California's governor, Gavin Newsom, fancies himself the white knight in the Texas redistricting melodrama, having just the answer to Texas's plan to redistrict in a way that would create five presumably safe new seats for congressional Republicans.

He's threatened to create more Democrat seats in California in a redistricting plan of his own in order to cancel out the Republican seats in Texas. Such is how he 'saves' democracy.

He's got just one problem, though. California's voters, according to Susan Shelley of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers' Association, writing in the New York Post:

Gavin Newsom is going to war with the voters of California — and they might just hand him his head.

The ambitious governor of California says he is trying to end the presidency of Donald Trump two years early with a plan to elect more Democrats to the House of Representatives, offsetting a mid-decade redistricting in Texas. Newsom wants to call a special election to throw out the congressional maps drawn by the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission that voters established using the initiative power.

...

In 2008, a majority of California voters were disgusted with incumbent politicians in Sacramento drawing self-serving district maps to guarantee their own re-election. Using the initiative power, voters revoked the legislature’s map-drawing authority for state offices in 2008 and for congressional districts in 2010. The two ballot measures, Propositions 11 and 20, empowered a California Citizens Redistricting Commission to draw the district lines free from the control of politicians and lobbyists.

She goes on to note that the result was not perfect, as consultant types still got their snoots in the redistricting troughs, and in the end the legislature became ever more extreme towards the left. But it was the voters' baby, and as Shelley notes:

Voters in California are nowhere near as wild-eyed leftist as the government they’ve elected. President Trump received 6 million votes in the 2024 election, a little more than 38% of the total vote, but Republicans hold just 17% of the congressional seats, 24% of the California Assembly and 25% of the state Senate.

Meaning, she thinks it's very unlikely that voters will go along with Newsom's power grab to rewrite districts himself, taking power from the voters in a special election he wants to hold, even if they are Democrats.

The voters have already decided in recent years that they would be the ones to decide the redistricting maps, not Newsom.

Shelley doesn't think it will happen at all even if Newsom gets it together for his special election.

“This is what fighting for democracy looks like,” Newsom wrote in an online post.

And this is what craven ambition looks like: Newsom proposing a snap election to discard the citizen-drawn congressional maps and substitute maps drawn by politicians, with no transparency to the public, for the next three election cycles.

There is significant and high-profile opposition.

She cited many non-partisan as well as conservative players. 

One can only hope she is right. Anyone with a record of failure like Newsom doesn't deserve anything at all from California's disgusted voters. Let's hope this will be his political Waterloo.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed