Democrats are banking in a big way on California and its governor, Gavin Newsom, to help them fight back against Republicans in a burgeoning gerrymandering arms race.
Texas Democrats are reportedly considering ending their walkout, which was intended to prevent the Texas GOP’s power grab but never really stood a chance of halting new GOP-friendly maps. That puts even more focus on Newsom, who signaled late Tuesday that he’s now pressing forward with his effort to redraw California’s maps to retaliate against Texas Republicans’ effort.
But it’s a risky bet – both for Democrats and for Newsom.
And you could understand if Republicans are inclined to try to call their bluff.
California provides Democrats’ best opportunity to retaliate against Texas Republicans’ extraordinary effort to gerrymander a more Republican congressional map in the middle of the decade. That’s for a few reasons.
One is that California could feasibly offset five new Republican districts in Texas with five new Democratic-leaning ones of their own. Another is that Democrats simply don’t have many opportunities to fight back elsewhere, to the extent this arms race spreads to other states. And the third is that California provides the threat of hitting back quickly – in time for the 2026 midterm elections – unlike in a state like, say, New York.
Democrats are clearly hoping this threat at least gives Republicans pause.
But what if Democrats and Newsom actually follow through? That’s where history suggests things could get messy.
The problem for them is that, unlike Texas Republicans, they need to jump through more hoops to make this happen. California Democrats would first need to get voters to sign off on a ballot measure in November to get rid of the state’s redistricting commission. Newsom is expressing confidence that it will pass.
“I think the voters will approve it. I think the voters understand what’s at stake,” the governor said Friday. “We live in the most un-Trump state in America.”
But the trick here is somehow getting voters to back a more politicized redistricting process – to effectively vote in favor of gerrymandering. And that’s something they’ve been reluctant to do, including in California.
More than a dozen states have put redistricting commissions on the ballot in recent decades, and voters have supported them about two-thirds of the time, according to Ballotpedia. When they’ve rejected them, it’s generally been in red states rather than blue ones like California.
The most recent vote on such a commission came last year, in Ohio. And voters rejected the commission. But that seemed to owe in large part to slanted language applied to the measure by the state’s Republican leaders. That language suggested the new commission was actually going to lead to more gerrymandering.
(The language described the measure as an effort to “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering” and said the new commission would be “required to gerrymander the boundaries” of the state’s districts.)
That language seemed to matter. A late poll that asked about the commission in a more neutral way showed voters supported the idea by 23 points, 57%-34% – right before they rejected the actual measure by 8 points, 54%-46%.
Of course, California voters wouldn’t be asked to install a new redistricting commission; they’d be asked to get rid of one.
But history looms there, too. Indeed, California voters have already rejected such an effort by a wide margin, back in 2010.
California voters had narrowly approved a redistricting commission in 2008, and the 2010 ballot featured a measure to repeal that ballot measure, Proposition 27. It failed 59%-41%.
The dynamics today are clearly at least somewhat different. Newsom seems to believe left-leaning voters can be convinced that turnabout is fair play and that Texas’ gambit is worth re-politicizing the process in California.
But that could be a difficult trick, particularly given how tuned-out Americans generally are on redistricting. Huge majorities dislike gerrymandering, but polls also suggest they don’t follow it too closely.
Empty seats are seen as a Texas House meeting is called to order at the state Capitol in Austin on Tuesday, August 5. Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state to protest a proposed Republican redistricting plan. – Brandon Bell/Getty Images
How many California voters who like the idea of a more independent redistricting process are going to understand the situation in Texas well enough and conclude they should scrap that principle in the name of political expediency? The 2024 Ohio example suggests the prospect of voting in favor of gerrymandering is a big hurdle.
And the risks here extend to Newsom.
This is his big play on the national stage right now. He’s making a huge show of it, including trolling President Donald Trump and Republicans with some very Trump-esque missives on social media on Tuesday night.
But imagine a situation in which the voters don’t go along with it and reject the ballot measure. That would be a huge setback for the perception of Newsom’s political prowess as he gears up for what many believe is likely to be a 2028 presidential campaign. Such a failure would also likely embolden other Republican-controlled states to press forward in the gerrymandering arms race, knowing that Democrats can’t really fight back.
Newsom seems confident he can make it happen. But as mentioned, Democrats don’t have a lot of great options to try to fight back against Texas Republicans’ gambit. So it’s understandable if they feel that they have to try something.
It’s just the something is very complicated – and would provide a real test for Newsom.
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