His real name is Tanner Johnson, but as he neared his last days at the job he once cherished, he told his beloved co-workers they could call him Elections Jesus.
Initially, it was in jest that Johnson, the former Shasta County Elections Office Account Clerk II, jokingly suggested his name change; a way to to cheer up his weary, beleaguered colleagues.
“I told my fellow co-workers that I thought my time here was done,” Johnson said. “I couldn’t stay any longer because I was fearing for my life, and the state of my mental health. But I was also worried about those people I cared about; friends I was leaving behind.”
Once Johnson decided to give notice, Johnson vowed to himself that he would do everything in his power to not just help his former colleagues, but that he’d go public with damning information that might ultimately restore a sense of humane and safe working conditions inside the Shasta County Elections Department. He would sound the alarm about bad actors’ attempts to destabilize Shasta County democracy.
Johnson would reveal some of worst of the bad actors who target the elections department, including specific county leaders whose conduct-unbecoming and blatant rule-of-law violations would deem them mentally unfit to serve seemingly anywhere in the civilized world except Shasta County, where the most powerful, corrupt people often evade consequences for their abominable behavior. He would tell of his unsuccessful attempts to take his complaints to the county’s most influential potential problem-solvers.
“Since I was leaving, I had nothing to lose, so I told them, ‘I’m Elections Jesus. I will sacrifice myself to help this department,’ ” Johnson said.
“At the time, I just laughed, because it was funny. But really, in a way, it’s become true. I told them, if you need a face for this cause, I’m here. If you need me to sign anything, I will sign anything you put in front of me. If you need anything at all, I’m here. Use me. I have nothing left to lose.”
Another aspect of Johnson’s sacrificial plan to help his colleagues and the elections department was an in-depth interview with A News Cafe. Included in Johnson’s interview were unsavory details about toxic, stressful work conditions inside the elections department. He expressed the fact that some of Shasta County’s lowest-paid employees continue to endure ongoing verbal harassment, and intense scrutiny and criticism by some members of the public, including elected officials. Plus, he shared how most elections department employees — including the assistant county clerk/registrar of voters — are carrying heavier work loads to compensate for massive vacancies left by an exodus of harried workers, and with their mass exit, a drain of institutional knowledge.
Johnson knew that his public disclosures would sacrifice his reputation, and render him a virtually unemployable Shasta County pariah. He knows the tradeoff. He’s made peace with it.
Friday was Johnson’s last day. He is the 10th elections department employee to leave within the last 12 months.
Election observers gone wild
Johnson is no stranger to the occasional ruckus caused by random trouble-making election observers. In fact, for more than a year, starting with the November 2023 Special Election, and leading into the March 2024 Primary Election, Johnson took pride in his knack to tactfully and professionally deal with numerous election-denying, hand-count-only, Dominion-machine-hating members of the public who converged upon the elections department in fruitless searches for election fraud.
But one disruptive incident last month triggered by a prominent Redding man pushed Johnson beyond the breaking point. In fact, the experience and its aftermath directly led Johnson to quit his job that he believed in, and leave behind co-workers who’d become like beloved functional family members; people who accepted and loved the 41-year-old smart, funny, handsome guy, exactly as he was.
“When I got this job, I felt like I was part of a cause. We were just a ragtag bunch, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, and you know, some of us did have wild and crazy hair,” Johnson said with a laugh. “But were all working for one common goal: Democracy, and free and fair elections. It was like a family, and they didn’t care that I was queer, and they didn’t care that I was on the spectrum. They really didn’t care. They were the family I needed.”
HAPPIER DAYS AT THE ELECTIONS OFFICE: From left, former elections employee Tanner Johnson, Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut, and other elections employees, pose in front of their Shasta Votes background.
That’s why, for Johnson, who’s suffered several deep, personal losses the last few years, it grieves him to realize that pretty much the only thing he had left was his job, and his solid relationships with good people there. Those disappeared when the elections department no longer felt like a safe place to work, and he concluded that the only sane decision was to give notice and leave.
