Far-Right Board Appointed Mosquito Conspiracy Theorist

In normal times, choosing a candidate to fill a voluntary mosquito control position on a local government board would not attract much attention. But these are not normal times in Shasta County, a rural northern California county whose Board of Supervisors is in the grip of a far-right majority determined to radically change local politics.

Since gaining the balance of power, three far-right board members, who are linked to local ultraconservative groups, including a secessionist movement and a militia, have approved a set of proposals aimed at shaking off state control and making Shasta County a blueprint for ultraconservative values.

This mostly rural county, home to 182,000 people, long a red bastion in a blue state, has now become a focal point for burgeoning right-wing movements across the country that aim to “take back control” of local government.

On Sept. 26, the three far-right supervisors, Patrick Jones, Kevin Crye, and Chris Kelstrom made their latest move: appointing a local radical activist and hydroponics store owner to the county’s mosquito board, over an epidemiologist who was previously the county’s public health director.

The appointment of Jon Knight, known for his involvement with local ultraconservative media and his attendance at the Jan. 6 insurrection, over Donell Ewert, a trained epidemiologist, grabbed national headlines, as did Knight’s conspiratorial comments.

“I know a lot about this stuff. I know a lot about some of these Bill Gates programs. This is not conspiracy, this is a fact. There’s Japanese scientists who have created flying syringes that will mass-vaccinate the populations,” Knight told the board during public comment on his appointment, warning of the dangers of “genetically-modified mosquitoes.”

“I would put my health in Jon Knight’s hands over Donnell Ewert’s any day of the week,” board chair Jones said from behind the dais.

Jones, who owns a gun store, was approached for comment in July by a reporter from SFGate, who asked about a controversial resolution the board passed declaring the county would “not abide by any order, provision, law, or agency initiative that violates […] the Second Amendment.”

“Drop dead,” Jones replied.

Jones did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.

Mary Rickert, one of two supervisors who frequently votes against Jones, Kelstrom and Crye, told The Daily Beast she was “adamantly opposed” to Knight’s appointment.

“It’s almost laughable that you would disregard the application from probably the most qualified person in this county, and basically try to appoint someone who got his education about mosquitos on the internet,” Rickert said during the board meeting. “Do you know how that makes us look as a county? It makes us look like idiots. Downright idiots.”

Nonetheless, the three far-right supervisors voted to appoint Knight to the position.

Mosquitos do indeed pose an ongoing threat in Shasta County. The vector control district has found West Nile virus in 152 mosquito samples this year, more than a 200 percent increase from the previous high of 45 in 2015. The county’s first human case was recorded on Aug. 23, after a local man was hospitalized.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty Images and Courtesy of Jon Knight.

Ewert told the LA Times that “it’s sad our county is not being governed now by a majority that believe in mainstream science.”

He said that misinformation in Shasta County led to fewer people getting vaccinated and more people dying from COVID-19 than in the rest of California.

In Oct. 2021, the death rate from COVID in Shasta County was more than six times higher than in the rest of the state, according to KRCR. A spokesperson for the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency (HHHSA) told the outlet that “Of the people who have died in Shasta County from COVID-19, fewer than 10 percent have been fully vaccinated.”

“They believed they would be at a higher risk of getting vaccinated than getting the virus. I think that’s a shame, a tragedy, and, quite frankly, an outrage,” Ewert told the LA Times, which this week also reported on the battle within the board of supervisors.

For his part, Jon Knight seems bemused about the amount of attention his appointment to the mosquito board has drawn. He didn’t even particularly want to run for the role, he told The Daily Beast on Thursday, but “multiple people in the community said the position needed to be filled,” and so he stepped up.

Knight described the political situation in Shasta County as “very hot,” and said that although Ewert had put himself forward for the position, “A lot of people in the community did not want him.”

Knight says he’s been selling pesticides in Shasta County for 18 years, and has “a deep understanding of mosquitos, different kinds of mosquitos and the diseases they carry.”

“I have a lot of deep research on the subject,” Knight said.

The day after he was appointed to the mosquito board, an inspector from the Agricultural Department walked into his shop, Knight says. The timing, he believes, cannot be a coincidence.

“Mary sent you, huh?” he said to the inspector, referring to Rickert.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty Images and Courtesy of Jon Knight.

On Oct. 4, two more inspectors turned up, Knight says, “going through everything like never before.” They found five or six products that he was not licensed to sell, and pulled them from the shelves, he said. Knight shrugs it off—he is already in the process of filling out the necessary paperwork to continue selling the products, he says, and believes the investigation is nothing more than harassment engineered by Rickert.

“I’m under the impression that it was retaliation from her,” he said.

Rick Gurolla, the agricultural commissioner, told The Daily Beast he ordered the inspection after Knight’s comments at the Sept. 26 meeting, where he talked about selling pesticides.

