05-08-2025
Once targeted over Trump shoutout in 2016, Gregory Cheadle plans Redding return
Five years after making his fifth California Congressional District 1 election bid, a Redding politician and real estate broker plans to return to Shasta County in a few months, doctorate in hand.
Gregory Cheadle said he's still devoted to public service — the impetus behind him going back to school — and is using those failed election runs to foster personal growth.
"I didn't earn a PhD to sit in an ivory tower somewhere," said Cheadle, 68, who graduated in June from Loma Linda University with a doctorate in social welfare. 'My time away (from Redding) wasn't an escape … it was preparation" for public service.
Cheadle went from long-shot Republican politician to a national pariah after President Donald Trump singled him out as one of his supporters during a 2016 campaign stop.
That notoriety that followed and six lost elections hasn't dampened Cheadle's optimism or appreciation for the Redding community. His home is here, he said, and he wants to return.
'Sometimes it takes leaving and returning ... to truly appreciate where you're meant to be."
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He said he's not sure if he wants to run for local office again or serve his community some other way when he arrives home in Redding, likely around the holidays: "I just have to find out where I fit."
That said, he does think Shasta County's political arena could use an overhaul.
"The county's grassroots leaders fight culture wars, and dispute election denial and conspiracy theories instead of economic development and infrastructure," Cheadle said.
Events that shaped Cheadle's life
Cheadle's credits two childhood experiences for his passion for public service and his ability to bounce back from defeat.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1956, Cheadle spent his early years in Oakland with his mother. When he was 8, his father took him from his mother and back to Cleveland, 'a traumatic experience that taught me early about resilience,' Cheadle said.
It was a pivotal time for the nation and for Cheadle.
He recalled during his childhood seeing military tanks rumbling through the streets during political unrest that marked the 1960s. He clearly remembers meeting the man whose election helped deescalate the violence. It was Cleveland's first Black mayor, Carl Stokes.
'He came walking down the street. He shook my hand. I was on cloud nine," Cheadle said.
Cheadle said meeting Stokes taught him celebrities were real people making a difference in their communities and that he could make a difference, too.
After graduating from high school in 1975, Cheadle spent the next decade earning his bachelor's and master's degrees at Cal State Hayward. He also received his real estate license, but soon discovered no broker would hire a Black person to sell real estate in the mostly white suburbs of Contra Costa County, he said.
By then married and helping support a family, Cheadle drew on his learned resilience. Real estate agents had to work under a broker, so Cheadle got his broker's license in 1988 and became his own boss, he said.
After more than a decade selling real estate, the father of three moved his family to Redding in 2000 to give them a better quality of life than he could afford in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was in Redding he discovered his "calling in public service," he said.
At first he planned to go into criminal defense. He earned his law degree in 2012 at Cal Northern in Chico, but was one of the 70% of aspiring lawyers who didn't pass the California bar, he said.
So Cheadle pivoted to public service through politics. He first threw his hat in the North State's District 1 Congressional ring in 2012, repeating the bid in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 — each time attempting to challenge GOP incumbent Doug LaMalfa.
Through 2018, he said he was running as 'an 1856 Republican," the party of Abraham Lincoln, but even in the conservative district he never made it past the primaries against the heavily favored LaMalfa.
Cheadle faces backlash after Trump shoutout
Bent on making a difference in a county where 80% of the population identified as white and less than 1% as Black, Cheadle said he resolved not to let other people's attitudes about race be his problem.
That became impossible when on June 3, 2016, Cheadle — then on his third congressional bid — went to hear then-presidential candidate Donald Trump speak at Redding Regional Airport.
When Trump mentioned an 'African American guy who was a fan of mine,' Cheadle told the Record Searchlight, he was just having a bit of fun when he tried to get Trump's attention.
'Look at my African American over here. Look at him. Are you the greatest? You know what I'm talking about? OK,' Trump said in Cheadle's direction.
Cheadle appeared on national news saying he couldn't find offense in someone calling him "the greatest," but others did. He stopped campaigning and retreated to his home to ride out a wave of angry phone calls and Facebook messages. By then divorced, the backlash cost him friends and made him feel unsafe going out, he said.
The only time Cheadle said he voted for Trump was in the 2016 general election.
Cheadle reemerged in 2018 to run for Congress as a Republican, but by 2020 he'd redefined himself as a political Independent.
Leaving the Republican Party wasn't waffling, it was "the result of following my conscience," he said. "I watched Republicans weaponize patriotism against a Black man (Colin Kaepernick) peacefully protesting police brutality."
Cheadle came under fire again after he defended Kaepernick's decision to kneel, this time from Republicans. 'The venom directed at me was a revelation," he said. "This wasn't the party of Lincoln (who) died alongside enslaved people."
But Cheadle faced a conundrum. Running as a Republican gave him an audience unwilling to support racial justice, he said, while running as an Independent meant he kept his principles, but few supporters.
So, he reinvented himself again.
While a doctoral student at Loma Linda, Cheadle ran for Congressional District 43 in 2024, this time as a Democrat against Democratic incumbent Maxine Waters of Southern California. While Waters won handily, Cheadle placed a distant fifth out of the five candidates in the primary, but said he again learned from the experience.
While not a perfect fit, the Democratic Party shares his views on racial equality, while Republicans are caught in a double standard. For example, the GOP considers Black unemployment numbers that are double white unemployment numbers to be the norm, Cheadle said: 'If those numbers were reversed, they'd declare a national emergency."
When he gets back to Redding around Christmas, Cheadle — who penned the pro-vegan book 'Milk Madness,' published in 2022 — plans to finish writing three other books he has in the works, he said. One is about the 2016 Trump rally in Redding and the fallout afterward.
Jessica Skropanic is a features reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. She covers science, arts, social issues and news stories. Follow her on Twitter @RS_JSkropanic and on Facebook. Join Jessica in the Get Out! Nor Cal recreation Facebook group. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Gregory Cheadle, who left Republican Party, returning to Shasta County
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