a day ago
Trump-inspired showmen are running this California county. Will it work on the state stage?
Bianco is a vocal supporter of Trump who regularly mirrors the president's rhetoric as he lays into Democrats on crime, immigration, high taxes and affordability. In the past, he said he would not enforce state vaccine mandates, promised to end sanctuary laws, and was once a dues paying member of the Oath Keepers, an extremist militia. When he endorsed Trump in 2024, he released a tongue-in-cheek video proclaiming 'It's time we put a felon in the White House. Trump 2024, baby.'
Shaw, meanwhile, led a successful effort in 2023 to bar teachers from displaying the Pride flag at Chino Valley Unified schools. That same year, she promoted a local policy requiring schools to inform parents if their child might be transgender, prompting the state to quickly sue the school district (last year, a court permanently blocked the policy). A Los Angeles Times profile of Shaw observed that depending on who you ask, she is a 'righteous mother' or 'a small-town bigot, basking in the celebrity she's attained as a mouthpiece for Christian evangelicals.'
'I think they're coming out fighting and swinging because people want to see results,' Ingram said. 'I don't know there is a center anymore when it comes to politics.'
For Democrats, that's a major problem. The party had expanded its ranks in the county by promoting a more moderate brand of center-left politics. But cost of living and other economic concerns are especially pronounced here. Longer commutes and lower wages mean economic issues resonate. Many residents who drive to Los Angeles for work spend hours each day on the highway to avoid paying for the toll road. Traffic grows worse by the year.
And while the county's ever-more diverse suburbs had propelled Democrats to past victories, Bianco, Essayli, and Shaw's wins in the half-decade leading up to 2024 were precursors to an election in which Republicans were able to capitalize on lower turnout and peel off voters who trusted the GOP more on core issues like public safety and the economy, said Democratic political consultant Derek Humphrey.
That migration, in swing states, was vital in delivering Trump the presidency and could reshape politics around the country — if it persists.
'There's certainly concern,' Humphrey said. 'The big question is: Was this a temporary shift? Or was it part of a long-term trend?'
In Norco, the traditional values of the Old West are (literally) embedded into the structure of the 25,000-person town. Gravel horse trails, groomed near-daily by city maintenance workers, lead to the piled haystacks at Tony's Hay and Grain beside Norco's Christian Community Church. On Corona Street, a series of corrals line the block, the mares inside watched over by an ironwork silhouette of two riders heading for a desert cross. New construction, by law, is required to look 'Western' — a regulation taken so literally that the City Council once rejected the domed architecture of a planned Hindu temple for not fitting a 'western aesthetic.'
