Rural California county keeps ultra conservative official who pushed to upend voting system

Kevin Crye, a supervisor on the county’s governing board, in Redding, California, on 28 March 2023. Photograph: Marlena Sloss/The Guardian

Shasta county voters returned a mixed verdict on the ultra-conservative politics the rural enclave in northern California has become known for, ousting one far-right local official and offering another a political lifeline.

County residents on 5 March resoundingly declined to re-elect Patrick Jones to the board of supervisors, the county’s governing body. Jones, a leader of the local far-right movement, had repeatedly, and baselessly, argued that county and US elections are being rigged. Jones’s opponent, Matt Plummer, won the race for the seat with nearly 60% of the vote.

But on Thursday, after more than three weeks of counting votes, officials announced that voters had rejected an effort to recall Kevin Crye, another far-right supervisor on the board.

Voters opted to keep Crye on the board of supervisors with a razor-thin margin of 50 votes, according to results from the Shasta county elections office.

Crye is one of the county’s most conservative officials, and faced a recall effort from citizens concerned about his support for a controversial effort to do away with voting machines and his ties to Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and one of the leading promoters of falsehoods about election fraud.

The outcome of the election had been unclear for weeks, leaving the county on edge and residents anxiously awaiting results.

Shasta county is home to just 180,000 residents, but the fights over control over its board of supervisors took on national significance after the county in the past five years developed into a center of the election denial movement.

Crye and Jones were part of a far-right majority on the board of supervisors, voted into office during the pandemic and its aftermath by an electorate angered over vaccine mandates and pandemic-related closures.

In the past year, that far-right majority moved to push policy in the county even further to the right, voting to allow people to carry firearms in public buildings in violation of state law and offering the county’s top job to the leader of a California secessionist group.

In January 2023, the far-right majority on the board voted to cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems and instead create a hand-count system, an effort that was ultimately blocked by state lawmakers.

At a recent meeting of the board of supervisors, Crye’s supporters argued that the board should not certify the results of the recent election.

The effort to recall Crye from office drew intense outside interest, including from high-profile Republicans such as the former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and the Kentucky senator Rand Paul.

Supporters of Crye’s recall hoped that a rejection of Crye’s tactics would force a larger change in the county.

“We’re seeing an extreme agenda coming here that we don’t think people want,” Jeff Gorder, a spokesperson for the recall group and retired county public defender, told the Guardian last month.

“This recall could be a turning point.”