This story was originally published by Shasta Scout.
Brian Stephenson is a fifth-generation cattle rancher, and his family’s property in BellaVista, California, was established in the mid-1800s after his ancestors immigrated from Germany. For the past year, an unlikely subject has been heavy on his mind: California’sProposition 50.
The measure, passed by voters last November, partitioned Shasta County and otherparts of the North State (rural and northernmost counties of California) from District 1, which was represented for years by Congressman Doug LaMalfa before his unexpected death in January of 2026. Under Prop. 50, the region now lies within the heavily Democratic District 2, a coastal region mostly populated by the cities just north of San Francisco.
At a time when Stephenson is encountering problems new to his family ranch, includingaffordability issues in the agricultural industry and the incursion of wolves into Shasta,he’s worried the concerns of the North State — which he trusted LaMalfa to understandand advocate for — will be significantly outweighed by those of the liberal, urban andaffluent North Bay.
“The biggest concern is we just become the kid in the back of the class nobody paysattention to,” he said, “and we don’t have a voice.”
With the midterm election just days away, Stephenson is one of many conservatives inthe North State fearing the impacts of a loss in congressional representation after thepassage of Prop. 50. Given the political demographics of the redistricted lines, District 2Representative Jared Huffman is all but certain to defeat opponent Robin Littau to represent parts of California’s far north, including Shasta County.
But not everyone is sure the impacts will be significant and widespread. ShastaSupervisor Matt Plummer, a Republican, said he thinks the impact of a change inrepresentation on the North State will be less dramatic than people think.
“Could the average Shasta County resident point to one thing that LaMalfa did thatspecifically helped Shasta County?” he asked. “Could they point to three? I think thatjust goes to show you that [there is] probably not going to be a huge impact.”
One thing is certain: Prop. 50’s redistricting shift will prove a historic moment for theNorth State, one that is just a piece of a nationwide conflict between the Democratic andRepublican parties.
What Is Prop. 50?
Geographically, the North State is defined by its vast forested, mountainous andagricultural land. Those who live there often identify strongly with the rural lifestyle, andthe area’s deeply conservative politics fuels resentment with the state of California andits major cities, driving secession movements like the State of Jefferson.
Before Prop. 50 was passed by voters last year, California redistricted using theindependent and nonpartisan Citizens Redistricting Commission. The proposition tookredistricting from the hands of the commission and placed it back with the CaliforniaState Legislature. It will sunset in a few years, when the commission resumes drawingmaps following the 2030 census.
President Donald Trump’s call for redistricting in Texas, an effort to garner moreRepublicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, led Gov. Gavin Newsom to launchProp. 50 to try to add more Democrats. In the North State, the measure redrewcongressional district lines to move Shasta, Modoc and Siskiyou counties from District 1to District 2, which also includes Del Norte, Humboldt, Marin, Mendocino, Sonoma andTrinity counties.
The majority of the North State voted against Prop. 50, but those votes held little weightcompared to the state’s urban population, as the measure passed by 64% across all ofCalifornia. In the new District 2, Democrats within the coastal counties largely outweighall of the registered voters in the North State.
Benjamin Schneer, an associate professor of public policy at the Harvard KennedySchool, researches political representation. He said he views Republicans acrossCalifornia, including those in the North State, as “collateral damage” from the nationalredistricting fight spurred by Texas legislators. He noted that what California, Texas andother states are doing is known as gerrymandering, which is when districts are drawn togive a political party or group a partisan advantage.
The maps show California’s District 2 before and after it was gerrymandered as a result of Prop. 50. (Photo courtesy of Ballotpedia)
Schneer said he expects Representative Huffman — if he wins — to face a major learning curve when it comes to representing the expanded region, which includes areas that arestarkly contrasting in geography, politics and lifestyle.
From Wolves to Healthcare: Where the North State’s Priorities Lie
Congressional representatives like Huffman play a variety of roles at both the regionaland federal levels. At the local level, one of their main responsibilities pertains to constituent services, where they assist residents in their district with federally connectedmatters like social services and immigration. Federally, they help shape national policiesand direct funding.
