District 3 Supervisor candidate Win Carpenter speaks at a recent League of Women Voters forum.
“And we know why some of these people are leaving the departments, because they know the day’s going to be coming when they’re going to be tapped on the shoulder and they’re going to be deposed and they’re going to be under the oath to answer questions specifically for a lot of things,” Carpenter said.
“That’s why forensic audits are huge because they’re also tied to law so they can be criminally prosecuted for things that they have done, for things they have not done so we need to get this cleaned up. Clean up the house and make things happen.”
Send county workers to jail. Great campaign strategy. In typical MAGA fashion, Carpenter offered no evidence for this alleged thievery by the employees he hopes to lead if he’s elected. Carpenter did not respond to A News Café’s questions.
Flier for Shasta County District 3 Supervisor candidate Corkey Harmon.
The third candidate running for the third district, Corkey Harmon, has three decades of local experience in business and project management in the construction, mining, trucking and cattle industries.
The last time Harmon ran for a supervisor seat was in 2010, when he lived in District 5, prior to redistricting that shifted him to District 3. Harmon lost to Les Baugh.
In certain ways, he exhibits a country-boy, down-to-earth charisma—‘riz’ the kids call it these days.
Corkey Harmon answers questions during a Mountain Top Media interview.
Harmon says he’s running as the eccentric grandfather whose grandkids wonder what he’s going to do next, and he has the avuncular attitude to pull it off.
Even so, he’ll have a hard time shaking his affiliation with such controversial figures as Carlos Zapata. The Harmon Ranch was the site for the Red, White and Blueprint’s first fundraiser, and Zapata and Harmon are District 3 neighbors and close friends. When asked who he was supporting for District 3 Supervisor, Zapata played the diplomat.
District 3 Supervisor candidate Corkey Harmon speaks with Red, White and Blueprint co-founder Carlos Zapata at a recent Harmon fundraiser.
“I think Mary, Corkey, and Win are all wonderful people,” Zapata said. “Win is a very capable and promising candidate for our county. I consider him a friend. Corkey is my neighbor and has earned my trust and respect over the years. He is a man of high integrity and just about the greatest friend and neighbor a family could have. I even like Mary as a person and think she is wonderful in so many ways. I respect her work in agriculture and community over the years.”
Harmon did not respond to A News Café’s questionnaire, but in his candidate statement in the District 3 Voter Information Guide, he offers his saddened “observation of the continued division of our county through the acts of our elected board. Conflict with anger has become too common with little regard for the division it has created amongst all of us. It must stop.”
So, Rickert and Harmon support bringing harmony back to the board of supervisors, while Carpenter wants to conduct a forensic audit and jail county employees for “things that they have done and things that they have not done.”
Rickert has taken the lead in campaign donations, collecting a total of $45,000 in 2023 and 2024 according to campaign filings. Carpenter has raised more than $30,000 thanks to Anselmo’s largess. Harmon’s self-funded campaign follows closely behind with $25,000 worth of personal loans.
Here at A News Café, we don’t see District 3 as a close call. Carpenter has vowed to continue the MAGA board’s destruction of Shasta County. Harmon has prodigious work experience but lacks Rickert’s seven years of board savvy. As Shasta County’s brain drain continues unabated, sapping our institutional knowledge, we need Mary Rickert now more than ever.
Shasta County District 4 Supervisor candidate Matt Plummer.
Step 4: Vote Matt Plummer for Shasta County District 4 Supervisor
When A News Café profiled Matt Plummer seven months ago, the idea that a smart guy from Bethel Church could depose mean-spirited Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones seemed remote. But Plummer’s door-to-door listening tour of the fourth district, in which he pledged to voters he’d focus on homelessness, crime and fixing potholes if elected appears to have paid off.
According to campaign filings, Plummer has raised nearly $42,000 compared to Jones’ $53,000, a respectable haul for the newcomer to electoral politics. It should be noted it appears the Anselmo-funded Water Users Committee has not yet donated directly or indirectly to Jones’ campaign.
