I grew up in this town, and it has a really interesting combination that I call the 'Hippie / Farmer duality'. On the one hand Petaluma is the focal point town for a huge amount of Sonoma County's agriculture business. There are multiple places you can buy animal feed in large quantities, and there is still a large cattle auction yard in town. Combined with a local racetrack and a very car centric version of nostalgia for the 1960s and 1950s and this town could very well have been a hotbed for conservative view points in Northern California.

On the other hand, many of the people who have moved to Petaluma since the 1960s have been Hippies and other back to the land folk (or just well off, liberal urbanites looking for small town vibes). Add to this the fact that many of the farmers have been 'mom and pop' operations that have fully embraced and seen the value of the organic farming movement.

What you're left with in Petaluma is a place where some of the traditionally conservative rural families are more into environmentalism and environmental justice than some city folk, and that some of the recent city folk have moved there as a reaction against socially liberal urban life.

The perfect image for me is a Prius with an 'all lives matter' license plate frame next to a lifted truck with a 'Support your farmer: ban GMOs' bumper sticker.

It's a really great place.