Funny thing about this place: You would expect the kids who grew up here and fell under the influence of My Little Pony and Ronald Reagan to want to escape to either one of the bigger metropolises that surround Walnut Creek or an even more far-flung place. Yet when the five members of the Bronies for Romney Task Force aren’t on tour, they all live with their parents and speak of their hometown with an almost nostalgic pride.

"This was a great place to grow up in," says Vice President of the Task Force Ryan Torf, as he and his fellow members gather around a table full of semi-automatic weapons at his parents’ charmingly cluttered home. "You can walk anywhere at two in the morning and feel totally fine. We were the most dangerous people walking around, so you know you’re not in a very bad place!"

That last comment gets a lot of laughs from everyone else in the Task Force. These weren’t the kids who got in trouble in Walnut Creek. They pulled a lot of silly pranks on their “liberal foes” in their days: upending a Planned Parenthood employee’s romantic evening out by stripping naked and interrupting her makeout session, chopping down a tree in front of an abortion doctor’s home, or simply cruising through their cookie-cutter neighborhoods, blasting NOFX and New Found Glory from the car stereo., 2013

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