Arnold Schwarzenegger swept into the California governor’s office in 2003 as a Republican vowing to practice what he called “post-partisan” politics.
He was the architect of the state’s nonpartisan redistricting system, which puts an independent commission, not Republican or Democratic lawmakers, in charge of drawing California’s political maps once per decade.
His success in weakening gerrymandering in California is one of the key legacies of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s seven-year tenure as governor. In the world of redistricting reform, he is an unlikely evangelist. After leaving the governor’s office, he lobbied other states to adopt nonpartisan systems and filed an amicus brief when the U.S. Supreme Court took up a landmark case on gerrymandering.
Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has floated a plan to put Mr. Schwarzenegger’s independent system on hold for the rest of the decade in favor of a set of maps that benefit Democrats. Mr. Newsom’s proposal is a response to President Trump’s efforts to get Texas to draw new districts that would help Republicans win more seats in Congress.
On Friday, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s top aide gave the first indication that the former governor could jump into the national fight over redistricting to try to save the system Mr. Schwarzenegger championed in California.
“His position is that two wrongs don’t make a right,” Daniel Ketchell, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, said in an interview. “He is still committed to independent redistricting in every state around the country. He thinks we have to get rid of gerrymandering to get rid of gridlock and have politicians who actually care about what the people think.”
Mr. Ketchell stopped short of saying the former governor would formally oppose the current governor’s plan. But his remarks signaled that a clash may be brewing between the two leaders, and raised the possibility that Mr. Schwarzenegger could become more involved by using his money, fame and political connections to campaign against Mr. Newsom’s attempt to gerrymander California.
Mr. Newsom’s spokesman said that the governor agrees with Mr. Schwarzenegger on the need for independent redistricting across the nation, but that Mr. Newsom believes that if Republicans are gerrymandering to win next year’s elections, Democrats must respond in kind.
“Governor Newsom has, his entire political career, supported independent redistricting and believes we are in a fire fight right now with Trump and Texas about to rig the election,” said Bob Salladay, Mr. Newsom’s spokesman.
Changing the map-drawing process in California is not simple. Mr. Newsom said Thursday that he was considering asking the state Legislature to place a measure on the ballot for voters to approve during a special election on Nov. 4. The plan would include new district boundaries that would be used for congressional elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030, and then return to the state’s nonpartisan map-drawing system in the next decade.
“This is not going to be done in a back room,” Mr. Newsom told reporters. “It’s going to be given to the voters for their consideration in a very transparent way, so they know exactly what they’re doing.”
If the governor succeeds in getting two-thirds of the state Legislature to put his proposal on the ballot, the outcome will be an expensive campaign this fall that places Mr. Newsom at the center of a high-profile fight against Mr. Trump.
Political operatives in Sacramento are in the early stages of preparing for a campaign. Some of the groups that supported Mr. Schwarzenegger’s independent redistricting measures back in 2008 and 2010 have formed a new coalition. And the donor who funded the push to create the independent commission created an X account last month and posted a single comment.
“Any attempt to undermine the nonpartisan California Redistricting Commission will be strongly opposed in the courts and at the ballot box,” wrote the donor, Charles Munger Jr., a Republican whose father was the billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
Since leaving office, Mr. Schwarzenegger has returned to acting, created a fitness app and remained engaged with some of the political issues that animated him as governor. He recently returned from Brazil, where he met with local leaders on a climate initiative he created while in office. And he founded a public policy institute at the University of Southern California that focuses on issues including redistricting reform.
On Friday, that group — the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy — convened a panel of political scientists to discuss the state of redistricting battles across the country.
The session included a Democratic state lawmaker from Texas, Representative Gene Wu, who said the danger of gerrymandering is that it makes elections so safe for politicians that they don’t need to be responsive to their constituents.
“Nobody will be listened to,” Mr. Wu said. “Everything will just be party politics.”
Rob Stutzman, who was Mr. Schwarzenegger’s communications director as governor, said he doesn’t expect him to back down. Mr. Schwarzenegger, he said, finds Republican gerrymanders just as problematic as those by Democrats.
“Fighting gerrymandering is a defining legacy issue of his time as governor and his post-governorship,” Mr. Stutzman said in an interview.
“So I would expect that he will at a minimum view skeptically and possibly actively oppose any effort to set aside the voter-approved citizens commission model and to seek to gerrymander the state.”
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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