The last time rural Inyo County supported a Democratic presidential candidate was in 1964, when voters chose Lyndon B. Johnson.

But in 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. 14 votes difference.

This election has quietly become one of the most dramatic red-to-blue flips in the country, considering President Trump carried Inyo County by 13 percentage points four years ago.

California is almost certain to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump, but once deep red Inyo County (home to about 19,000 people between the Eastern Sierra and Nevada border) is in contention. There’s room.

Unlike other predominantly Republican areas, Inyo County’s mountain and desert towns are attractive to “rednecks and hippies,” gun-toting hunters and backpacking environmentalists. , is “rather an outlier,” said project director Kim Nalder. Informed Voters in Sacramento State.

“Right now, our politics are very divided, but I have a little bit of hope that by interacting with each other as human beings, this situation will one day be overcome,” said many in Inyo County. said Nalder, a former wildland firefighter who has spent time there. “I think the best opportunities for that kind of future healing are in small towns where there’s no way to avoid people coming from the other side.”

Sadly, Inyo County’s purple color means politically inclined people who have become more vocal and more suspicious of their neighbors, whether they’re super MAGA or non-Trump supporters. It is unpleasant for some people.

And nearly all blame the change on newcomers: remote workers and what one Democrat called “the incursion of Los Angeles Sprinter vans.” The newcomers fled expensive, locked-down cities to the Eastern Sierra during the pandemic and never left.

(People in the city left so much trash and feces in the forest that local residents distributed stickers urging proper camping etiquette. Some of them read, with a smile on their faces, “Load your stuff! Care about where you’re going.” It also included a sticker with a poop on it that read “I’m wearing it!”

Lynette McIntosh (right) speaks with others who attended the Bishop City Council candidate forum on Oct. 2, 2024.

Lynette McIntosh, who describes herself as “very, very MAGA” and has lived in Bishop, the county’s largest town, population 3,800, for nearly 50 years, has a bleak view of the influx.

She cited a coordinated effort by well-connected progressive groups like the Sierra Club to infiltrate and divide small conservative communities across the country, take over school boards and city councils, and turn residents against Trump. I believe there was.

Another sign of disagreement here is that Macintosh charged it Newly released artwork depicted the horned demon god Baphomet. Local artists say it’s just a fanciful combination of images of the Pride flag’s rainbow-winged animals, including bears and bighorn sheep.

A controversial mural at the C5 Studio Community Arts Center in Bishop, California.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

“We are a truly conservative community, but the left, the radicals, have swept in en masse. radical” said McIntosh, a 73-year-old Presbyterian elder who likes glittery ball caps studded with stars and drives his car with a “Trump” bumper sticker.

McIntosh was happy to credit Trump with the reversal of Roe v. Wade, saying Trump is “called by God” to lead the country.

Fellow Episcopal resident Fran Hunt also mentioned God when asked what she thought about Trump. “Oh my god,” she said, burying her face in her hands and shaking her head.

Like McIntosh, Hunt, 65, is a grassroots political activist who still attends public meetings and protests wearing a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and who has been part of the Trump-era mask and vaccine mandates. Macintosh, who protested against the change, turned a blind eye.

Mr. Hunt is a proud Democrat and is indeed retired from the Sierra Club. She helped organize Inyo350, a branch of the international activist group 350.org, which focuses on environmental and social justice issues.

Hunt and his wife, the daughter of tungsten miners who grew up in Bishop, moved here from Washington, D.C., in 2014 to be closer to family. She’s terrified of the possibility of another Trump presidency.

“He is threatening a dictatorship,” she said. “He’s threatening to prosecute his opponents. Mass deportations. He threatens to wreak havoc in a country full of guns. Where does my list of worries end?”

Hunt is encouraged by Inyo County’s recent liberal trends. But the sad thing is, “We may be more blue, or more purple, but we’re more divided,” she says.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power owns large tracts of land in the Owens Valley, some of which it leases to ranchers and businesses.

Politics in Inyo County, which is roughly the size of Massachusetts, has long been colored by residents’ distrust and resentment toward liberal metropolises like Los Angeles, where the Department of Water and Power owns much of the land. County land.

This is still a place where people brag about their then governor. The existence of Ronald Reagan Grand Marshal A scene from the 1974 Mule Day Parade.

When Trump ran in 2016, just over 41% of registered voters in Inyo County were Republicans. 10 point advantage than the Democratic Party.

A sign in the yard of a home on Elm Street in Bishop, California.

this year? Republicans hold 4% Benefits of registration.

There is almost no doubt that the newcomers are making an impact.

In 2020, when the county turned purple, 10% of registered voters moved to Inyo County from another California county since 2016, according to an analysis of The Times’ voter registration data by Eric McGee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute. had immigrated. of california.

Statewide, only 5% of registered voters in 2020 moved from another county since 2016.

In Inyo County, about 34% of new residents came from Los Angeles or Orange counties, according to the data. 11% were from the Bay Area. Most were Democrats and independents.

