Earlier this year, the voters of Avenal, a community in California’s rural Central Valley, ousted their mayor and all but one member of their City Council.
Leaders of the recall celebrated the effort as democracy in action.
The message: Get out.
But more than three months after the election, the recalled officials still won’t leave, claiming the process was unlawful. At a meeting in June, they made it official, voting 3 to 0 to ignore the results.
Their refusal to cede power — highly unusual even in an era of election denialism — raises a host of legal and political questions and has triggered one of the messiest recall battles in modern California history.
Town halls have devolved into screaming matches. Residents have accused one another of spreading falsehoods and malicious A.I.-generated memes, and of racially charged jabs. In the former oil boomtown turned migrant farming community, one recall supporter asked the ousted mayor, who emigrated from Tijuana as a teenager, if he needed something translated into Spanish.
Avenal now finds itself at the unlikely center of a debate that has plagued federal, state and local races across the country: What happens when elected officials refuse to follow democratic norms?
