The Campaign Mailer The distorted, close-up photo of the candidate’s face shows red letters: Vote for someone other than Natalie.
She is called Natalie Adona, an Asian American Running for office in a predominantly white, rural Northern California county, “a carpetbagger.”
Postcards sent last month – which provoked outrage from some residents and elected officials calling them racist – were part of a vicious campaign for a one-time secular, non-partisan status: clerk-recorder and voter registrar for Nevada County. .
Adona’s sins, in the eyes of her critics: she legitimized the 2020 election, and she enforced the mask mandate at the county office.
Adona, assistant clerk-recorder / registrar, is running to replace her boss, Gregory Diaz, who is retiring.
Polling workers separate mail-in ballots from envelopes Monday at the Eric Rudd Administration Center in Nevada, California.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“Who uses the word ‘carpetbagger’?” Adona said. “The civil war wants its humiliation back.”
He added, “There seems to be a fear that the good old days are disappearing. And the feeling, ‘We need to get that back’ – I’m just on their way.
The election in Sierra Nevada County, home to 103,000 people, has become the epitome of intrigue and bitter partisan politics, with Americans – many angry over epidemic policies and culture-war issues such as critical race theory – going to the polls. This is the middle year.
Nevada County cuts through Tahoe National Forest and includes Grass Valley, Trucky, and the old mining town of Rough and Ready. Unlike most rural Northern California, this is not exactly a Republican stronghold, with Donald Trump, 56% to 41%, supporting Joe Biden, and voting against the recall of Governor Gavin News last year.
But Trump’s lies about the rigging of the 2020 presidential election are too big for many, with the number of votes and the distrust of election activists motivating him to run in such small local races.
Paul Gilbert, one of Adona’s opponents in the 7th primary, is a self-described “citizen auditor” who personally monitored the local 2020 election results. He says he found late, outdated voter registration and evidence of fraud – the county denies.
Gilbert, a retired information technology engineer, says voting by mail is fraudulent.
Paul Gilbert, left, candidate for Nevada County Clerk-Recorder and Voter Registrar, Eric Rudd awaits voting Monday at the Administration Center.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
He also believes that election officials should have the right to open and inspect voting machines because they can have, among other things, hidden cellphone modems inside that collect information for bad actors.
“There’s a lack of proper diligence,” Gilbert said. “It boils.”
Gilbert said he had nothing to do with Mailer insulting Adona and called it a “hit piece”. But he said Flyer – who accused him of bringing Beltway politics to the county where he is a relatively newcomer – raised “valid questions.”
Another candidate, Jason Tedder, a naval veteran approved by the local Republican Party, did not respond to a request for comment.
Adona’s critics have tried to portray her as an out-of-town interviewer who should be a good person.
Adona, a native of Vallejo, California, with 14 years of electoral experience, was working for the Democracy Fund in Washington, D.C., a non-partisan foundation aimed at strengthening the election, when the job of Nevada County Assistant Clerk-Recorder / Registrar opened. In 2019.
After spending many years in Washington, she was eager to go home to California and do the election work she felt, she said.
Campaign Mailer called her a “Washington, DC outsider – and a newcomer to the county.”
Nevada County Supervisor Heidi Hall said she was surprised by the flyer.
“They will say it’s not racist, that they don’t like him,” she said. “But it’s racist.”
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Vitriol is up in arms over the county registrar’s election as far-right activists and financiers in conservative parts of rural Northern California try to wrest control of the local government from the Republican establishment – and take his playbook as a national model.
In February, Shasta County voters stunned Californians by claiming that the Republican county observer – a former police chief – was not conservative enough.
Supporters of the memorial included separatist and militia members, anti-mask parents. They say they consulted with Nevada County activists who later tried to recall all five of their observers for “crimes against humanity” and the imposition of epidemic sanctions.
In January, Adona, who had just announced her candidacy, was working at the Nevada City County Electoral Office when a group of recall supporters appeared to check the status of her application to force a special election.
Natalie Adona is running for Nevada County Clerk-Recorder and Voter Registrar. He has been targeted by election mailers, some calling him a racist.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
A statewide indoor mask mandate was effective because the Winter COVID-19 increased fuel by the Omicron version. But recall supporters refused to cover their faces.
