Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive
The instructive thread weaving through the 2024 presidential election cycle also ran through little towns across America.
Consider Fairfax, CA.
This cool community in Marin County, located in the San Francisco Bay Area on the good side of the Golden Gate Bridge, was known back in the day as home to “Summer of Love” bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin. Most residents in Fairfax can tell you first-hand stories about those days. They take pride in their roots.
But then came a disturbance in the force a couple years ago when the town’s Council began to enact draconian woke laws like “extra” rent control, high-density zoning changes, and climate change virtue signaling resulting in laws prohibiting gas stations inside town limits.
Residents attended council meetings for a year to complain about the direction. Aspirational goals were one thing, mandates that hurt people were another.
The Town Council paid no attention. They started to view the people they serve as the enemy, limiting their speech at Council meetings and threatening to remove them from public meetings if they applauded speakers too loudly. The Council became authoritarian and pressed ahead until, finally, Fairfaxians rose up in revolt.
Three incumbent Town Council members sought re-election this week. Two former and popular mayors of Fairfax — Frank Eggar and Mike Ghiringhelli — came out of retirement and finished No. 1 and No. 2 in the vote, knocking off two of the three incumbents. The third incumbent escaped by the skin of her teeth.
Town voters also thoroughly rejected the old Town Council’s rent control “leadership” by striking down the law via a ballot measure. It was a total rebuke.
What happened in Fairfax won’t make the national news, but it’s made of the same stuff that swept Donald Trump into the presidency and gave him majorities in the Senate and the House. It wasn’t a “conservative” vs “liberal” thing.
It was people standing up for representative democracy and a full-on revolt against authoritarian woke governance gone too far.
Read the full column here.
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