Long-red O.C. faces a political turning point

County went against recall by 52% to 48%, a significant result in former GOP bastion.

In Orange County, no place has been more of a pandemic battleground than Huntington Beach.

Some residents joined pro-Trump, anti-mask rallies at the beach. Others were appalled.

Mayor Pro Tem Tito Ortiz refused to wear a mask at City Council meetings — until he resigned, paving the way for a Black woman to replace him and flip the council majority Democratic.

Last month’s recall election cemented the city’s reality as more ideologically mixed than its reputation for showy right-wing gestures would suggest.

The city voted in favor of recalling Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, but not by a landslide.

While still more conservative than the county as a whole, Huntington Beach has become increasingly ethnically and politically diverse.

The same is true of other traditionally deep-red enclaves, which are less likely than in the past to support a cause like recalling the governor largely on his pandemic performance.

For the near future, Orange County may continue to teeter on either side of the political divide, as when two U.S. House seats that flipped blue in 2018 went red again two years later.

O.C. went against the recall by 52% to 48% — a narrower margin than Newsom’s overwhelming statewide victory but still a significant result in the former conservative bastion.

Experts say the longterm trend for O.C. leans blue, with the politicization of the pandemic accelerating movement away from the Republican Party.

Battles over masking and vaccines drove some conservative, science-believing voters to support Newsom — likely some of the same voters, alienated by Donald Trump’s insult-heavy, truth-bending tactics, who helped the county break for Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden four years later.

“There’s this loud minority that comes out and wants to portray the county as still being very conservative, with the anti-vaxxers and some of the white supremacist ideas, but that’s not the case,” said Ada Briceño, chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County.

Still, pro-recall sentiment extended beyond farright fringes.

The county, long a wellheeled source of Republican revenue, was a notable fundraising nexus. The tremendous cost to small businesses of Newsom’s pandemic shutdowns resonated strongly.

An Irvine-based LLC called Prov. 3:9 — a reference to the Bible verse that reads “honor the Lord with your wealth”— was a top donor to the recall effort, pulling in $500,000.

The Lincoln Club of Orange County contributed nearly $300,000, and many individual donors chipped in to statewide pro-recall coffers that totaled more than $11 million.

Jim Brulte, a former state Republican Party chairman who lives in San Juan Capistrano, said O.C. is still “the mother ship” of fundraising.

Republican candidates like Larry Elder rallied their base with campaign stops in O.C., including Little Saigon, where many Vietnamese immigrants hold

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