There are roughly 22,000 registered voters in District 4, including 15,000 within Redding city limits, 6000 in Shasta Lake City, and 1,000 scattered throughout eastern Shasta County.
Should Plummer supplant Jones on the board, it would be a sea change. The 36-year-old Yale graduate works as a consultant to nonprofit corporations, teaching them how to employ critical thinking to solve problems.
“I have experience helping communities make progress on the challenges Shasta County is facing, including homelessness, crime, and childhood trauma,” Plummer told A News Café. “I train companies to use critical thinking to solve problems and make decisions, so I’d be able to help the board evaluate policy proposals with more rigor and rationality and make sound decisions that will benefit Shasta County into the future.”
Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones answers question at League of Women Voters’ forum. Challenger Win Carpenter is on far right.
Jones did not reply to A News Café’s inquiries. But the laundry list of accomplishments in his candidate statement serves as a roadmap for the destruction he and the MAGA board majority have wrought in Shasta County.
Jones begins by claiming he’s “leading the effort to build a new jail, working closely with the Sheriff and our CEO and we should have a design ready for approval this year.”
In fact, since he began running for the District 4 seat in 2019 Jones has led the effort to torpedo a plan to build a $500 million state of the art jail and mental health facility outside the downtown area. He opposed Measure A, the 1 cent public safety tax on the 2020 primary ballot that would have provided funding for more prosecutors and a new jail. Jones won the seat and Measure A failed.
The increased revenue Jones predicted would come from cutting taxes and regulations never materialized. That’s because it’s based on the same false pretense Jones used to justify the MAGA board’s recent 3-2 decision to cut new development impact fees in the unincorporated county.
Despite the positive spin Jones puts on his dedication to a new jail, others — like retired RPD Captain Steve Davidson — believe otherwise.
“Patrick Jones is currently running for re-election for Shasta County Board of Supervisors,” Davidson told A News Cafe.
“In his radio advertisement Jones states he is working closely with the Sheriff on the new Criminal Justice Center. On a recent talk show Patrick Jones was asked by his election competitor, Matt Plummer, where the money was coming from to build the new jail. Patrick Jones refused to answer and said that information would be coming out shortly, a timeline which most likely will be after the election in March. If Patrick Jones is working closely on the new jail with the Sheriff, it is not visible to the general public.”
The MAGA board’s ill-informed decision to eliminate new development impact fees will blow yet another $1 million chunk out of the county budget with no replacement funds identified.
For five years, Jones has touted the reduction in development impact fees enacted by Redding when he was on the city council in 2011-2012. The city was able to issue 200 building permits for new single-family homes, but Jones neglects to mention the reduced impact fees were backfilled by millions of dollars in federal funding passed by President Barack Obama’s administration.
“Data from the City of Redding and around the country does not definitively support the idea that suspending impact fees will spur new development or that it will lower housing prices for residents,” Plummer said, putting on his analyst hat. “In fact, when Redding partially suspended fees between 2011 and 2014, it had fewer building permits than in the years preceding and following the suspension of fees.”
Former Shasta County CEO Matt Pontes was chased out of office by the MAGA board.
After he took office, Jones attempted to blackmail Shasta County CEO Matt Pontes into quitting by leaking an expunged criminal record from Pontes’ youth to a local TV station. Pontes was hired from Santa Barbara in 2019 specifically because he’d helped that city plan and build a state-of-the-art corrections facility. Pontes resigned after being harassed by the MAGA board and its mob for two years.
Last year, the MAGA board voted 4-1, with Rickert the only no vote, to build a cheaper $125 million facility near the existing jail. The addition means the existing jail, built in the 1980s and in a state of serious disrepair, will have to be maintained for decades to come. One year later, Jones and the MAGA board have yet to identify funding sources for the new addition.