Protective nature
Johnson’s inspiration to apply for a job with the elections department came after watching an earlier news report that showed Darling Allen under intense fire by election deniers one election night, when, as Darling Allen put it at the time, elections were being “weaponized.”
“I saw that, and said, ‘That’s not right,’ ” Johnson said. “Nobody should allow that.”
He was hired in August of 2023, never imagining that his job would later include heart-pounding moments when he would protect elections department staff.
Saturday morning, during an in-person interview outside the elections department, when asked about his inclination to rush in and sacrifice himself, when most everyone else pulls back, Johnson — with dark, wavy hair and John Lennon-esque glasses — smiled and shrugged.
“I don’t know. It’s who I am. I guess you could say it’s my nature.”
The erratic man in the lobby
During his interview, Johnson described the pivotal moment in early October when an agitated man entered the lobby and beelined for the seated staff members who were concentrating on some complicated pre-election test procedures.
“He was very erratic, and was flitting about the lobby in the Market Street building,” Johnson recalled.
“Mind you, the extra help and some full-time staff were doing the logic-and-accuracy testing. They’re doing the 1-percent hand count of the test ballots. They’re calibrating the actual machines to start receiving the ballots. And he’s there, I guess as an observer. So he starts intimidating the supervisor there. He’s all upset because he thought the rope barriers were too far away from the tables. And he was like, ‘Well, the public deserves to see!’ And then he started asking really weird questions, like, ‘You hate me, don’t you?’ ”
Johnson said that man continued to accuse staff of hating him, and insisted it was because Joanne Francescut, the assistant registrar of voters, had instructed staff to hate him. A staff member disagreed with the man. She assured the man she didn’t hate him, and that Francescut hadn’t told staff to hate the man.
At one point, two staff members became so distressed by the man’s unstable conduct that the women each displayed special flags, a silent system to signal issues or problems, so employees can call for backup assistance.
Johnson said that finally, the obviously exasperated man strode away, got on his cell phone and was overheard ordering someone to come down immediately to the elections office.
“He was saying, ‘Yeah, you need to get down here! You need to help me understand this. Just get down here!’ ”
But the man wasn’t done. Once the man’s friend showed up, the two men – each of whom wore observers’ name badges — doubled down on the staff members.
“Then the new man was disrupting the process, saying things like, “Oh, you guys are just going to rig the election again, aren’t you?’ ” Johnson said.
“One of the staff women relented and moved the barriers closer to the tables so perhaps the men could see better. Then he’s flitting about again, and is trying to be funny, and saying, ‘I’m going to get your ballots! I’m going to get your ballots!’ It was so bad. It was very awkward.”
That was an understatement, because what made the incident even more awkward was the identity of the agitated man: District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye.
District 1 Supervisor/Chair Kevin Crye.
Later, after Crye and his friend left, Johnson said one of the women who’d been on the receiving end of Crye’s manic badgering told Johnson it was the first time she’d encountered Crye.
“She’s like, ‘I felt very unsafe.’ ”
Kid gloves, commissioner scams, stranger danger
As Johnson put it, the Crye episode was the last straw for him. He immediately complained to management about not just Crye’s behavior, but the double standard.
“If he had been a regular observer, we’d have booted him out,” Johnson said. “What happened — what Crye did — was wholly inappropriate. He was interrupting official elections proceedings, where we were starting the process.”
When Johnson addressed the Crye encounter during a staff meeting led by new ROV Thomas Toller, Johnson said Toller told his employees that unfortunately, there’s not much elections staff could do with the board of supervisors. In fact, Johnson said Toller told staff to handle supervisors with “kid gloves.”
Johnson was dumbfounded by Toller’s response. He said that was yet another moment when he’d had enough, and was not going to take it anymore.
“This was not OK. Not only are they (board majority members) encouraging people to bring weapons in here, but they’re literally in here themselves trying to disrupt the process in person. The analogy I made was if this was the private sector and you were working in the mailroom; it’d be like the CEO coming down to the mailroom and saying, ‘You suck!’ ”
For Johnson, Crye’s transgressions were just the steamy tip of a giant heap of awfulness on a large pile of unacceptable happenings inside the elections department. Here’s a partial list:
• Supervisor Chair Crye recently accompanied ROV Toller and an elections department employee to Shasta High School, to educate teens about the voting process. It’s a common community outreach tradition, where area high schools sometimes invite supervisors who represent their respective districts to speak at the high schools about voting, democracy, and the election process.
