What totally discredits the author's theory is that Placer County has been strongly conservative and only very recently has been trending toward purple due to the influx of left-wing retirees from the San Francisco Bay Area.
They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in 1980 — and twice voted for Donald Trump by wide margins. But when it comes to how long their residents can count on living, the parallels fall apart.
AI
Black life expectancy in the United States remains significantly lower than that of White individuals, with a national gap of approximately 9.57 years based on data from 2018–2019 in three large U.S. cities.