BIEBER, CA – Last Thursday saw Megan Dahle (R-Bieber), state assemblywoman for the 1st Assembly district, announce a campaign for the open 1st State Senate District seat in 2024. This seat is currently held by Dahle’s husband and Assembly predecessor, Brian Dahle (R-Bieber), who is subject to the 12-year lifetime term limits placed upon members of the California state legislature.

A dryland wheat farmer by trade, Megan Dahle was born and raised in Fall River Mills, working in the agriculture industry before meeting and marrying her husband of 24 years. While raising their three children, Megan also served on the local school board and operated Big Valley Nursery with a close friend; in that time, Brian served as a member of the Lassen County Farm Bureau and then the Lassen County Board of Supervisors. Eventually, Brian was elected to the State Assembly in 2012 and then the Senate in a 2019 special election caused by Ted Gaines’s ascension to the Board of Equalization; Megan won Brian’s vacant Assembly seat in a later 2019 election.

“The North State needs a strong advocate with common-sense solutions and legislative experience” said M. Dahle in a press release on February 2nd. “I’m known for getting things done in the Assembly, and will carry on that same fight on behalf of constituents into the Senate.”

Senate District One (SD1), which she aims to represent, is dimensionally the largest in California and holds over 938,000 people; it stretches from the northern edge of Sacramento County in the south to the Oregon border and contains Grass Valley, Yuba City, Chico, Red Bluff and Redding. The district voted for former president Donald Trump by 15 points in 2020, when he carried it 56.6 to 40.9 over now-president Joe Biden. Because of this, Dahle holds a significant political and fundraising advantage against most or all potential challengers, Democratic and Republican alike, and is likely to win election to the Senate by a significant margin.

Her current seat, Assembly District One, overlaps heavily with the northern and eastern parts of SD-01; it is home to just over 500,000 people and runs from Amador and Alpine counties in the south to the Oregon border. The largest population centers in the district are in Redding, Susanville, Grass Valley, Truckee, Pollock Pines and South Lake Tahoe; these cities anchor a district that voted for Trump by 12 points over Biden in 2020, when the ex-president carried it 55.1 percent to 42.5 percent. This district, much like its Senate counterpart, is physically the largest in the state.

Dahle’s departure creates a completely vacant field over a year out from the March 2024 primary, which will more than likely determine the outcome of the general election in November 2024 due to this district’s heavy Republican skew. There are many potential candidates in a district as vast as this one, and the Republican side could potentially see names such as disaster preparedness specialist and former Dahle challenger Kelly Tanner (R-Round Mountain), Siskiyou County Supervisor Brandon Criss (R-Macdoel), and Mark Baird (R-Yreka), a perennial candidate and advocate for the State of Jefferson movement. These three candidates represent different factions of conservatism – a more issues-focused and non-inflammatory subset, an old-school and traditional ideological take, and a hardline populist libertarian type emboldened by the 45th President’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

On the other hand, California Democrats will seek to expand their legislative supermajority if possible, even into some of the reddest territory in the state. Community figure Belle Starr Sandwith (D-Loyalton), who Dahle defeated by over 22 points last November, is a potential candidate. Other potential candidates include Shasta County farmer Elizabeth Bettancourt (D-Redding), and Truckee Town Councilman David Polivy (D-Truckee). In contrast to the more splintered factions in the Republican field, Democratic candidates present a united front that is generally somewhere between liberal and progressive ideologically.

The statewide primary election will be held March 5, 2024, and will see hundreds of state, local and federal races contested alongside the 2024 California presidential primary. For prospective candidates, the signature gathering period runs from September 8th through November 8th, 2023, and candidates must officially declare between November 13th and December 8th. In any event, you can expect that the Mountain Messenger will yet again be on the scene to cover the elections and results.