Four years ago, rural and staunchly conservative Inyo County produced a surprise on Election Day when voters chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a margin of just 14 votes.
Before 2020, the rugged eastern Sierra county had not supported a Democrat in a presidential election since 1964, when voters chose Lyndon B. Johnson.
Longtime locals wondered whether the pandemic-era influx of new residents from urban California, most of them Democrats or independents, had permanently turned the place purple.
Will Inyo County ostracize Trump again in 2024?
That won’t happen.
As of Tuesday, Trump held a 3-point lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in the county by 267 votes.
County Registrar Daniel Sexton said there are 12 ballots that have not yet been officially counted due to signature verification issues. Seven of the ballots have been “repaired” and will be counted after election officials contacted voters by knocking on their doors or making phone calls. The remaining five ballots have pending issues.
“Thankfully, this time no one wins or loses by that 12-vote margin,” Sexton said. He added that despite the political divide between national and local election volunteers, there was a calm and peaceful atmosphere at the polling stations on Election Day.
“Everyone is stressed on both sides of the issue, and it’s so great to see counties flock to the polls no matter which side they’re on,” she said. “Everyone had a great time. They were really polite and I was proud of everyone.”
Given that Trump carried Inyo County by 13 percentage points in 2016, Biden’s victory in the county in 2020 is quietly one of the most dramatic red-to-blue flips in the country. They became one.
The only county in California that voted for Trump four years ago and turned blue in 2020 is mostly rural, where the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018 and caused mass displacement. of Butte County. As of Tuesday, Trump was leading in Butte County. The difference was 2.9 percentage points, or 2,670 votes.
State law requires counties to finalize official counts within 30 days of the election, by Dec. 5 of this year. Secretary of State Shirley Weber is scheduled to certify the results on December 13th.
“We may have had maybe 14 votes purple last time, but it certainly reaffirms that Inyo is a red county,” Inyo County Republican Central Committee Chairman David Blacker said. .
As in other parts of the country, voters’ top concern in Inyo County appears to be the economy, Blacker said. Inyo County has a population of approximately 19,000 people, is made up of mostly public land, and is highly dependent on the economic ability of tourists to spend their vacation there. There.
He said rural California has been particularly hard hit by inflation during the Biden administration, where residents often have to pay more for groceries due to the cost of shipping to remote areas. They also tend to have to drive longer distances than people in urban areas, and gas prices tend to be higher than in other parts of the state.
“You can’t just shrug it off when you have a spike in inflation like we’ve had,” said Blacker, who lives and works in Death Valley National Park, which covers nearly half the county.
“RINOs and Democrats are spending recklessly,” Lynette McIntosh (right) said at a Bishop City Council candidate forum held last month in Inyo County’s only incorporated city.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
Nina Wiseman, chairwoman of the Inyo County Democratic Central Committee, said she was disappointed but not at all surprised that the county voted for Trump, given the rightward shift in American politics this year.
After Trump won in 2016, local liberals gained momentum. They reactivated the Inyo County Democratic Central Committee, which had been inactive. They organized women’s marches and Black Lives Matter protests.
Wiseman, an Independence resident, said the resistance is a little more weary this time around, but it’s not over yet.
“It’s very tiring,” she said. “But I hope they get angrier.”
Wiseman said there were some new attendees at the central committee’s first meeting since the election, including representatives from the state Democratic Party who “came in specifically to encourage us.”
“Our employees were really down, but we also had guest speakers and new people coming in,” she said.
This gave Wiseman, a seasonal park ranger who has worked in Alaska and is deeply concerned about President Trump loosening environmental regulations, much-needed hope.
Meanwhile, Lynette McIntosh, who lives just outside Bishop, couldn’t be happier with the election results. She is 73, retired from the custom window covering business she ran with her husband, and was excited about President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits.
“RINOs and Democrats are spending recklessly,” she said, referring to so-called nominal Republicans who don’t have enough loyalty to President Trump.
She has liked the president-elect’s cabinet appointments so far and believes opponents should “shut up and let them do their job” over the next four years.
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