Shasta County faces another pivotal election — and more uncertainty over voting

As a devoted Republican who runs a cattle ranch and proudly talks about owning a gun, Shasta County Supervisor Mary Rickert is an unlikely progressive icon.

But that is exactly what the 72-year-old devout Catholic and grandmother has become to some in this northern California county — which has been convulsed by conspiracy theories about voter fraud and other extremist ideologies over the last three years.

Rickert is still a staunch conservative. But she has also emerged as an often lonely voice on the Board of Supervisors against a far-right insurgency that has roiled her county.

Shasta County District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert.

(Shasta County)

After an ultra-conservative majority took over in 2022, the board voted to dump Dominion voting machines in favor of hand-counting ballots. The supervisors passed a measure to allow concealed weapons in local government buildings in defiance of state law. And they explored hiring a California secessionist leader as the county’s chief executive. Rickert, whose personal style tends toward feathered blonde hair and flowy scarves, argued against much of what they did.

On Tuesday, voters in her district, which stretches from Redding into the waterfalls and mountain peaks to the east, will decide whether to give her a another term. Her challenger is a local business owner, Corkey Harmon, who said on his website that he is running to “to protect our god given rights and our rural way of life.”

Some county residents say the contest is also about the future political direction of the county.

In recent years, Shasta County has attracted national attention for its embrace of voting conspiracy theories along with 2nd Amendment and anti-vaccine causes. Board meetings have been disrupted by shouting matches and senior staff have been fired or quit. Election workers, meanwhile, say they have faced intimidation. An unknown person installed a game-hunting camera in the alley behind the elections office in 2022.

John Deaton joins others in a demonstration calling for the recall of Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye during a rally in Redding.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

But there are signs that the electorate has grown weary of being a far-right poster child.

Board president and gun-store owner Patrick Jones lost his election in the spring to a more moderate candidate and will leave the board in January. Another moderate, retired Redding police Lt. Allen Long, was elected to fill a vacant seat.

What that means is, if Rickert retains her seat, the far-right will likely lose its majority on the board.

County residents say it is harder to predict what will happen if her opponent wins. Harmon has said on his website that his “affiliation is to no group. I am not part of any Super Pacs or special interest group.” He did not respond to interview requests from the Times. In public statements he has posted on his website, he has not taken a clear position on many of the hot-button issues that have convulsed the county, although he did tell a local television station that he believed the county had an obligation to “fight back” against some state laws.

“As a supervisor, we have a duty to fight back, to go to our legislators and say no … This is against our rights,” he said. “The state is overreaching. We all know they are, causing us grief in lots of ways… We don’t need to go into all the details of that.”

Doni Chamberlain, a local journalist and Rickert supporter whose news website has spent years chronicling the chaos that has ripped through local government, said voters in the county’s Supervisorial District 3 face a choice that will define the county. “The future of Shasta County depends on this race,” she said.

But no matter what happens in that race, there are signs that some chaos may continue. On Wednesday, the county announced that its new voting machines were failing to properly count ballots.

The county purchased the machines after it dumped Dominion and a new state law blocked it from hand-counting. The county also got a new registrar after Cathy Darling Allen, the only elected Democrat in the county, stepped down because she had heart failure and needed to reduce her stress.

Vote by mail envelopes are sorted at the Shasta County Registrar of Voters office in Redding in February. The Shasta County Board of Supervisors last year voted to get rid of the county’s ballot-counting machines and had planned to conduct elections with a hand count. The California Legislature later passed a law to bar hand-counting elections ballots, except in narrow circumstances.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The new registrar, Tom Toller, said his office had discovered “an issue with ink overspray” that “is preventing our election equipment from processing those ballots.” He said the error isn’t visible to the naked eye and wasn’t detected during pre-election testing.

Nevada County, which uses the same machines, is having a similar problem, he said. He added that it is unknown how many of the 117,000 ballots his county issued have been affected; about 32,500 ballots have already been turned in by voters.

Also this week, a Shasta County elections official told the news website CalMatters that he had quit his job because election observers were crowding into the office in an intimidating manner. Some observers are “very angry,” Tanner Johnson said.

“They want to catch us in a lie, so they’ll try to trick you into saying something,” Johnson said. “A lot of times they’ll be secretly videotaping you or recording you.”

Toller confirmed that an employee had quit because “he felt the climate surrounding elections was too hostile, and he felt threatened by that.” He called it “a great disappointment” because Johnson was an “excellent employee.”

He added that election observers have “become much more aggressive about pursuing their agenda,” which he said in many cases is advocating hand-counting, which is illegal.

“Things have gotten more confrontational,” he said. “The tone is more aggressive.”

Toller said he hoped for a placid election night, but law enforcement was planning patrols and “we have to be prepared for everything.”

Shasta County voters went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and many expect them to do the same this year. The real election suspense is whether voters will back Rickert or Harmon.

In a video introducing himself to voters posted on a local television station website, Harmon laid out his priorities. He described himself as “a true conservative who believes in local control” and said his values are more in tune with the district’s rural constituents than Rickert’s.

His video made no mention of the controversies that have repeatedly put his county in the national news. He has said one of his goals is to stop the “infighting” among board members and that he is committed to improving public safety.

Rickert, meanwhile, argues that she is the candidate with the experience to help right the county. She said she wants to stabilize the county’s workforce, which has been disrupted by all the turmoil, and make sure the $39 million the county expects to receive from opioid settlements is well spent.

She said she would have loved nothing more than to retire and spend time with her grandchildren, but she couldn’t find a moderate Republican willing to run.

“I just want to focus on getting our county finances back in order,” she said. “This is a pivotal moment in Shasta County’s history.”