Mary Rickert, a Republican and former Shasta County supervisor, said she hopes thenew District 2 representative will focus on the wolf issue in the North State. She owns alarge cattle ranch in Siskiyou County that she said has lost at least 23 cattle to wolves inthe past four years, a major financial hit.
Aware that Huffman is likely to represent the North State, she said she’s already metwith him to start educating him and his team about top-of-mind issues in the region.When it comes to wolves, she hopes they can eventually be delisted from theirendangered species status federally and statewide.
“It’s really a helpless, hopeless feeling as we try to navigate this,” she said, referring tothe issue of cattle being killed by wolves in the North State.
Stephenson, the fifth-generation rancher, has similar ideas. He said he hopes his newrepresentative will help navigate uncertainty around what he can or can’t do if a wolfenters his property. He feels the government should consider adopting delisting zonesin California, something that’s been done in parts of Oregon. He also said he wantsroads in the North State to be improved and for the government to require country-of-origin labeling on beef.
Stephenson hopes Huffman will meet with the Shasta County Cattlemen’s Association,which he is the president of, along with other agricultural-focused groups to learn aboutand address their concerns.
“Shasta County’s had a long agricultural history,” he said, “and there’s people that wouldstill like to see it continue and not just get paved over.”
The North State is also facing major challenges when it comes to healthcare, which istop of mind for other community members as they consider congressionalrepresentation. Former Shasta Health and Human Services Agency Director DonnellEwert, who currently serves as a board director of The California Endowment, saidCongress should provide incentives for physicians to work in underserved communitieslike the North State, such as through a loan forgiveness program, to help addressphysician shortages.
“I hope people give him a chance,” Ewert said of Huffman. “Let’s try to engage with himabout the things that people up here care about before making a judgment aboutwhether he’s a good or bad representative.”
Shasta Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Kelstrom, who faces reelection in November,said he hopes the winning District 2 representative will focus on environmental issueshe cares deeply about, including safeguarding bodies of water created by aging damslike the Battle Creek Reservoir.
Kelstrom, a conservative figure in the community, thinks losing Republicanrepresentation will be detrimental to the North State. But he’s trying to stay optimisticabout the change in leadership and look for the possibilities even as he mourns theimpacts he sees as likely given the new district lines.
“People are going to realize that we really lost representation that we took for granted,didn’t even know we had,” he said of LaMalfa’s leadership. “We’ll see. [Huffman] couldprove me wrong.”
For much of the North State, LaMalfa’s most important asset seems to be how hephysically showed up and the identity he shared with many of the region’s residents.But LaMalfa also sponsored three federal bills that became law during his 13-yeartenure and co-sponsored another 135 while serving as a consistent supporter of waterstorage in California.
As congressional leadership shifts into a new era, Supervisor Plummer has gotten ahead start at forming a working relationship with Huffman. He met with the congressmanin June in Washington, D.C., to discuss what he sees as the county’s priorities,including behavioral health, housing development and criminal justice. Plummer explained that while he’s different from Huffman politically, they’re actually aligned onmany local and regional issues.
“Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that when people are considering voting, theyfocus a lot on ideology,” Plummer said. “But at the local level, that’s less important.What tends to get not focused on is competency, and are [elected officials] able todeliver results to their locality or the district that they represent?”
Shasta County Supervisor Matt Plummer speaks at a board of supervisors meeting. (Photo by Madison Holcomb / Shasta Scout)
Huffman’s Plans for the North State
Huffman, who lives in Marin County, said he’s against California’s decision togerrymander while also calling it a “necessary, temporary evil” to counter Trump’s pushfor redistricting in Texas.
“My job is to try to make the best of it and to try to give the area that has been drawninto the second district the best possible representation I can,” he said, adding that oncethe independent redistricting process is reinstated, Shasta, Modoc and Siskiyoucounties will likely “go back to something that looked a lot like the previous district.”
To prepare to potentially start representing the North State, Huffman said he’s alreadydriven through the area multiple times, from meeting with ranchers in Siskiyou to touringbiomass plants, talking to Republicans and Democrats alike.
