A Tale of Two Cities

In "Bedrock, USA" Bloomberg CityLab investigates how the far right is making inroads into local government, and profiles the people fighting back. Reporter Laura Bliss introduces us to Sequim, Washington and Shasta County, California.

In Sequim, the QAnon-boosting Mayor William Armacost forces his city manager to resign, just days after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol shocking residents. Meanwhile in Shasta County, California, right-wing activists accuse local leaders of too many rules around the Covid-19 pandemic. One of them threatens “blood on the streets.” But the county had barely enforced Covid mandates at all. So why are people so angry?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay. Election date June seventh, official ballot. Let's go, baby.

(00:08):
I'm sitting in my kitchen in San Francisco about to
cast my vote. You've got my official instructions with my
eye voted sticker, vote by mail steps, use pencil or
penh it, I just did it wrong. I just filled

(00:30):
it out wrong, kind of find the instructions. God, Okay,
I don't know what to do, so let me find
the number. There's got to be one on your somewhere.
There it is. I call up the hot wine and
an election worker answers right away. Hi, I'm a San
Francisco voter. I was wondering what do I do if

(00:51):
I checked the wrong or I filled out the wrong
bubble on my ballot, like I made a selection that
I didn't really want to make. The person on the
other end of the line has heard my problem before.
He tells me all I need to do is put
an X through the circle I marked incorrectly, then fill
in my new selection. He assures me my ballot will

(01:12):
still be counted. Okay, thank you. I follow his instructions
and I take my ballot to the mailbox down the street.
Here goes I voted feels good, feels good to have
that done, and it strikes me just how human the

(01:39):
voting processes. At the end of the day, Our whole
democracy runs on trust between people, actual people, people casting ballots,
people working in polling stations, people in elected office. We
put faith in each other because that's what makes the
system work. But lee that system feels vulnerable. Our democracy

(02:04):
has never been perfect, but right now it feels like
it's falling apart, like people are losing their faith. I
have faith that my balance is going to be counted,
that the mistake I made while filling it out isn't
going to be a problem. The election workers said so,

(02:25):
and I trust him. But there are others who have
lost their faith in our democracy, who absolutely believe the
system is not to be trusted. And it's most apparent
on the right. I'm a reporter at Bloomberg City Lab
covering cities and local government. I saw that right wing

(02:45):
loss of faith take shape in the Stop the Steel
rallies right after election. I watched it happen on January six,
when Trump supporters stormed the capital to protest the results.
I've reported on queuing on conspiracy cists, explosive school board
meetings and county recall elections that make the streaming matches

(03:06):
on reality TV sound time. It's a real break from
what covering local government was like even a few years ago,
and it feels like the beginning of a historic shift.
Conspiracy theories and far ideologies that used to be fringe
are moving to the front and center of politics, and

(03:28):
that's shaking the foundation of our democracy at every level
of government. What you're about to hear is the story
of two communities. We'll start in a small town in
Washington State called squim Or, the local mayor revealed his
passion for Q and on on live radio and triggered
a political awakening in the name of good governance. And

(03:51):
then we'll go to Shasta County, California, where a group
of far right activists tried to recall their local Republican
leaders for not be radical enough. I'm fascinated by what's
happening at the local level because that's where the stories
are most human and where votes hit closest to home.

(04:12):
To be anti government in a small town can mean
going against your own neighbor to promote Q and on
instead of an issue like affordable housing or safer streets
is to miss the point of local government. That local
level is the bedrock of democracy, and I've learned it's

(04:33):
shockingly easy to chip away at it. So how does
it get broken? And how are people trying to fix it?
The answers I found were an eye opening ride, and
I'm here to tell you about it. Welcome to Bedrock USA,
a production of Bloomberg City Lab and I Heart Radio,

(04:54):
a podcast about political extremism, small town life, and the
fight for democracy. I'm your host, Laura Bliss. Let's begin
our tale of two cities in Squim, a rural town
in Washington State at the top of the Olympic Peninsula,
a few hours from Seattle. Squim is generally pretty sleepy place,

(05:15):
but in early it was shaken like an aftershock from
January six. Let me play you a bit of tape. Yeah. Hello,
my name is Josh. I live in Squim. I would
request that Mayor Armacrost denounce q and On for all
the reasons the Breathus collogist said. And I'm hoping that

(05:38):
our mayor is not too deeply in mention in this
terrorist organization that it is dangerous for him to denounce it,
in which case, don't denounce it. Keep yourself safe. I
don't want to think bad to happen to him, but
at the very least for the rest of this month,
if you could promise not to commit any accidents, direction
would be great. Uh. Just as a citizen of Squim,

