California’s Inyo County flips back to red after 2020 surprise

Four years ago, rural — and staunchly conservative — Inyo County delivered an election day surprise when voters there chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump by just 14 votes.

Before 2020, the rugged county in the Eastern Sierra had not backed a Democrat for president since 1964, when voters chose Lyndon B. Johnson.

Longtime locals wondered if a pandemic-era influx of new residents from more urban parts of California — most of them Democrats or independents — had forever purpled the place.

Would Inyo County once again spurn Trump in 2024?

It would not.

As of Tuesday, Trump was carrying the county by 3 percentage points, beating Vice President Kamala Harris there by 267 votes.

County Registrar Danielle Sexton said there were 12 ballots that had not yet been formally tallied due to signature verification issues. Of those, seven ballots had been “cured” — and will be counted — after elections officials have contacted the voters by knocking on their doors or calling. The other five ballots have issues pending.

“Thankfully, this time nobody is winning or losing by those 12 votes,” Sexton said. She added that despite the nation’s — and local election volunteers’ — political divisions, polling places had been calm and cordial on election day.

“Everybody is so stressed out on both sides of the issues, and it is so awesome to see the county getting together at the polling places regardless of what side they’re on,” she said. “Everybody had a great time. It was really polite, and I was just proud of everybody.”

Considering Trump carried Inyo County in 2016 by 13 percentage points, Biden’s victory there in 2020 was quietly one of the most dramatic red-to-blue flips in the country.

The only other California county to flip blue in 2020 after voting for Trump four years earlier was mostly rural Butte County, which saw massive displacement after the deadly Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018. As of Tuesday, Trump was leading in Butte County by 2.9%, or 2,670 votes.

State law requires counties to finalize their official tallies 30 days after an election, by Dec. 5 this year. Secretary of State Shirley Weber will certify the results on Dec. 13.

David Blacker, chairman of the Inyo County Republican Central Committee, said that “maybe we went 14 votes purple last time, but we certainly reestablished that Inyo is a red county.”

As in other parts of the country, Blacker said, the economy seemed to be voters’ top concern in vast Inyo County — which is home to about 19,000 people, is composed of mostly public lands, and relies heavily upon tourists’ financial ability to vacation there.

Rural California, he said, was hit especially hard by Biden-era inflation, and residents there often pay more for groceries due to shipping costs to out-of-the-way places. They also tend to have to drive farther than their urban counterparts, and gas prices tend to be higher than in the rest of the state.

“You can’t have the kind of spike in inflation that we had and then just kind of shrug that off,” said Blacker, who lives and works in Death Valley National Park, which covers almost half of the county.

“The RINOs and Democrats have been recklessly spending,” says Lynette McIntosh, right, at a Bishop City Council candidate forum last month in Inyo County’s only incorporated city.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Nina Weisman, chair of the Inyo County Democratic Central Committee, said she was disappointed but not at all surprised that her county voted for Trump, given the rightward shift in American politics this year.

After Trump won in 2016, local liberals were fired up. They restarted the Inyo County Democratic Central Committee, which had been inactive. They organized a women’s march and Black Lives Matter protests.

This time around, the resistance is a little more tired — but not gone yet, said Weisman, who lives in Independence.

“It’s exhausting,” she said. “But I’m hoping they just get madder.”

There were a few new attendees at the central committee’s first meeting after this election, Weisman said, and representatives of the state Democratic Party “came specifically to give us pep talks.”

“Our people were really depressed, but we had some guest speakers and new blood coming in,” she said.

That gave Weisman — a seasonal park ranger who has worked in Alaska and worries deeply about Trump loosening environmental regulations — much-needed hope.

Meanwhile, Lynette McIntosh, who lives just outside Bishop, could not be more delighted by the election results. She is 73, retired from the custom window covering business she and her husband ran together, and was thrilled by Trump’s campaign promise to end taxation of Social Security benefits.

“The RINOs and Democrats have been recklessly spending,” she said, referring to so-called Republicans-in-name-only who are not loyal enough to Trump.

She has loved the incoming president’s Cabinet picks so far, and believes that over the next four years, naysayers “need to just butt out and let them do their jobs.”