The only other county in California invert blue After voting for Trump in 2016, Butte County was mostly rural, but it experienced mass displacement after the deadly Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018.

Inyo County Republican Central Committee Chairman David Blacker said local conservatives were “duped into a false sense of security” in 2020 and were surprised by the political reversal.

This month, a pro-Trump flag is being flown next to the American flag in Bishop, California.

He said Republicans continue to win down-ballot votes here, with Inyo County voters favoring Republican Sen. Brian Dahl over Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2022 Inyo County gubernatorial race. he pointed out.

Blacker, who lives and works in Death Valley National Park, said the economy is the No. 1 concern for voters in Inyo County, which relies on the economic ability of tourists to vacation on public lands. He said inflation in the Biden era has been terrible.

“Everyone I talk to right now is saying that mean tweets and a vibrant economy are better than continuing to do things the way we are,” Blacker said.

He said Trump is appealing here because Democrats in Washington and Sacramento “don’t understand rural communities” and prioritize things like electric vehicles. Electric cars don’t work well in remote areas where there are few charging stations. (He said he has to drive at least an hour to the grocery store and has to cross the Nevada state line to buy cheap gas.

Emily Lanphier, vice chair of the local Republican Party Central Committee, set up a booth at the county fairgrounds last month, displaying a giant, bloodied President Trump with his fist raised after an assassination attempt in July. He held up a photo. She said she was pleasantly surprised by the number of children and teens who came to ask questions and pose with cardboard cutouts of the former president.

“They think he’s a really bad guy,” she said.

Lanphear, who has lived in Owens Valley for 21 years and is the wife of a law enforcement officer, said the growing political divide in the county makes many people uncomfortable about displaying Trump signs and flags. He said he is doing so.

Mayor Jose Garcia poses next to a mural on Main Street. He said the small city has too many important issues, including housing, to focus on, and should not be divided by national politics.

After the 2016 election of President Trump, marches were organized for liberal causes.

“Suddenly we started seeing women’s rights protests, anti-Trump protests, pro-immigration open border protests,” she said, adding, “Locals were like, ‘What’s going on? ‘What?’,” he added. That creates division. ”

Even before the pandemic-era newcomers moved in, local progressives were becoming more visible, stunned by President Trump’s 2016 victory. They reactivated the Inyo County Democratic Central Committee, which had been inactive. they organized women’s march And Black Lives Matter protests At Bishop.

In 2018, progressives supported the election of Stephen Muchovage, the first openly gay member of the Bishop City Council, who entered politics because he believed President Trump was stirring up anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. said.

Muchovezi, a 44-year-old Brazilian immigrant and astrophysicist, moved from New York City around 2007 to work at the Owens Valley Radio Astronomy Observatory near Big Pine.

Around the time of Trump’s election, Muchovezi and her husband were walking their dog (a black research dog they nicknamed Prince Valium because it was “too cold”) in a public field when members of a nearby church called police. He said he reported it. They claimed that their dog was running wild and scaring the children.

Muchovezi said there were no children around at the time and believes the real problem was “walking while gay.”

Muchovezi defeated his previous incumbent in his first city council election. bishop police chief. He ran for re-election in 2022. not opposed.

“Many people – closet liberals – are realizing that they are not in the minority and that conservatives across the country have moved too far to the right. [liberals are] “I don’t want to sit in the shade anymore,” he said.

In fact, in 2022, the region’s increasingly high-profile local LGBTQ+ community will host the first-ever Eastern Eastern Festival with an all-ages drag show, over the objections of religious conservatives who have vowed to “bring back the rainbow.” -Held Sierra Pride.

Deena Davenport Conway at an upscale salon on Main Street in Bishop.

Deena Davenport-Conway, one of the event’s founders, married her wife at San Francisco City Hall in 2013. That was the year that the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for same-sex marriage to resume in California after Harris became state attorney general. refused to defend Proposition 8, a state ballot initiative that bans same-sex marriage.

Davenport Conway, 58, worries that President Trump will roll back hard-won rights for women and LGBTQ+ people.

But from her hair salon on Bishop’s Main Street, she tries to remain optimistic about the county’s political divide. Since moving to Inyo County in 2016, she has made many conservative friends and neighbors. They accepted her, and her, and them.

“Compromise requires great skill,” she says. “I hope our country can get back to that. The Owens Valley, and especially Inyo County, is a perfect cross-section of America.”

Mayor Jose Garcia, a medical interpreter and former dentist from Mexico City who moved here In 1989, he said he found kindness and grace in Inyo County that transcended partisan rivalry.

“We have less than 4,000 people. Will politics divide us? No,” he said.

Garcia, who was elected in 2020 and is seeking re-election, said last month that substantive interview In the podcast “Butthurt Owens Valley,” the name comes from the Red Facebook group where locals gossip and complain.

He read out loud recent comments on his Facebook page. “Democrats stay off my property!!!” And Mr. Garcia, you don’t have my vote!!!”

It made him laugh.