The powerful Democrat trying to win over California’s rural voters

Mike McGuire courts red territory with town halls and a populist pitch on jobs, healthcare and wildfire costs Quincy, population 1,600, is not exactly the sort of place you regularly run into California’s most powerful Democratic lawmakers. Nestled deep in the Sierra Nevada, the forested town is in a rural and reliably red county that – like nearly all of far northern California – has sent Republicans to Congress for nearly half a century. But on a Tuesday night in mid-April, Mike McGuire, a three-term state lawmaker who previously led California’s senate, was inside a local veterans hall rallying a crowd of about 40 people with the verve of a baptist preacher. “No matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, you want to send your kid to a good public school. You want to be able to keep your hospital open and to keep healthcare thriving in the community that you love. Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?” he said to applause. “That’s what we need to fight for right now.” As McGuire, now on his third visit to the area in recent months, spoke about the need to bring more jobs to rural America and pass Medicare for all, the crowd grew louder. “The only way that we’r