(05:59):
I don't like to be represented by terrorists. Yep, you
heard that right. It sounds like satire. But the guy
you just heard, a local dog walker whose name was
Josh Sutcliffe, he was dead serious. He just asked his
town's mayor to denounce Q and on, Q and on.
That's the utterly baseless, varright conspiracy theory that a Satan

(06:23):
worshiping cabal of pedophiles runs the US government and can
only be stopped by Donald Trump, and the mayor of
Squim had openly embraced this idea. Let me fill you
in with some context. The mayor of Squim was William Armacost,
a man in his sixties with a thick, blonde mustache.
In addition to his official duties, Arma Coost is the

(06:46):
owner and stylist at a local hair salon called Changes.
Before that, he downed a glamour studio in New York
City and was even a spokesperson for Revlon. According to
a candidate statement, he wasn't all known and when he
ran unopposed for Swim City Council in twenty nineteen, nor
when he was appointed mayor by his colleagues, and Swim

(07:08):
City Council positions, including mayor, are supposed to be nonpartisan.
Here's armor Cost leading the meeting where Josh spoke up,
good evening and welcome to the Squim City Council meeting
of January eleven. The meeting was online via zoom. It
took place five days after Trump supporters stormed the capital.

(07:28):
For months, Mayor armor Cost had been brazenly open about
his support for Q and on his personal Facebook page
was stuffed with Q and on videos and right wing memes.
These posts were tagged with the impossibly long hashtag w
w G one w G a a Q and on
slogan that stands for where we go, One we go All.

(07:52):
The phrase is like a dog whistle away for fellow
Q and ON believers to find each other. In a
few months before this city council meeting, Armacrost had been
on a local radio show where he publicly described his beliefs.
Josh had actually called in to ask what the mayor
thought about the FBI labeling q and On a domestic

(08:15):
terror threat. Keep in mind, what Arma Cost is about
to say is thoroughly untrue. Do thanks for the question.
That's a great way you and On iss a trude
movement that encourages you to think for yourself. If you
remove cue from that equation. It's patriots from all over

(08:36):
the world iding for humanity, true freedom, and thinking children
and others from human traffics which sold can the people
and corruption of the last century, in hopes of leaving
a better future for our children and grandchildren. I want
to encourage you to search for Joe m on YouTube

(09:01):
and watch his video starting with to the Plan to
Save the World. I want you to really take in
what Arma Coost just said to fully appreciate why these
comments were so extremely out of line, especially for an
elected official. Q and On is a violent cult linked

(09:22):
to multiple murders, including the deaths of children. The theories
that propagates are a tangle of lies and scapegoats. Yet
Arma Cost, the elected leader of an American town of
seven thousand, was broadcasting his view as mayor that q
and On saved children that it fought evil and that

(09:44):
it promised to make the world a better place. Since
Arma cost declined multiple requests for an interview, I never
got a chance to ask him directly why he subscribed
to the spaceless theory. The problem is, healthy democracy runs
on a share truths, not alternate realities. So back to

(10:05):
the Squim City Council meeting. The zoom that night had
six squares filled with other members of Squim City Council
peering into armacrosts where you can see the mayor was
wearing two pins on his jacket, one an American flag,
the other in the shape of a Punisher skull, a
Marvel superhero logo that had been adopted as a symbol

(10:26):
of Q and on. Hello, my name is Josh. But
as Josh made his surreal request for the mayor to
denounce Q and on, Armacrost just kind of rolled his eyes.
In the zoom recording, which I watched multiple times to
be sure of what I was seeing, the mayor raises
his middle finger for a split second to scratch the

(10:49):
corner of his eye. When Josh finishes talking, Armacost says nothing.
It was like Josh never said a thing. The mayor
moves on to the next agenda item without batting an eyelash.
I met Josh at his house and Squim more than
a year after he made a statement the city council.
He's wiry, thin with a runners build, and he lives

(11:12):
on a property with a big yard for his own dogs.
I asked him why he'd spoken up at this city
council meeting, and he told me, well, there were rioters
in Washington, d c. Wearing Queune on T shirts and
waving Queune on flags. Josh was worried about that violence
spreading in his own backyard, and he thought maybe he'd

(11:33):
help prevent it if he spoke up. I felt that
my responsibility as a citizen was to point it out
for the people who are on the sidelines, who are
having a hard time accepting this reality that there are
very destructive forces within our communities that wants to destroy everything.
There wasn't any violence at the Swim City Council meeting

