Why was Northern California Democratic decades ago?

[ElectionsGuy]

By Northern California, I mean the rural areas, not the Bay area or Sacramento. There are areas, most noticeably Shasta County, where Redding sits, that even voted for McGovern. Now, they're heavily Republican. Why were these areas Democratic in the first place and what made them trend Republcian?

[Skill and Chance]

Okies?  But that could be a bit far north for them?

[CapoteMonster]

Where this a bit of a libertarian bent in that part of California and the Democrats were also seen as a party that would better protect farmer's interests back then. Those counties were also very pro-Roosevelt and a lot of New Deal democrats have passed away the past few decades.

[freepcrusher]

they don't like how the environmentalists took over the democratic party.

[andrew_c]

The Democrats used to appeal to conservative, agrarian regions. Now, those areas are solid Republican because the Democrats (especially the state party) have moved too far to the left.

[Mr. Smith]

Ignoring the foolish stereotype right above me, the answer is simple enough:

That part of California is not all the different from The South, same evangelical and agrarian roots with a helping of old retirees.

So naturally, the reasons it switched are almost the exact same reasons the South switched, except instead of '68 with Nixon, it was '80 with Reagan.

[H. Ross Peron]

I'm actually reading about this in Kevin Philips's Emerging Republican Majority. The gist of it as echoed by others above is that the interior areas of the West Coast states have always had an anti-establishment and populist streak leading it to support William Jennings Bryan as well as the Progressives and LaFollette before enthusiastically supporting the New Deal (it helped that the populations of these counties tended to be heterogeneous rather than solidly Republican Yankee stock and for at least some counties augmented by strongly Democratic Okie populations) The agricultural areas of Kern and Fresno appear to have gone Republican first largely due to the overall trend of culturally Southern whites turning Republican in 1968 as well as racial conflicts arising between local whites and Hispanic labourers. Shasta and the more northerly counties (which were more dependent on mining and logging) probably trended Republican later due to its old industries becoming less dominant as well as environmental/conservation conflicts.