Here’s how someone who witnessed Crye’s high-school electioneering spectacle described what happened: As Toller looked on mutely, Crye came on like gangbusters to an auditorium full of high schoolers with fear-based questions. For example, Crye asked how the students would feel if the government came and took their property, or their parent’s property, and there was nothing they could do to stop it? Crye tossed out a few more lines baited with more scary-scenario questions, and wrapped it up by pouncing on this paraphrased punch line, “Well, that’s what Measures P & Q seek to prevent!”
According to the witness, although Crye didn’t come right out and say, “Vote for Measures P & Q!” it was unabashed electioneering to anyone who knows anything about elections codes. Toller, an attorney by trade who’s still learning the elections department ropes, allowed Kevin to go on in that electioneering vein for several minutes, without intervening and/or correcting Crye.
Think about it: Why would Toller publicly correct Crye? He wouldn’t, because Crye is the only reason why Toller enjoys this lucrative ROV job in the first place, a position where Assistant ROV Francescut does all the ROV’s heavy lifting, for which Toller is generously compensated, not her. Sweet deal, if you can get it.
What’s more, during the public interview process for the ROV position, Crye was the only person in all of Shasta County who spoke out in favor of Toller for ROV, after which Crye tricked colleagues Jones and Kelstrom into voting for Toller, even though Jones and Kelstrom clearly supported their guy, Clint Curtis. Crye’s con was simple and effective: Either you vote for Thomas Toller, or I will vote for Joanna Francescut. Of course, if Crye had voted for Francescut, she would have won the ROV position, as she had backing from District 2 Supervisor Tim Garman, and District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert. So Kelstrom and Jones ate Crye crow as their candidate lost, Crye won and the rest of us are suffering the consequences. Oh, how rich it would have been had Kelstrom, for example, called Crye’s bluff and voted for Francescut, especially since Kelstrom had spoken positively about Francescut.
• Former ROV Cathy Darling Allen’s retirement marked the moment for Johnson when he feared things were about to get far worse for the elections department. Darling Allen retired early due to the diagnosis of a perilous heart condition that required she remove herself from stress. At the time, arguably few Shasta County jobs were more stressful than Darling Allen’s, starting with non-stop turmoil following the 2020 election as election deniers, and far-right majority board members continually harassed, mocked and criticized her and her staff. She’d received death threats, and following her doctor’s recommendations, she quit, for the sake of her health.
• The far-right board majority voted to get rid of the Dominion Voting System that Darling Allen had successfully used for many elections. Ironically, the Dominion Voting System was in place when the board majority members won their elections.
• Interference from some Shasta County Elections Commission members, most specifically Patty Plumb, who, according to Johnson, tried to “scam” the elections department into ordering paper poll books by claiming the order had been approved by CEO David Rickert, who had not authorized any such order.
• A frightening exchange between an enraged intoxicated voter and a female elections worker. “It was toward the end of the day, we don’t have enough staff, and and we don’t have security, and she was the only one there with another extra help person,” Johnson said, who was told about the incident later. “This guy came in and was drunk off his ass, and he basically held up one of my co-workers. This guy starts freaking out, and he’s screaming at her to shut the fuck up, to keep her hands where he could see them. It was 25 minutes of terror.”
Johnson said his rattled colleague later explained to him how she’d basically “just played possum” as the man yelled at her, because the man had a backpack, and she didn’t know what was in it. Maybe a weapon. Johnson said that after work that night, he and that co-worker drove to the Sundial Bridge parking lot to talk and attempt to calm down.
“It was really bad,” Johnson said. “She was really traumatized. She was so wound up, just crying and shaking. We just sat in the car together because she was seriously trying to process what had just happened.”
• The board majority voted against the state law created to protect elections workers.