“We had no record of this business ever being licensed,” Gurolla told The Daily Beast.

The investigation is still ongoing, Gurolla says, though he hopes to have it wrapped up by the end of the month. As agricultural commissioner he is able to issue warnings to businesses, or suspend their licenses if they are found to be in violation. In extreme cases, he says, he is able to refer matters to criminal prosecution to the District Attorney.

Rickert sees Knight’s appointment as emblematic of the wider dysfunction in Shasta County.

In a conversation with The Daily Beast, Rickert described herself as a conservative Republican who has found herself in a war to prevent the three far-right supervisors from wreaking havoc in Shasta County.

“We are the guinea pig. I’ve said this from the very beginning. We are the poster child for a takeover of local government,” she said. “This is methodical, planned, orchestrated to overthrow and take complete control of Shasta county and sever themselves from the thumb of Sacramento.”

Doni Chamberlain, a veteran local reporter who has covered Shasta County for decades and now runs A News Cafe, where she and a small team of journalists report on every board of supervisors meeting in detail, says she “affectionately” describes the ongoing political strife as the “Shasta County shitshow.”

She has had to contend with a steady stream of death threats and attacks for her work. In July, Chamberlain was covering a militia meeting where she says she was physically attacked, leaving her with a concussion and whiplash. She told The Daily Beast she is now in physical therapy while she weighs her legal options. In 30 years as a local reporter, she says she’s never experienced anything like the current level of threats just for doing her job.

Chamberlain coined the term “Shastaliban” to describe the coalition of forces gathered behind the hard-right local government officials, a phrase some far-right activists have co-opted, even getting t-shirts printed with the phrase.

While the situation in Shasta may look like similar far-right takeovers of local government in other areas of the country, like Ottawa County, Michigan, Chamberlain says there’s one key difference.

“There’s money backing up these guys,” she says.

Chamberlain’s site has covered the shadowy influence of Reverge Anselmo, a Connecticut-based billionaire who donated $100,000 to Jones’ election campaign, provided funding to local conservative media outlet Red, White and Blueprint, and backed a recall against former board supervisor Leonard Moty. Anselmo appears to be motivated by a personal vendetta against the country—he was sanctioned for building a Catholic chapel on his Shasta vineyard without permits.

Shawn Schwaller, who teaches history at Chico State and writes for A News Cafe, said the far-right supervisors are backed not only by Anselmo, but an alliance of groups that are “working together to build a kind of far-right identity politics.”

Shasta County has long been conservative, but the pandemic created new political alliances, Schwaller told The Daily Beast, and he thinks people got more radical, more quickly.

“It was very traumatic,” Schwaller says. “I think a lot of people went off the rails.”

Many locals in Shasta were enraged by state-mandated COVID measures enacted by Gov. Gavin Newsom, which they felt infringed on their personal liberties.

Carlos Zapata, a local bar owner and far-right activist, went viral in August 2020, when he railed against COVID restrictions at a board meeting, warning that citizens would be willing to take up arms to fight back.

In an appearance on Alex Jones’ Infowars that October, Zapata said the ongoing mandates would push people “to a point of violence” and could lead to “blood in the streets.”

The far-right movement in Shasta gained momentum as the pandemic continued, with alliances formed between anti-vaxx activists, the secessionist “State of Jefferson” movement, and the local, heavily-armed, Cottonwood militia.

Knight himself was executive producer of The Red, White and Blueprint, a documentary series looking at the recall campaign of previous board supervisor Moty, who was ousted by a far-right coalition backed by Jones in Feb. 2022. Moty, a Republican and former police chief, was targeted because of this support for pandemic-era precautions like masking.

Jeff Gorder, who is now leading a recall campaign against Crye, one the far-right supervisors, says some in the community are outraged by the huge swing to the right local politics has taken and are looking for avenues to unseat the supervisors.

“It is this effort to try and proceed at a county level and appoint like-minded individuals to all these committees and school boards,” Gorder says. “They want to be the tip of the spear, the vanguard of a right-wing extremist movement across California and around the country.”

Now, the supervisors are gearing up for a new fight.

In May, they voted to end the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the center of a swirl of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, in favor of moving to a hand-counting system. They were supported behind-the-scenes by the My Pillow CEO and high-profile election denier, Mike Lindell, who promised to foot the bill for any potential legal fees.

The controversial move led to Gov. Gavin Newom signing a new bill on Oct. 4, that comes into effect immediately and limits local government’s ability to hand-count votes. Board chair Jones said Shasta County will go ahead with their plans regardless, setting up the possibility of a legal battle between the supervisors and the state.

“As far as I’m concerned, we push forward. The state may want to sue us,” Jones told the Record Searchlight.

Rickert said she fears the outcome of the board continuing down the path they’ve chosen, especially in regards to manually tallying.

“I would not be surprised if the Governor has to call in the national guard in this county at some point,” she said.