Pontes is just one of many top Shasta County officials who have either resigned after being harassed by Jones and the MAGA board or fired outright. The pattern is almost always the same. Thanks to bad publicity created by the MAGA board, it took more than a year to hire Ponte’s replacement new Shasta County CEO David Rickert. Jones counts this as an accomplishment on his campaign statement, “new CEO.”
Former Shasta County Public Health Officer Karen Ramstrom.
After the MAGA board fired Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Ramstrom without cause in 2022, it took more than a year to find her replacement, Dr. James Mu. The board lowered the requirements for the public health officer position so Mu, a family physician who doesn’t have a background in public health, could take the job. “New Health Officer,” Jones brags.
When longtime Shasta County Counsel Rubin Cruse retired last April, he was replaced by James Ross, who left abruptly in July. He was followed by interim county counsel Matt McOmber, who was replaced by interim county counsel Gretchen Stuhr. In December, the MAGA board hired Joe Larmour from Yuba County, where he’d been on the job just five months. Larmour happens to be romantically involved with one of District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye’s employees. He’ll take office in April, one year after Cruse’s departure.
“New County Council (sic),” says Jones.
The MAGA board majority: Jones, Crye and Kelstrom.
To top it off, the MAGA board awarded the new CEO, Public Health Officer and County Counsel generous severance packages that collectively total more than $1 million, a deterrent to keep future non-MAGA boards from firing them.
“I do not agree with this decision as it removes some of the incentive for these key county leaders to perform well and deliver a benefit to the community,” Plummer told A News Café. “It makes it very expensive to remove them if they don’t perform. I hope they live up to the responsibilities entrusted to them.”
Autocratic decisions without contacting the involved stakeholders are the MAGA board’s specialty. Last August, Chair Jones, Crye, Kelstrom and Garman bypassed Sheriff Johnson, Shasta County DA Stephanie Bridgett and Shasta County Fire Department Chief Sean O’Hara and approved a 30-year contract for services with the Redding Rancheria and its casino expansion project on 1-5 without negotiating the cost of public safety issues.
Jones calls this, “Supporting the Redding Rancheria” on his list of accomplishments. Why is supporting the casino the MAGA board’s concern? Could it be those fat $5500 maximum donations the Rancheria sends to Jones, Crye and Kelstrom when campaign season rolls around?
District 4 candidate Matt Plummer and family.
Plummer’s three-pronged campaign approach, focusing on homelessness, crime and infrastructure doesn’t sugarcoat reality.
“Shasta County could be the best, freest place in California,” Plummer explains in his candidate statement. “We have hardworking people, American values, and beautiful land. Instead, crime is increasing while a floor of our jail was closed for a year and the sheriff loses deputies. Homeless camps spill onto our streets. Overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Our suicide rate is the worst in California. Our roads are 7th worst.”
Meanwhile gun store scion Jones has kept himself busy by passing self-serving Second Amendment proclamations and ushering his multimillion-dollar gun range project through the Department of Resource Management. Eliminating impact fees alone saved Jones $20,000.
A News Café strongly endorses Matt Plummer for Shasta County District 4 Supervisor. If Plummer, Rickert and Long or Baremore can take the dais, we might have a functioning county government again. Then we can get to work on the enormous number of problems facing Shasta County.
Everything you need to vote in the March 5 Primary election.
Step 5&6: Vote No on Measures C&D
Like most ordinances passed by the MAGA board, not a lot of thought went into Measure C, which will limit Shasta County supervisors to two 4-year terms in office, and Measure D, which would transform Shasta County from a general law county to a charter county for the singular purpose of permitting the board of supervisors to fill vacancies on the board instead of the governor.
Term limits for politicians are popular with American voters. According to a recent PEW Research Center survey, 87 percent of Americans support congressional term limits. The California Legislature has had term limits since 1990. Nine California counties ranging from Los Angeles County to San Francisco County to El Dorado County currently have term limits for various elected officials, including county supervisors.