• Three months after Johnson was employed with the elections department, on Election Day during the November 2023 Special Election, Johnson observed something that still rattles him when he thinks about it now. Lori Bridgeford — who self-identifies as a “citizen journalist” — was in the elections office lobby, ostensibly as an observer, when she got within inches of Cathy Darling Allen, who was then Shasta County’s Registrar of Voters, and began yelling at Darling Allen about metal security gates.
“It was the first time I’d experienced anything like that,” Johnson said. “Honestly, it shook me. It was like seeing real madness for the first time in my life.”
Johnson said something snapped inside him as he observed an obviously unhinged Bridgeford as she stood literally nearly toe to toe with Darling Allen, screeching at Darling Allen about the new metal fence unit that Darling Allen had ordered for the safety of the elections department and its employees.
When Johnson realized Bridgeford had still not stopped verbally accosting Darling Allen, Johnson, the 6-foot 4-inch gentle man who favors Hawaiian shirts and colorful bracelets, strode over to Darling Allen. Like a sentry, he silently put one hand on Darling Allen’s shoulder. He stood quietly beside Darling Allen until Bridgeford finally stomped away.
-
- Cathy Darling Allen, former County Clerk/Registrar of Voters.
-
- Lori Bridgeford shows a badge as proof she’s a journalist.
“I thought to myself that this is not okay for a human being to endure alone. So I didn’t do anything or even say anything. I just stepped up and put my hand on Cathy’s shoulder, just so she knew like she wasn’t alone.”
• Persistent rumors among elections employees feared that Toller might have the metal fence removed as a peace offering of sorts to placate some far-right election observers who claim the fence is a waste of taxpayer money. “There was quite the uproar over that, because we’re saying, no, no, no, no, no!” Johnson said. “We literally need that fence to protect us from from some of you!”
• The board threw a monkey wrench in a $1.5 million gift of grant money, awarded by private nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life, in recognition of Shasta County Elections Office’s excellence. Far-right board meeting speakers, as well as supervisors Chris Kelstrom and Patrick Jones, were among the most strident opponents to the no-strings-attached “dirty Zuckerbucks” on the grounds that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was among Center for Tech and Civic Life’s backers. The grant guidelines stipulated that the funds be used “exclusively for the public purpose of planning and operationalizing safe and secure election administration in Shasta County.”
On a related note, an item on the upcoming Nov. 7 board of supervisors agenda summons Joanna Francescut — the assistant county clerk/registrar of voters — to give a presentation on the controversial grant matter, and answer supervisors’ questions. The consensus among county insiders is that agenda item was the demented brainchild of Supervisor Jones, a way for the MAGA board majority to publicly interrogate, humiliate and bully Francescut, someone Jones has openly expressed his desire to fire.
• The board majority rejected Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut as the best-qualified heir apparent applicant to replace the retiring Cathy Darling Allen, but instead hired Thomas Toller, an elderly attorney with self-described health issues and zero elections experience.
Johnson recalled how morale soared briefly in the elections office when staff’s well-respected, well-loved and highly admired Francescut was in the running for the ROV position.
Johnson said that had the board fired Francescut, there would have been a massive elections department staff walkout.
“If Jo had honestly been fired or whatever, we would have gone with her. We are that faithful to her,” Johnson said.
“We felt the same about Cathy, but the only reason we stayed when Cathy left was we thought Jo was going to be the new ROV. I had hopes that they’d pick Jo, but when Tom was hired, that’s when I knew. I’m like, OK, that’s it. That’s it. It’s done. We’re done.”
-
- Assistant ROV/County Clerk Joanna Francescut
-
- ROV/County Clerk Thomas Toller,
In fact, Toller has acknowledged that prior to becoming the new ROV, the only time he’d set foot in the county clerk’s office was to apply for a passport.
Regarding Toller, Johnson believes he’s a nice enough guy, but absolutely not ROV material.
“To hear him talk, Toller was living the good life,” Johnson said. “He was a former monk, he loves to cook, and he would tell us all his passions for cooking. He just had this zest for life as a retired fellow. And now he’s here. And
he looks haggard as hell. Poor Tom, poor Tom. I just feel like he was bamboozled into this job.”