He acknowledged that trust is earned and said that if he wins, he’ll need to continue toshow up for North State residents in order to overcome assumptions that a Democratfrom the North Bay can’t understand them. To do so, he plans to open a fully staffedoffice in Redding. “It’s one thing to show up on the campaign trail,” Huffman noted, “butif you just disappear after that, it doesn’t mean a lot.”
While North State counties are different from the coastal counties, “it’s not like they’redifferent planets,” he said, adding that he has experience representing ruralcommunities in parts of the district he’s served for more than a dozen years.
When asked if he sees himself having a challenge of representing both Republicans inthe North State and Democrats in the North Bay, he said it depends on what’s expectedof him.
“I will work hard for people regardless of their political party, and many of them will bevery surprised at how hard we work to do things for them,” he said. “But if there’s anexpectation that … I’m going to vote like a Republican, people are going to be upset.”Huffman hopes to begin his new term with a focus on the cost of living, which he said isfelt across the rural-urban divide even if it shows up in different ways.Environmental issues will be another area of priority, Huffman said. He’s currently on theNatural Resources Committee in Congress, which includes the Water, Wildlife, andFisheries Subcommittee.
In terms of his impact, so far only two of Huffman’s sponsored bills have become law,including the Coastal Habitat Conservation Act of 2023 and a bill that allows “theDepartment of Agriculture to collect and spend fees for a marina in the Shasta-TrinityNational Forest.” More than 120 bills he’s co-sponsored have become law.
Can a Marin Democrat Speak for the North State?
Littau, the Republican candidate for District 2, knows predictions show she has only a2% chance of winning. But she said she has “a 99.9% chance with God, and I just thinkI’m going to win.” If she does, she wants to focus on issues concerning water storage,wildfires, wolves and the affordability crisis.
While many of Littau’s priorities overlap with Huffman’s, she argues that the seasonedpolitician doesn’t have the life experience to represent the agricultural community in theNorth State, an area she said she’s well-versed in.
Congressional District 2 candidate Robin Littau says with God, she has a 99.9% chance of winning, despite projections showing otherwise. (Photo by Madison Holcomb / Shasta Scout)
She also warned that a win by Huffman might enrage Republicans in the North State,comparing electing the Democratic congressman to represent people in Shasta andother parts of the region to “poking a bear that’s asleep.”
“I’m concerned at what that’s gonna look like when they don’t feel represented orheard,” she said, adding that the next step is “pure anger.”
Littau said gerrymandering only increases the kind of polarization that encouragesCalifornia conservatives’ long-time push to secede and form a new state. It’s asentiment that Lisa Pruitt, a rural law professor at the University of California, Davis,agreed with, saying Prop. 50 “fuels the fire.”
“These communities already feel unseen and unrecognized and unappreciated,” Pruittsaid, “and so it’s just another way of depriving them of what they see is how little theyHave.”
Pruitt recently wrote a research paper that critiques California’s response to Texas’redistricting, saying it undermines rural representation by tying North State counties tothe urban North Bay.
She also discussed how district lines should be redrawn in the future to better considercommunities of interest, or areas that have commonalities amongst their populations, inorder to affirm “that rural lives and livelihoods are critical parts of the democratic project,not merely peripheral to it.”
The North State is distinctive in terms of its shared commonalities, Pruitt wrote, “shapedby remoteness, scale, livelihood, and service deficits.” She said that nuance was absentfrom Prop. 50’s “ham-handed cutting and pasting chunks of far northern California.”
“Now, however,” she explained, “different parts of old CA-01 are tethered to the BayArea in ways that shift the new districts’ centers of gravity to cities—and thus to urbanconcerns, along with urban attitudes and values.”
While Stephenson, the rancher with family property in Bella Vista, worries thatpredictions like Pruitt’s will come true, he affirmed that he and his community don’t planto give up.
“In the ag-cattlemen-ranchers world, do we feel like we’re a losing voice? Yes,” he said.“Will it stop us from doing what we’ve always done, reaching out to our representativesand congresspeople, senators and other things? No.”
The post In California’s North State, Changes Driven by Redistricting Make Some Fearful. Others See Opportunity appeared first on The Daily Yonder.
