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As Calif. Righty Bastion, Orange County Cedes to Rural Placer

But it's a place to hide from, not breed, change

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Jun 16, 2009 3:20 PM CDT
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(Newser) – Placer County, Calif.—stretching from Sacramento east to Lake Tahoe—is this generation’s Orange County, and that bodes ill for conservatives, Tom Schaller writes on FiveThirtyEight.com. Placer’s demographics and voting record are similar to the Orange County of the 1960s, which birthed the modern conservative movement. But, Schaller writes, “Placer is simply too small and remote” to effect that kind of change again.

These days, Schaller continues, “Placer County is more emblematic—or symptomatic, to be precise—of the state of American conservatism than Orange County.” The population is one of the state’’s whitest, fueled by emigration from more diverse districts. But though its politics are reliably right-of-center, it is still just a “rural outpost,” Schaller writes, “a place to escape from, not push back against, the political changes occurring in America.”

Lake Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe.   (AP Photo)
A couple walk the Lake Tahoe shore.
A couple walk the Lake Tahoe shore.   (AP Photo)
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In the story of modern American conservatism, Placer is the new Orange. But that replacement is symptomatic of conservatism’s decline.
- Tom Schaller

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COMMENTS
Showing 1 of 1 comment
RobN
Jun 16, 2009 9:57 AM CDT
A rural outpost? Actually about 90% of the county's population lives within 30 miles of Sacramento and most spend their lives commuting up and down highway 80 in bumper to bumper traffic. And how can you call its politics reliably right of center when the current congressman, who is a freshman Republican, had to go through a state mandated recount because the vote was so close? Placer likes to push its gold rush heritage to pick up the tourism dollar, but it has a whole lot more unionized state workers than it does rural folk.
Politics • US

 
California • Sacramento • Barry Goldwater • Orange County • demographics • Lake Tahoe • conservative movement • Placer County

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