California’s governor hopes that his new gerrymander will help his 2028 presidential prospects.
E veryone knows why President Trump has applied pressure on Texas Republicans to conduct a mid-decade revision of the state’s congressional district lines. Trump remembers the results of the GOP’s loss of the House majority in 2018, during his first term: two impeachments (though he wasn’t convicted in the Senate), endless oversight hearings and subpoenas of his staff, and the prevention of any domestic legislation he hoped to pass. A new Texas map could shift as many as five seats in favor of the Republicans. In a House currently divided between 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats, those seats could make the difference in who controls the chamber.
Trump’s bold move is being matched by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is pushing his state’s Democratic legislature to redistrict the Golden State and eliminate up to five of the state’s nine Republican districts. Newsom insists that his move is intended to save democracy (and not just the Democrats). In a podcast last week, he even referenced the historical example of how Adolf Hitler dismantled German democracy in 53 days. But everyone in California knows that Newsom’s real concern has far more to do with the Democratic presidential primaries he hopes to enter in 2028. If he can engineer a new Democratic gerrymander in California, he can appeal to the party’s liberal base by appearing to be Trump’s most successful opponent.
Should Newsom pull off what he calls his Election Rigging Response Act, he may well become the new darling of progressives who are looking for a 2028 champion.
But it will be a lot harder for Newsom to reshape California politics than it will be for Texas Republicans to do so in their state. California uses an independent redistricting commission — a reform enacted in 2010, by 61 percent of voters, to take the process out of the hands of politicians. Newsom’s plan, therefore, would require the passage of a statewide ballot initiative this fall that asks voters to hand that power back to the Democratic-controlled legislature.
The major problem for Newsom is that a new Politico/Citrin poll finds that Californians favor keeping the commission, by a wide margin — 64 percent to 36 percent. A stunning 72 percent of independent voters would like to keep the congressional mapmaking out of the hands of legislators. There is rare bipartisan agreement on the issue, with 66 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats backing the commission. “If this is the starting point,” then Democrats “will have a struggle,” pollster Jack Citrin says.
Newsom promises that Democrats will spend tens of millions of dollars to promote the measure as the ultimate anti-Trump response. But former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — a strong original opponent of partisan gerrymandering — has called the move a naked power grab, and he might even star in commercials against it. (Although he is a Republican, the Terminator endorsed Kamala Harris for president last year, so he might not be easily dismissed as a partisan.)
Noting that any complex California ballot measure must overcome the bias that people have to vote “no” if they’re in doubt, California Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio calls the measure “a gigantic roll of the dice” for Newsom. “This is not good long-term governing,” he tells Politico. Other Democratic insiders are also skeptical. Ed Kilgore, a former Democratic consultant who is now a columnist at New York magazine, warns that Democrats have a narrow window of time to convince voters to back their new map, since voters will begin receiving and filling out the mail ballots in early October. “To put it mildly, a defeat at the polls would be devastating to Democrats in California and everywhere, and would likely put an end to Newsom’s well-known presidential ambitions,” he notes. “Newsom’s gambit will give Republicans high moral ground and a good-government cause with which they can identify.”
Voter suspicions about politicians rigging the game will only be exacerbated by the way Newsom and his allies are rushing their proposal to the ballot. Deadlines will have to be abandoned and rewritten by the legislature, opening the measure to court challenges. As Dan Walters, the dean of the California press corps, reports, “California’s new maps are being drafted in secret, a sharp contrast with the months-long public deliberations four years ago of the state’s redistricting commission.” The maps will only be “revealed briefly before the Legislature votes,” and there will be “no plans to allow them to be modified before adoption.”
Gerrymandering is a sin against good government that both parties engage in as frequently as they can get away with it. Schwarzenegger makes it clear that he opposes what Texas Republicans are doing. But his message to Californians is that he doesn’t think Newsom’s solution — to return redistricting to politicians — is wise. “We are not going to go into a stinking contest with a skunk,” he says. “We are moving forward.”