Rural California is divided, armed for revolt. What’s the matter in the State of Jefferson?

Carlos Zapata has a message for any government official who shows up at his Tehama County restaurant and tries to enforce California’s pandemic shutdown orders. “I’ve made it very clear that if they come to shut us down, I’m going to call 100,000 people that’ll be there with guns, and what happens happens, you know?” Zapata said Tuesday. “I’m hoping that they’re not stupid enough to want that kind of a fight over a restaurant being open, but if they want it, we’ll definitely give it to them.” It’s not the first time the Red Bluff restaurant owner and U.S. Marine combat veteran has made those kinds of threats. A few weeks ago, he told the Shasta County Board of Supervisors to expect trouble if they enforce Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 restrictions on local businesses. “Right now, we’re being peaceful,” he said in a short speech that has since made Zapata a celebrity among far-right groups. “But it’s not going to be peaceful much longer.” Just about anywhere else in California, that sort of talk would have been widely condemned. But here, in what’s arguably the capital of the State of Jefferson — a decades-old movement to break off conservative northern counties from Democrat-controlled California — many have shrugged Zapata off as commonplace. In Jefferson, the sweeping pandemic edicts out of Sacramento are the latest in a long line of grievances about California’s liberal policies, from new gas taxes, to minimum wage hikes, to environmental restrictions, to gun control. Indeed, the rebellious sentiment behind Zapata’s threats briefly carried its way to Shasta County’s elected leaders who considered this week rebelling against California on their own. Despite having one of the highest per-capita rates of COVID-19 infections in the state, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors spent the last several weeks hearing calls to ignore state public health orders that would force restaurants, gyms and other small businesses to stop serving customers indoors. As the country approaches a contentious election and the coronavirus shutdowns continue to hamstring the economy, the State of Jefferson may seem primed to explode. But how much of this revolutionary talk needs to be taken seriously? How much is over-hyped by outsiders? And how much of it just comes with the territory? This is a place that has long resented its stepchild status in California’s strongly Democratic household — a place where grousing about Big Government is as fundamental as buying a new gun or putting a campaign sign for a local Republican on your lawn?...MORE