Super Tuesday was not so super in California. Of the 22 million registered voters around the state, only 4.5 million submitted a ballot, the lowest turnout since the 2004. California saw record turnout in 2008 when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled it out; HRC won CA’s primary but President Obama became the party’s nominee and defeated Senator John McCain in the general election.
Although the official results from Tuesday’s election have not been completed, one Southern California city, Huntington Beach, has now gone completely MAGAt because of low voter turnout. Only 22% of registered voters cast ballots Tuesday and 58% of those voters approved a controversial measure known as, Measure B. “Of the city’s nearly 138,000 registered voters, 53,894 are Republicans and 41,412 are Democrats. Nearly 28,000 are registered with no party preference.”
“Measure B prohibits the display of Pride, breast cancer awareness and religious flags, but it exempts city, county and state flags, as well as the U.S. and armed forces flags. Commemorative banners, like those for POW-MIAs or the Olympics also would be allowed in places like City Hall.”
“The Huntington Beach City Council is run by a hateful majority whose only interest is advancing an agenda of intolerance for minority communities, including LGBTQ+ individuals," said Peg Coley, the executive director of the LGBTQ Center Orange County. "The pendulum always swings back and history is the harshest judge, but informed votes are the very best prevention.”
To add some context about Huntington Beach: The city has long been associated with conservative beliefs but in the last few years, it’s gone full throttle MAGAt; while other parts of Orange County have flipped blue or turned purple because of changing demographics. However, in Huntington Beach, “white and Republicans still account for the plurality of Huntington Beach’s registered voters.”
During the pandemic, “fierce protests became common, with crowds clogging the pier and Pacific Coast Highway to shout down coronavirus precautions or cheer Trump. Some of the rallies were organized by white-supremacist groups and turned violent,” typical of TFG’s MAGAt base. “The most recent Orange County hate crimes report found a 126% increase in hate crimes against members of the LGBTQ community in 2022 over the previous year.”
Now that hard right, fascist MAGAts dominate Huntington Beach’s City Council and mayor’s office, they “voted to establish an advisory board that would review public library books for sexual content and decide whether they should be relocated from the children’s section to another part of the building. Last month, librarians began the recataloging process, which one described as arduous and confusing.”
“The fact we’re trying to limit what people will read is scary,” said Briana Lee, a senior at Huntington Beach High School who, like many of her friends, will soon move away from her conservative hometown for college. “I want to make the city a better place for the people who still have to live here.”
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark “championed the new policy and stressed that it is not ‘banning’ books from the library; rather, it moves them from the children’s section to upstairs, where members under the age of 18 would need a parent’s permission to check them out.”
