Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is ready to put some muscle into the effort to stop Newsom’s gerrymander plan.
A rnold Schwarzenegger is vowing to come out of retirement to play a starring role opposing Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to scrap the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission. More than 60 percent of Californians approved the commission in 2010, which was Arnold’s last year as governor.
Newsom says that this November, he plans to put a measure on the ballot asking voters to approve a new set of congressional districts. They will have been carefully crafted by the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature to force out of office up to five of California’s nine remaining Republican House members. Currently Democrats have a 43–9 majority in the delegation.
Schwarzenegger was the driving force behind the 2010 creation of the redistricting commission. He began speaking out on the issue early in his governorship and clearly views any attack on it as a personal affront.
“He calls gerrymandering evil, and he means that. He thinks it’s truly evil for politicians to take power from people,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Daniel Ketchell told Politico.
Newsom claims he is acting in the interests of “democracy” and only in response to an effort by Texas Republicans to redraw that state’s congressional map to squeeze out five sitting Democratic House members.
But 2028 presidential politics is also clearly playing a role. If Newsom succeeds in redrawing the state’s congressional map with five new blue-leaning districts ahead of next year’s midterms, that alone could be the deciding factor in who controls the House (where the GOP has a narrow 219–212 majority).
“If he delivers Democrats the House, he can argue in the 2028 primaries he stopped Trump’s progress and is the real leader of the Democratic Party,” Jon Fleischman, who runs the California news aggregator FlashReport.org, told me.
Ketchell said Schwarzenegger’s stance is consistent and also is in accord with good government: “He’s opposed to what Texas is doing, and he’s opposed to the idea that California would race to the bottom to do the same thing.” Having the legislature take over the drawing of districts again would set a risky precedent that erodes trust in elections — two wrongs do not make a right.
Newsom also has to factor in the issue of the lawsuits that would be filed at the state and local levels if his measure were to prevail. “Expect lawsuits aimed at slowing the process enough to prevent new maps in time for 2026,” said Fleischman. “Trump’s Justice Department would likely weigh in, and all roads eventually lead to a conservative U.S. Supreme Court.”
Democrats claim to have taken polls that show in a low-turnout special election this November, voters would back their audacious move to gerrymander the state. Their confidence stems from the fact that of California’s 23 million registered voters, 45 percent identify as Democrats, 25 percent as Republicans, 22 percent as “no party preference,” and 7 percent with minor parties.
But while Californians lean left when voting for partisan offices (Kamala Harris won 58 percent in the state last November), they often vote in surprising ways on ballot measures.
In 2020, California progressives put Proposition 16 on the ballot. It would have repealed the prohibition against preferential treatment based on race that was passed by 55 percent of the state’s voters in 1996. But the proposed repeal of the prohibition against racial preferences was rejected by a larger margin of 57 percent to 43 percent, despite the fact that the electorate had grown more liberal in the intervening quarter century.
So what happened? After all, Prop 16 had all the advantages. Virtually the entire political and media establishment endorsed it. Proponents spent $23 million. Opponents spent only $1.8 million and had zero money for television ads.
A post-election survey by the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley provided some answers.
The Los Angeles Times summarized the results as follows: “The findings of the survey provide the clearest evidence so far of the disconnect between those political leaders and many of their ostensible followers.” That skepticism extended across racial groups. Pluralities of Latinos, Asians, and whites thought repealing a ban on race preferences was a bad idea. Only 56 percent of African Americans thought it was a good idea.
It’s safe to say that given the national stakes surrounding Newsom’s possible California gerrymander, an opposition campaign would be well funded — unlike the effort to defeat Proposition 16.
Charles Munger Jr., the son of Warren Buffett’s late business partner, helped fund the 2010 effort to create the independent commission. He wrote on X last month: “Any attempt to undermine the nonpartisan California Redistricting Commission will be strongly opposed in the courts and at the ballot box.”
Britain’s Independent newspaper reports that “Schwarzenegger is reportedly preparing to be the face of a ‘No’ campaign.” It would emphasize how the new gerrymandered districts would divide communities of interest in ways only an abstract artist would love. Another line of attack could be the $200 million a special election would cost California at a time when its state budget is in serious deficit.
And we can already envision the kind of showmanship any ads featuring Arnold, the former action hero, would appear in: Dressed vaguely as the iconic star of The Terminator, he could cast a steely-eyed gaze at the camera and intone, “I’m back!”
If I were Gavin Newsom, I might go back to my pollsters and consultants and ask them to run another set of focus groups on just how the public would react to his brazen power play.