A woman pushed a county employee as she and two others forced their way into a locked polling station. A judge later issued a restraining order against him.
Attempts to recall failed last week when supporters missed the deadline to file signatures for their petition. In a statement provided to news website YubaNet.com, supporters said they would drop their efforts to help Gilbert get elected.
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Gilbert, who spends his days in his vegetable garden, said he doubts the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Trump, he said, had large crowds of supporters, and Biden appeared to have received only “dozens” at campaign stops, indicating that he had little support.
Biden organized small, social distance campaigns during the first year of the epidemic and criticized Trump – who reduced the threat of coronavirus – to his rallies.
Still, Gilbert’s skepticism led him to start a business called Citizen Auditors in Nevada County last year and to look into fraudulent local voter lists and election results.
Adona, he said, did not take him seriously. He was insulted.
Paul Gilbert, a self-titled citizen auditor, is running against Natalie Adona for the Nevada County Clerk-Recorder.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I said, ‘I have to run. I’m going to defend myself. I’m not scared. I’m not a scam.’
In an interview with The Times, Gilbert – who says he won’t wear a mask because he doesn’t want to be part of a “medical experiment” – was met by a reporter at the Grass Valley Wellness Center, which sells medical supplements. There were hundreds of local level issues inside Newspaper called Covid Times.
In the most recent edition, the banner headline on the front page read: “Vote for Natalie Adona.”
Dan McKenzie, who works at the Wellness Center, said he distributes free newspapers, which include a lengthy article recently published by Gilbert about his election audit and a documentary promoting MyPillow chief executive and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.
“We’re not rednecks,” McKenzie said. “We are conservative people who want honest voting. We want honest machines. We want honest software.”
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After the 2020 election, a large number of election workers are leaving the country, facing constant harassment and intimidation.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice formed a task force to prosecute those who threatened election workers. California lawmakers are considering legislation that would treat polling workers as victims of domestic violence, keeping their home addresses hidden from public records.
“There are death threats, there are threats and physical threats, there are threats in election offices and sometimes at election officials’ homes,” said David Baker, a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer who heads the Center for Electoral Inventions and Research. . “And it’s ramping up.”
The growing harassment is “a direct result of the Trump election,” he said, adding that “there is an entire industry that is built to convince people who have sincerely supported the former president that he has not lost, when, in fact, he lost badly.”
He said, “Those who do not vote are being attracted to rural areas, running for office with limited resources.”
In Nevada County, Adona included a flyer called “Carpetbagger.” A tweet She wrote in September that Biden had confirmed his victory in the presidential election after a recount of Arizona ballots.
“I wonder how many people will call my office tomorrow for a forensic audit. Such a waste of time, but I’m happy for the end,” he tweeted, along with three wine glass emojis.
The election mailer was sent last month by a grassroots group called Americans for Good Government, whose website is entirely dedicated to trying to discredit Adona.
State records show that one of the few donations the group received was a महिना 999 contribution last month from Robert Horn, chairman of the Nevada County Republican Party.
Hren did not respond to a request for comment.
The group also received 2,000 from attorney Barry Pruitt, representing unmasked recall supporters who had been forced into the election office.
Pruitt – who ran unsuccessfully for clerk-recorder in 2010 – accepted his donation to the Americans for good government and said he knew the flyer was made. He asserted that his confession had been obtained through torture, and that his confession had been obtained through torture.
He says he thinks Adona is trying to create “a story” that election activists are being harassed, and he thinks “it’s bullshit.”
When asked about the allegation that the flyer is racist, Pruitt laughed.
“Everything is racist these days,” he said. “She is from DC, the Democracy Fund. It does not belong to this community.”
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At the county election office on Sunday, two days before the primary, a handful of staff sorted and processed mail-in ballots.
They were sitting in front of a large window set up about a month ago so that members of the public could see their work from the hallway. They also have four live streaming cameras in their office that anyone can watch online.
People complain about the lack of transparency, Adona said. But few actually come to see it.
Adona said that since she ran, she has not and will not process ballots and will not be in the tabulation room on election night.
“If I win, I’m a little worried about the well-being of my staff,” she admitted. “Because these people can only say that I betrayed them.
“And even if the truth is on my side – what we’ve learned since 2020: there is a difference between truth and perception.”
Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.