Republican-Democrat, rural-urban divide in California's statewide races

This is a striking feature of the New York Times county-level maps reporting on California's state-wide races in Tuesday's primary.  A cluster of counties in northeast California went for Republican candidates, while the rest of the state went for Democratic candidates.  How far south the rural/Republican bit stretched depending on the candidate.  Oh, and it's worth noting that California is a top-two primary; the top two vote getters advance to the general election, regardless of party.  

Here's the map for the Governor's race, with Republican Brian Dahle's counties (17% of total vote) shown in yellow and incumbent Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom's (56.2% of total vote) counties shown in purple: 

The yellow counties coincide roughly with the would-be State of Jefferson, a region that has long sought to form its own state, with parts of southern Oregon.  Read more here.  Oh, and that's where Republican candidate Brian Dahle is from, specifically Lassen County. This is also the least racially/ethnically diverse part of California.  And it's interesting that the Central Valley, often thought of as rural, though it's more densely populated than the far north, skewed Democratic.  

Here's the map for the Attorney General's race, with Democrat Rob Bonta's (54.4) in purple and Republican Eric Early's (16.9%) in yellow--fewer counties than the Republican gubernatorial candidate won, but all in the same region.

Here's the map for the Secretary of State's race, showing Democrat Shirley Weber (58.7%) in purple and Rob Bernosky's (19.5%) in lime green.   

After this, down to the Controller's race, the pattern breaks.  In that race, much of the Bay Area voted for the leading Democrat, Malia Cohen; one Bay Area County went for Steve Glazer; and the rest of the state voted for the Republican, Lanhee Chen, a Stanford Professor.  

Will be interesting to see how things play out in the General Election, when loyalties get re-allocated based on candidates no longer in the top two.