Flat-Earth Governance

How MAGA loyalists are hijacking local government to wage national culture war from ICE proclamations to election fraud theater.

Rod Taylor was never qualified to be a county commissioner. That didn’t stop him from running, and it didn’t stop him from winning. Like many pro-Trump candidates across the country, Taylor didn’t seek office to govern. He ran to impose a worldview. In Coos County, that’s meant pushing election conspiracies, platforming discredited ideologues, and now, twice, trying to pass a pro-ICE proclamation that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of Oregon’s sanctuary laws.

He’s not alone. Across the U.S. and here again in Coos County this month, far-right candidates are running for school boards, commissions, and city councils not to fix roads, improve services, or balance budgets, but to use the credibility of public office to wage culture war. They often have no background in governance. No training. No interest in doing the actual work. But they do have Telegram channels, national talking points, and a knack for finding the loudest microphone in the room.

Taylor’s ICE proclamation isn’t an isolated act. His first attempt failed under public pressure. Now he’s back with a watered-down version, strategically vague, legally flimsy, and laced with the kind of dog whistles that echo through Truth Social comment threads.

But this is just the next chapter in a much longer story. Before trying to deputize the county into federal immigration enforcement, Taylor spent months giving a platform to Douglas Frank, one of the country’s most notorious election fraud fantasists.

It started with what could have passed for a lapse in judgment: inviting Frank, a self-styled “election integrity expert,” to speak at a commission meeting. But when Taylor followed up with a three-hour public work session devoted entirely to Frank’s debunked theories, it became clear this wasn’t about civic dialogue. It was about laundering conspiracy through the public process. Working with Commissioner John Sweet, I helped bring in someone who understands elections and math: Stanford Professor Justin Grimmer.

Rather than engage with the evidence, Taylor dismissed his constituents as “math deniers” and gave Frank even more time. It was like inviting a flat-earther back to teach geography, except this wasn’t a joke; it was your local government.

Frank’s signature claim? He can predict voter turnout by age using a single number he calls a “turnout key.” To support this fantasy, he parades around charts and spreadsheets that might impress anyone unfamiliar with basic statistics. But as Grimmer makes clear, it’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous. A veneer of data used to smuggle in delusion, legitimized by officials like Taylor who either can’t recognize fraud or choose not to.

After the work session, I sat down with Grimmer to talk about what we’d just witnessed. In our conversation, he walks us through Frank’s most egregious errors, Taylor’s refusal to engage with the truth, and the broader trend of local governments becoming conduits for national conspiracy theories.

Grimmer doesn’t use the word “lie” lightly. But he doesn’t mince words either. Frank’s entire premise, he explains, confuses correlation with causation, counts with turnout rates, and basic statistical review with conspiracy confirmation bias. And when confronted with evidence, even his own spreadsheets, Frank simply shrugs, says “people don’t understand my work,” and repeats the same claim louder.

Taylor’s fixation on election denial was never the endgame. It was just the opener. Now he’s using his platform to push a “non-binding” ICE resolution, parroting Trump-era rhetoric, undermining state law, and building a permission structure for local law enforcement to cozy up to federal immigration enforcement.

The language may be softened from his original draft, but the intent is unchanged. It’s a political stunt dressed as policy, a calculated move to align Coos County with the authoritarian wing of the Republican Party.

And this is the playbook. Trump loyalists aren’t running for office to oversee sewer budgets or economic development zones. They’re running to inject national grievance into local governance. To bring the border wall to your school board. To turn every county commission into a culture war flashpoint.

This month, Coos County voters will see multiple candidates on the ballot who follow this formula: unqualified, unprepared, and unashamed. Their allegiance isn’t to facts, law, or the public good, it’s to an ideology that prizes performance over policy and power over process.

The danger isn’t just Rod Taylor. It’s what Rod Taylor represents: a pipeline of misinformation that runs from fringe Telegram chats to official government chambers. A deliberate erosion of institutional credibility, where facts are optional and spectacle is strategy.

When we ignore local elections, we make room for people like Taylor to slip in—not because they’re the best candidates, but because they’re the loudest. If we want local government to mean something again, we have to treat it like it matters. Because to the MAGA movement, it clearly does.