(11:57):
in the end, but in Josh's eyes, there was distraction
because after a couple of hours of running the Mill
City Council stuff like community safety and traffic planning issues,
the mayor moved to the last item on the agenda,
which shook SQUIM to its core. At this executive session,

(12:17):
we discussed the city manager, Charlie Bush. As a result
of this discussion, I am prepared to make the following motion.
I move to direct the mayor to negotiate with the
city manager relating to his resignation. In case he didn't
catch that, Mayor Armacrost had just forced his city manager,
Charlie Bush, to resign. Charlie had been at the job

(12:41):
for six years. This was the person who was more
or less responsible for keeping the town running. This seemed
to come out of nowhere and equally surprising. The move
past with the majority of votes, and no explanation was
ever given for why Charlie Bush had to go other
than quote philosophical differences. Why that was such a shock

(13:04):
for this town after the break. In case you're not
a local government nerd like I am, let me pull
back the curtain on what a city manager does. Besides

(13:24):
having a mayor, most cities have a top administrator who's
often far more involved in day to day management along
with their staff. They're the ones who make sure public
contracts get signed, trash gets picked up, and roads get paved.
So you can think of Charlie Bush a squim's version
of Chris Traeger and the TV show Parks and Recreation
who becomes the acting city manager of Pawnee, Indiana and

(13:48):
is above and beyond devoted to his work. It was
fantastic to be here, would you tell them? Like a tour?
There is quite literally nothing I would rather have in
the world than a tour of the Parks and Recreation
Department of the great City of Pawnee to give you
a taste of the real Charlie Bush. He helped pilot
a program and swim for cleaning up wheats that involved
a team of adorable goats dressed in purple capes. Their

(14:10):
name the swim Vegilantes. Thank you guys for stepping up
in the last minute the city with our Vegilante efforts.
And during the first year of COVID, Charlie Bush helps
small businesses apply for emergency grants using the city's Rainy
Day funds. That project actually won an award from the

(14:31):
Association of Washington Cities. And here's another thing you need
to know about Charlie. He and Mayor Armacrost had clashed
before after Armacost made his wild comments on the radio
the ones where he called q and On a truth movement.
Swim locals started to call on him to step down,

(14:52):
and Charlie Bush couldn't stand by and condone the mayor's
comments either, because, remember, the mayor of Swim is supposed
to be nonpartisan. In a small town, leaders are supposed
to be focused on practical, tangible things like making sure
the trash gets picked up and fixing potholes. Taking a

(15:12):
side on hot button political issues gets in the way
of that. So it does broadcasting your view of a
cult like conspiracy theory. So Charlie put out a statement.
It made the local news King five, an NBC affiliate.
It read, any responses to questions reflecting the personal opinion
of the mayor do not reflect policy positions of the
Squim City Council, and armor Cost added, well, I believe

(15:35):
that people should fight for truth and freedom. It was
inappropriate to respond to this question as mayor during a
program designed to talk about City of Squim issues. Notice
how Arma Coost didn't retract anything he said, He didn't
denounce his beliefs. So Charlie Bush's austair at the hands
of this q and On mayor was shocking. To locals,
and it sure looked like retaliation, but we don't know

(15:58):
for sure. When I spoke to Charlie Bush, he said
he couldn't talk about his termination because he had signed
an n d A, but he did say his time
and Swim was one of the highlights of his career.
I want to stress how alarming Charlie Bush's termination was
for a lot of locals because it left open the
question of who would run the government the functioning of

(16:20):
the town. With Charlie Bush gone, who was going to
replace him? Another quan unbeliever, someone who cared more about
ideology than actual local problems. A couple of weeks later,
at another council meeting, residents zoomed in to say how
outraged they were. My name is Nicole Hartman and I'm
a City of Swim resident. I failed to understand why

(16:42):
you would call for the resignation of a highly qualified
individual who has built relationships and brought Swim into a
strong position. Hello. My name is Harmony Rutter and I
am a concerned City of Swim resident. I am in
love with the beauty of the peninsula and the warmth
of this community. I am confident that this is be kind.
Is of the competent leadership of our wonderful city manager

(17:03):
Charlie Bush. Being asked to resign due to philosophical differences
with the mayor is aligning to me. Good evening. My
name is Brian Jackson. Tonight, I want to address my
concern for the council's action on Charlie Bush. So, Charlie
Bush's austa had big implications for the town and there
was no real clarity about why it had happened, but

