Some voters see red over districts

Republicans in rural Northern California balk at a plan to redraw voting maps.

- JESSICA GARRISON

REP. DOUG LAMALFA says redistricting could fuel secession sentiments.

When the talk turned to politics at the OK Corral bar in this historic stagecoach town on Tuesday night, retired nurse Ovie Hays, 77, spoke for most of the room when she summed up her view of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan.

“I don't want Democrats around,” she said. “They have gone too far in controlling us. We won't have a say in anything.”

Nearby, a man in hard-worn cowboy boots agreed with Hays — using much more colorful language. He works as a ranch hand and said he’d just come from fixing a goat pen.

“The morons in charge, and the morons that put [those] morons in charge need to understand where their food comes from,” he said. He declined to see his name printed, like a lot of folks in this part of Shasta County and neighboring counties.

In its current form, California’s 1st Congressional District, which sweeps south from the Oregon border almost to Sacramento, is larger than Massachusetts or Maryland or eight other states.

This is farm and forest country. From the glittering peaks and dense forests of Mt. Shasta and the Sierra Nevada, rivers course down to the valley floor, to vast fields of rice, endless orchards of peaches and golden, rolling grassland full of more cows than people. Voters here are concerned with policies that affect their water supply and forests, given that the timber industry limps along here and fires have ravaged the area in recent years.

This is also Republican country. For the last 12 years, this district has been represented by Congressman Doug LaMalfa, a rice farmer from Oroville who is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.

But if voters approve the redistricting plan in November, the deep-red bastion that is LaMalfa's district will be cleaved into three pieces, each of them diluted with enough Democratic votes that they could all turn blue.