Johnson also mentioned that Toller is frequently out sick, and is hard to “pin down”. Johnson added that because of Toller’s woeful lack of ROV experience, he operates as more of a political figurehead ROV, rather than a hands-on practical ROV. The result, said Johnson, is Francescut does her job, plus the lion’s share of Tolller’s ROV job, on an assistant’s salary.
As frustrated as Johnson is on behalf of a maxed-out Francescut, he also feels sorry for Toller.
“Honestly, this job may very well end up killing him, and like it is with me, I ask, ‘Is it worth it? Is this job worth dying for? Not for me. This job is not worth dying for. I’m not willing to be a martyr.”
Undaunted by Toller’s lack of help with the Crye situation, Johnson gathered up a handful of willing elections colleagues to join him in reporting a number of grievances, but about Crye in particular, to their union representative.
Crickets from the union, disinterest from the DA
“We just said everything, not just about Crye, but about other things, like the fence,” Johnson said regarding their visit with the union rep. “He took copious notes about all our issues, like how Kevin Crye is literally coming down here and intimidating us. This is not OK. It’s harassment!”
The union rep said he’d write up a letter to send to personnel, but would first send it to Johnson and other elections department employees to review by Friday. That was three weeks ago, Johnson said. During that time, Johnson sent numerous text messages and phone calls, all without response.
“The last thing he said was he was having lawyers review it,” Johnson said in a flat tone. “They must have a heavy caseload.”
Having struck out, first with Toller, and then with the union representative, Johnson moved on to report the Crye incident to the Shasta County District Attorney’s office. Initially, someone at the DA’s office suggested Johnson report his complaint about Crye to the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office.
“I was like, yeah, that’s not happening,” Johnson said. “Sheriff Michael Johnson’s not going to help me. I found it so bizarre to report that to the DA’s office, and then they say go to the sheriff.”
At last, Johnson heard from someone — perhaps an investigator — from the District Attorney’s office, who called and asked for Johnson to tell exactly what happened when Crye came to the elections office. After the investigator listened, he told Johnson that it sounded like technically, Crye didn’t do anything wrong, because it wasn’t official election interference, because the staff members were only practicing the election process, not engaging in the actual election.
According to Johnson, the DA investigator said he’d see if the district attorney wanted to pursue the complaint against Crye. But ultimately, Johnson said the investigator didn’t “really think there’s anything to this,” to which Johnson said he replied, “Yeah, well, that was a long shot.”
But next part of the investigator’s conversation is what most bothered Johnson.
“So he says the elections code doesn’t apply in this instance,” Johnson said. “Then he went as far as to quote the elections code to me, and I’m like, yeah, that’s literally why I’m reporting this, because of that code, and he said I might want to write down the code number. I’m thinking, ‘motherfucker, I know the elections code, do you?”
When Johnson told the investigator the variety of ways in which he’d tried to report the elections violations Crye had committed inside the elections office, Johnson said the investigator suggested — because Johnson and the other elections employees are private citizens — that if Crye ever showed up again, the employees had every right to use their phones to record Crye.
“I was like, OK,” Johnson said. “I’d done everything I could. I’d even written two heart-felt letters to Governor Newsom in the last six months, trying to let him know what’s really happening here. I’m now realizing how deep this stuff goes here. These creeps — these little worms like Crye and Jones — they get away with this shit because they intimidate people. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Shasta County; we have a bunch of sniveling, cowardly, pathetic men trying to grasp all the power.”
Is election violence on Shasta County’s horizon?
As Tuesday’s election draws near, there’s a lot of nervous talk taking place between Shasta County citizens regarding what will happen on Election Day, and the following days, depending upon who wins, and who doesn’t.
A Dutch film crew recently created a short film about Shasta County extremism, that includes interviews with this reporter.
Jones provided a chilling response to the journalist’s question regarding what could happen, in the event Trump loses the election.