(17:26):
a lot of residents believed it had to do with arma, costs,
politics and the way they were getting entangled in the
work of the city. Charlie Bush's termination brought home the
theater's many Americans were feeling in the wake of January
six fears about who or what was taking control of
the government of democracy, and it thrusts Swim into the

(17:48):
national spotlight. The small community of Swim, Washington, Question after question,
Q and on and the mayor are the talk of
the town. Mayor, excuse me, we you owe it to
the citizens of Squim. Residents fear that Squim population seven thousand,
maybe the first to have a Q and non conspiracy

(18:09):
theorist in power. I was one of the reporters who
jumped on the Squim story amid the media blitz. Arma
Coost actually denied that he'd ever publicly stated his support
for q and On, but again, he didn't denounce it either,
and Josh, the dog walker with a knack for public comment,
wasn't surprised by any of what had happened to him.

(18:32):
The mayor's actions were in line with what he'd seen
from Trump supporters in Washington, d C. I feel like
they kind of have a burn everything down policy, and uh,
I just felt like they would be willing to do
anything that would cause more chaos. But Josh wasn't the
only one worried about the future of Squim. And if
you're unhappy with your local democracy most of the time,

(18:53):
you need to do more than speak out. Here's what
prompted me to actually organize is because I felt so
much anger around me that I knew that if I
didn't or somebody didn't organize a healthy, positive flow of
energy to get that out, it could go the other way.

(19:16):
And I didn't want things to get any more uglier
in my community than they already had been. So I said,
let's hold a rally for Charlie. Let's talk about it
on a zoom call, and the rest is history. That
was Shena younger. I met her when I first started
reporting this story. Right after Charlie Bush was forced to resign,
Shena and her allies organized a grassroots movement to try

(19:39):
to kick out Armacosta's mayor and take back city council
in an upcoming election. And Squim is pretty politically purple,
so the battle lines weren't exactly Democrats for Republicans. Sina's
group was called the Squim Good Governance League. Fueled by
their fears for the future of Squim, they geared up
for a fight. I'm going to pause Squim story there.

(20:02):
Later in the series, we're going to come back to
it and show how the community came together across political
lines to push back against FARA ideologies. But I promised
you a tale of two cities, and while Swim shows
how people are fighting for democracy, Shasta County shows us
how fragile it is that's coming up after the break.

(20:29):
Over the past year, I've talked dozens of people in
both Squim and Shasta County. Militia members, citizen journalists, a
dog walker, a music producer, tribal leaders, angry parents. Their
politics were all over the spectrum, but they had one
thing in common. Almost everyone was outraged about what was

(20:49):
happening in their local government. The difference was what they
were outraged about and how they fought for change. So
let's meet Carlos Sapata, the owner of a bar in
Shasta County. Shasta is a deeply conservative pocket in liberal California,
a few hours north of Sacramento. Carlos is a local

(21:10):
militia member, and during the pandemic, especially towards the beginning,
he was outraged about mandates. I can't blame you for
wearing masks, because i'd behind my face too if I
was you. For what you're doing. This is absolutely horrendous
what you're doing these people. I'm a business owner, and uh,
I'll tell you our family's are starving. I went towards
for this country. I've seen it ugliest, dirtiest party humanity.

(21:33):
I've been in combat and I never want to go
back again. But I'm telling you what I will to
stay this country. That right now we're being peaceful, and
you better be happy that we're good citizens, that we're
peaceful citizens. But It's not gonna be peaceful much longer.
If I'm telling you that good citizens are gonna turn
into real concern and revolutionary citizens real soon. His voice
rattles me. To hear Carlos talk about going from a

(21:58):
good citizen to a evolutionary one. It's unsettling because that
sounds like a threat to me. When Carlos delivered this tirade,
he was standing at the podium before the Shasta County
Board of Supervisors in August. He had on a black
baseball hat and T shirt and was holding a pair

(22:20):
of sunglasses in one hand like he'd just come in
off the street. And his speech it went viral. It
struck a chord with people across the country who were
angry about COVID and the way it brought government into
their lives. It briefly made Carlos a right wing mini celebrity.
A few weeks later, he spoke to Alex Jones, the

(22:41):
far right radio host and anti government conspiracy theorist most
famous for calling the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax. Nobody
who wants to make a call for violence earlier than
than need beat. But I've said this over the last
seven months that there's come times within the last seven
months where we have been pushed to a point of violence.
You don't vote your way out of socialism. Once it

