Accusations of Satan worship fly in wild California GOP election fight

Shasta County, California has long been a hotbed for far-right Republican politics -- but it seems that even many voters in this deep-red county are getting fed up with local officials who have been running on denying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Shasta County voters chose to oust gun store owner Patrick Jones from the local Board of Supervisors after he spearheaded a campaign to remove Dominion Voting Systems machines and relentlessly promoted false claims about Trump's loss in the 2020 race.

And Jones wasn't the only hardcore election-denying Republican facing a tough election cycle, as his ally, Supervisor Kevin Crye, is currently winning his race by less than four dozen votes.

Added to this, voting totals show Allen Long, a retired Redding police lieutenant, with a significant lead over Laura Hobbs, a candidate who describes herself as "100% MAGA and America First."

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Long tells the LA Times that he was motivated to run for the board because he thought local officials had become too extreme, particularly in their embrace of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's conspiracy theories about voting machines.

"I was watching the politics here in our county, and I thought, ‘Wow, this has really become extreme,’” he said. “I wanted to guide us back to the middle.”

As if to illustrate Long's point about extremism, the LA Times report notes that Hobbs, his opponent, labeled Shasta County Republican Supervisor Mary Rickert a Satan worshipper because her car's license plate happens to have the number "666" on it.