As Johnson takes stock of not just his future, but Shasta County’s, it terrifies him to realize that if nobody –no agency, no entity — cared enough to protect elections staff from a megalomaniacal malignant narcissistic board chair, it’s likely no one would protect election workers in the coming days from even more dire circumstances, here in Shasta County, where District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones has vowed serious consequences if Donald Trump loses the election.
Will it be as Jones threatened, with some of kind of “consequences” or is it all talk?
Johnson said he absolutely takes Jones’ threats seriously, which is one of the reasons he quit his elections department job.
“I just have these thoughts, of like someone doing a mass shooting in the crowded elections area, a bomb or whatever,” he said.
“But the police and the sheriff came by for a meeting a couple of weeks ago and they basically told Jo and Tom that they weren’t concerned, that the only thing that we are really going to have to deal with is harassment.”
He’s concerned that law enforcement’s apparent lackadaisical attitude will leave them ill-prepared if something big happens.
“There’s been just been a lot of saber rattling for the last couple of years, and it’s just been ridiculous, with one pissing contest after another,” Tanner Johnson said.
“But eventually, someone’s going to actually draw the saber. And I don’t want to be there for that. I think a lot of people just think, ‘Well, this is just Shasta County. They’re just a bunch of blowhards, because they’re all talk. But when are they actually going to follow through? When will they feel desperate enough?”
Last stop: Elections Jesus hits the road
Johnson said his last day at the elections office was more difficult than he’d expected.
“Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to hit me as hard as it did, but at the end of the day, I was just bawling,” he said. “I had to actually send basically an email because everyone was so busy, I couldn’t even say goodbye to them. I was just basically in my cubicle crying.”
Since his decision to leave, many of Johnson’s colleagues have confided their belief that he’s getting out at the right time, and that they’re jealous that he’s leaving, and that he must have known something bad was going to happen, because he’s leaving so suddenly, just days before the election.
Some of his co-workers even tried to entice him change his mind, and stay, like maybe he could just take a leave of absence, and then return later if things settled down.
“I said no, I’m not. I’m never coming back to this,” Johnson said. “But I’m so worried about them, because they feel stuck. I’m like, ‘guys, do not die for this.’ ”
Now, Johnson finds himself experiencing survivor’s guilt of sorts. On the one hand, he knows that leaving the job he once loved was the only choice for his mental and even physical health. But on the other hand, he’s concerned about about his friends and former colleagues, toiling in a pressure-cooker workplace.
“Some of my coworkers are in really, really bad shape, like suicidal shape,” he said. “Part of me feels like I’m abandoning them. But I felt like I was receiving so many warnings to leave, and I can’t ignore them. I have to go. Something is wrong with the soul of this area.”
Now, Johnson’s work is done here in Shasta County. He stood up for Cathy Darling Allen when she was under attack. He stood up for himself and all elections workers by seeking (but not finding) justice in any way or any place that might protect them from verbally abusive observers, even — especially — supervisors. He and the entire elections department showed up and stood during the Board of Supervisors meeting where Francescut was interviewed for a job for which she was immensely qualified, but soundly rejected by the far-right board majority.
Back, center — former elections worker Tanner Johnson crosses his arms and smiles as his boss, Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut performs her public interview with flying colors, but was later rejected by the hard-right board majority.
“I value truth, honor and justice more than anything,” he said. “And there is a lot of that missing in Shasta County, and yeah, that’s hard to admit. That’s why I’m actually leaving the county, because I just can’t be here. It’s such a dark, dark place. And it’s draining.”
As someone who was born and raised in Red Bluff, who’s never lived anywhere except the North State, Johnson says it’s time to pull up stakes and put Shasta County in his rearview mirror. A single man with two cats – Shade and Rogue – Johnson says he doesn’t have much money, and doesn’t know quite where he’ll go, or where he’ll eventually land, but he knows one thing for certain: he wants to go as far away from Redding, as quickly as possible.
“I’m looking at just maybe even buying a little camper van, and just hitting the road, just me and my little tuxedo cats,” he said.
“I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I think I’ll know it when I get there. Anywhere except here.”
###