(23:03):
takes root. The only way to eradicate it is to
fight with arms, to have a violent, violent confrontation at
blood in the streets, and to say that but it's
a realityable we're at Alex Carlos's connection cuts out, but
he went on to explain that he didn't think the
normal ways of professing outrage, like protesting and voting, would

(23:24):
work anymore. He said, you fix that mechanism by by
violent overthrow. You fix it by storm and the chambers
and forcibly removing those people that are oppressing you. Carlos
sounds so steady, so smooth, almost like a politician, even
though he's talking about violence. And keep in mind this

(23:47):
was before January six. It makes me think of how
normalize this kind of rhetoric is becoming. Here's what's confusing
about Carlos's anger. Shasta County was barely enforcing California's covid roles.
Schools briefly closed and kids were asked to mask up
upon return, But Shasta wasn't finding businesses for staying open.

(24:12):
In a lot of places, it was like the pandemic
didn't exist. After all, Shasta County is a deep red
pocket in northern California, where the entire board of supervisors
was Republican. They had little interest in cracking down on
behalf of a liberal governor. A quick aside for a

(24:35):
Civics lesson. A county supervisor is a local legislator, someone
elected to pass laws and make policy at the county level.
They don't have control over what the state does. But
in Shasta County, the roots of anti government rage ran deep,
deep enough at the boring details of how the government

(24:55):
actually works didn't matter. Here's Leonard Moody, who was one
of county supervisors, talking about how the pandemic created an
opening for a right wing revolt. You're imposing rules across
the state and one size fits all, and I said,
counties are different. In My county is much more rural
and much more conservative. And they're going to say, why

(25:18):
are you putting the same rules on for Los Angeles
that has millions of people in Shasta County, that has
thousand people, that's pretty well spread out. And I said,
this is going to lead to anarchy. People are going
to revolt against this. People like Carlos, His words through
fuel on an already burning fire, both nationally and at home.

(25:42):
For months, angry Shasta residents had been showing up to
county meetings to register their frustration loudly. There was even
one lady with a bullhorn, and for another group, a
fringe fantasy of forming a separate government separate from the
state of California looked like it might be finally meeting

(26:03):
its moment. The pandemic brought these individuals together by inflaming
their mistrust and government, and by spring of that anger
had evolved into a full blown recall movement targeting Leonard
Moody the county. In a conservative northern California community, there

(26:31):
have been threats made against politicians, outrage over COVID vaccines
and mask mandates. All of that adds up to the
likely removal of a long time Republican county supervisor who
critics say is not Republican enough. Recall Shasta dropped off
what they say is over six thousand signatures to recall
Shasta County Supervisor Leonard Moody. What was happening in Shasta

(26:54):
was an extreme example of a movement taking hold in
many local governments, with right wing theory moving squarely into
the center of politics across the country. Officials were being
pushed out because they weren't quote conservative enough. Towns once
known for their lavender festivals were suddenly on national news

(27:15):
for having a Q and on mayor. School boards that
used to care about grades were suddenly obsessed with critical
race theory. For the next few episodes, we're going to
stay in Shasta County, where we'll meet the players trying
to remake their government in a far right image, not
just Carlos, but an alliance of characters, including a Christian

(27:39):
music producer, a group of secessionists, and the vengeful son
of a billionaire funding the movement. Because if January six
signaled a major rupture in the bedrock of our democracy,
Squim and Shasta are in some ways after shocks, but
they might also be or stories of a new layer

(28:01):
of history, one where the usual ways of resolving differences
are discarded and replaced with something more ideological, something more forcible,
more bloody, maybe even something people are willing to die for.
Sometimes I hear people ask are we heading towards civil war?

(28:23):
It's unsettling to imagine, but so was January six. I
had to know where these stories of outrage were pointing
us as a country, what they're revealing about, what's broken
and what's being built in place. It's time to restore
reasonable representative at accountable government in Shasta County for ourselves

(28:45):
and our future generations. All in favor of a recall,
say I that's next time on Bedrock USA. This episode
was reported and hosted by me Laura Bliss. Kathleen Quillian
is our senior producer. Samantha Story is our story editor

(29:07):
and executive producer. We had additional editing help from Nicole
Flato and Francesco Levie. Original music and scoring by Zachary Walter,
and audio engineering by Blake Naples. Jennifer Sandag is head
of Bloomberg City Lab. Bed Rock USA is a production
of Bloomberg City Lab and I Heart Radio. For more

(29:28):
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.