But term limits rarely deliver on their promises. In the argument in favor of Measure C, signed by Jones, Crye, Garman and Kelstrom, it states, “Term limits encourages competitive elections and fosters increased citizen participation in seeking elective office.”
But as the great northern California journalist Peter Schrag found in a 2001 report on the effects of term limits in the state Legislature after ten years, the predicted rise of citizen legislators never really happened.
“But anyone looking for a new generation of citizen-legislators will probably look in vain,” Schrag writes in The American Prospect. “By general agreement, the 1995 session of the California Legislature was probably the most mean-spirited and unproductive in memory, a unique combination of instability, bad behavior, political frenzy, and legislative paralysis.”
The argument in favor of Measure C claims “Establishing term limits for elected members of the Board of Supervisors will motivate those elected to office to familiarize themselves quickly with issues impacting their district and maximize their time in office to accomplish their goals, including establishing policies during their limited tenure.”
But Casey Burgat, the director of the Legislative Affairs program at the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University, told NPR that term limits do exactly the opposite, forcing people out of office right when they’ve finally learned how to do the job proficiently.
“And so when you term-limit someone,” Burgat says, “you are effectively cutting out their incentive to invest in learning how to do the job, to delve into policy issues at the depth that they need to and to really dive into how the procedures work, which just takes years. Because, again, there’s no training ground for this. There’s no training program.”
According to Schrag, term limits take “government’s toughest decisions out of the hands of legislators with long experience and deliver them into the hands of amateurs.”
If Measure C was in effect right now, two-term District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert would not be permitted to run, depriving her constituents of her skills and knowledge. Term limits don’t create more voter freedom, they disenfranchise voters from selecting their preferred candidates.
Vote no on Measure C.
Don’t forget to vote!
Measure D is the MAGA board’s response to AB 2582, signed into law by Gov. Newsom last September which removed the replacement election from the local recall process. When Leonard Moty was recalled in 2022, Tim Garman won the replacement election and became the new District 2 Supervisor. Thanks to AB 2582, if Crye is recalled on March 5, there will be no simultaneous replacement election. It’s up to the governor to appoint a replacement or for the county to schedule a special election.
Measure D proposes to change Shasta County’s status as a “general law” county to a “charter” county for the sole purpose of filling supervisor vacancies. In all other areas, Shasta County would remain a general law county subject to state laws and regulations. But in the case of board vacancies, Measure D would permit the board of supervisors to either appoint a replacement or call for a special election.
If passed, the ordinance wouldn’t take effect until next year. But if it was in effect now and Crye was recalled, it’s possible that Jones, Kelstrom and Garman could select a MAGA replacement, negating the power of the recall to change the board majority.
District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert told A News Café that the MAGA board won’t be able to resist expanding the charter to change elected positions such as the Registrar of Voters into appointed positions.
“If that board continues to remain in power, they would have the ability to appoint ‘their people’ and our local governance could result in detrimental decisions being made for all of its citizens,” Rickert said. “I am a firm believer that the voters should have the right to pick their replacement for their supervisor, and not the Board of Supervisors. The power should be given to the people so their voices can be heard.”
Amen.
Vote no on Measure D.
Ready, set, vote!
That wraps up The Reasonable Person’s Guide to Shasta County’s Primary Election. To recap, here’s A News Cafe’s 5-point guide to restoring sanity to Shasta County’s government:
1. Vote Yes to recall Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye
2. Vote for Allen Long or Susanne Baremore for Shasta County District 2 Supervisor.
3. Re-elect Shasta County District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert.
4. Vote for Matt Plummer for Shasta County District 4 Supervisor.
5. Vote No on Measures C and D.
It’s a big ask, and voter turnout will be key. Remember, if you don’t vote in the primary election, no one will take you seriously when you complain later.
