Bakersfield, at the apex of the southern end of California's Central Valley, has been the focus of great migrations four times--in a gold rush in 1885, when oil was discovered there in 1899, during the 1930s when so-called Okies drove their jalopies from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas across the Southwest on U.S. 66, and again in the 1980s, when Bakersfield and Kern County grew more rapidly than California's biggest metro areas. Bakersfield's gold is gone, its oil rigs still pump, but the migration that made the deepest imprint occurred in the 1930s. The Okies drove over one thousand miles of brown landscape, headed through the Tehachapi Pass and finally found the vast green San Joaquin valley, with its irrigated fields and its eucalyptus-shaded towns--the richest farming country in the world--bright under the sun.

The story is told vividly in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, though his vision of the Okies as workers eager to join together with their fellow proletarians and rise up against their bosses did not get the picture quite right. More accurate is Dan Morgan's Rising in the West, which shows the strong Pentecostal beliefs which drove many migrants and, unlike Steinbeck's novel, explains how they prospered in California.

The area around Bakersfield has become the one southern-accented part of California, the home of country singers Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and a thriving contemporary country music scene, culturally conservative with a strong drive toward discipline and little empathy for the therapy that is so common in Los Angeles, 110 miles south.

``I hope you all agree with me that Bakersfield is boring,'' LA Mayor Richard Riordan said on radio in July 1994- -and then came up for a tour in 106-degree heat and heard the Kern County D.A. tell him that motorists are not fired at on Bakersfield's freeways, its citizens don't riot when they don't like a jury verdict, and its celebrities are not on trial for murder.

Politically, this was Democratic territory until the early 1960s--when, for that matter, so was Oklahoma; by he late 1960s, both had become solidly Republican in national politics, and today vote Republican up and down the ticket. In 1994, Kern and Tulare Counties favored Governor Pete Wilson over Kathleen Brown 70%-27% and Michael Huffington over Dianne Feinstein 63%-28%.

The congressman from the 21st, Bill Thomas, is now one of the senior Republicans in the House after years of frustration in the minority. He chairs the House Oversight Committee and is a senior member of Ways and Means and chairman of its Health Subcommittee. Thomas grew up in Orange County, graduated from San Francisco State and taught political science in the community college in Bakersfield. He was elected to the Assembly in 1974, a conservative in a liberal-run legislature; when Congressman Bill Ketchum died after the 1978 primary, Thomas ran as the relative moderate at the party convention and won the seat. With his position on the House Oversight Committee, Thomas defended partisan positions with no chance of prevailing, on campaign finance and the contest over the Indiana 8th District in 1985; he worked with Democrat Al Swift on uniform poll closings but could reach no agreement on a motor voter bill. On campaign finance reform, Thomas called for restricting PAC and out-of-district contributions; he passed a bill restricting franked mail. Some younger conservatives considered him too accommodating to the opposition, and--with the encouragement of then-Minority Whip Newt Gingrich-- Paul Gillmor of Ohio ran against him for the ranking-member post on the House Oversight Committee in December 1992, losing by only 12 votes.

Since then Thomas has been an adamant opponent of the Democrats. He criticized their health care plans and called for more choices and innovations for consumers. He fought George Miller's Central Valley Water Project Act and the Desert Protection Act, unsuccessfully. He backed ``super IRAs for college and major medical expenses and a $2,500 first-time home buyer tax credit. He has generally been a free trader, with an eye out for California pistachios; he voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

After Republicans won their majority, Newt Gingrich appointed Thomas chairman of House Oversight, but many of that post's administrative functions have been taken over by a new House administrative officer, who reports to the Speaker; Gingrich also named his ally Jim Nussle to work on internal House matters and named all the members of the committee. On the Health Subcommittee, Thomas has promised to do much to reshape Medicaid and Medicare and to salvage the depleting resources of the Medicare trust fund, and on the full committee he can promote super IRAs. He took a lead in backing the restoration of the 25% health care deduction for the self-employed, which Republicans packaged with repeal of the broadcast license racial preference in February 1995.

Thomas has not had serious competition for reelection in many years.

The People: Pop. 1990: 571,143; 19% rural; 11% age 65+; 71% White; 4% Black; 1% American Indian; 3% Asian; 13% Other; 20% Hispanic origin. Voting age pop.: 398,049; 4% Black; 17% Hispanic origin. Households: 59% married couple families; 30% married couple families. w. children; 47% college education.; median household income: $29,943; per capita income: $12,983; median gross rent: $454; median house value: $84,600.

Source: taken, and then edited, from http://www.politicsusa.com/PoliticalUSA/resources/almanacv/ca21.html.cgi