Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democratic lawmakers and their allies on Thursday launched a special election campaign to ask California voters to approve new congressional districts to decrease the size of the state’s Republican delegation — a move that could determine control of Congress next year and stymie President Trump’s agenda.
The effort is a response to GOP-led states, notably Texas, attempting to redraw their congressional maps to decrease Democratic ranks in the narrowly divided U.S. House of Representatives at Trump’s behest.
Newsom, speaking to a fired-up partisan crowd at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, said the effort by Republicans represented a desperate effort by a failed president to hold on to power by keeping Congress under his control.
“He doesn’t play by a different set of rules. He doesn’t believe in the rules,” Newsom said. “And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire.”
The governor was joined by U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California; Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-San Bernardino), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and union leaders essential to providing the funding and volunteers to convince Californians to vote for the “Election Rigging Response Act.” The ballot measure would temporarily toss out the congressional districts enacted by the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
“Our union stands in full support of this ballot initiative. We are ready to do whatever it takes to stop this power grab and fight back against any and all attacks on our democracy, on our students and on public education,” said Erika Jones, secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Assn., which represents 310,000 public school teachers.
She said schoolchildren have suffered because of the Trump administration’s immigration raids, as well as cuts to healthcare funding, after-school programs and teacher training.
“Our students deserve better,” she said. “The majority of Americans are not with him on these vicious attacks. So what does Trump want to do? Rig the next election and steal our right to fair representation? He wants to stack the deck to keep slashing public services to pad the pockets of his billionaire donors.”
Outside the political rally, Border Patrol agents gathered and arrested at least one person. Newsom told the crowd inside that he doubted it was a coincidence.
Supporters of the independent commission that draws California’s congressional maps criticized Democrats’ efforts to conduct a highly unusual mid-decade redistricting plan. For Newsom’s plan to work, the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote in favor of placing the measure on the ballot in a special election in November, and then the final decision will be up to California voters.
“Two wrongs do not make a right, and California shouldn’t stoop to the same tactics as Texas. Instead, we should push other states to adopt our independent, nonpartisan commission model across the country,” said Amy Thoma, spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, which includes Charles Munger Jr., the son of a billionaire who bankrolled the ballot measure that created the independent commission.
Munger will vigorously oppose any proposal to circumvent the independent commission, she said.
Since voters approved independent congressional redistricting in 2010, California’s districts have been drawn once per decade, after the U.S. census, by a panel split between registered Democrats, registered Republicans and voters without a party preference.
The commission is not allowed to consider the partisan makeup of the districts, nor protecting incumbents, but instead looks at “communities of interest,” logical geographical boundaries and the Voting Rights Act.
The current map was drawn in 2021 and went into effect for the 2022 election.
Newsom is pushing to suspend those district lines and put a new map tailored to favor Democrats in front of voters on Nov. 4. That plan, he has said, would have a “trigger,” meaning a redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own.
Sara Sadhwani, who served on the redistricting commission that approved the current congressional district boundaries, said that while she is deeply proud of the work she and her colleagues completed, she approved of Newsom’s effort to temporarily put the commission’s work aside because of the unprecedented threats to American democracy.
“These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” said Sadhwani, citing the immigration raids, the encouragement of political violence and the use of National Guard troops in American cities. “And if that wasn’t enough, we are watching executive overreach that no doubt is making our Founding Fathers turn in their graves, and we have to take action. These are the hallmarks of a democracy in peril.”
If voters approved the ballot measure, the new maps would be in effect until the independent commission redraws the congressional boundaries in 2031.
To meet Newsom’s ambitious deadline, the Legislature would need to pass the ballot language by a two-thirds majority and send it to Newsom’s desk by Aug. 22. The governor’s office and legislative leaders are confident in their ability to meet this threshold in the state Assembly and Senate, where Democrats have a supermajority.
Newsom first mentioned the idea in mid-July, meaning the whole process could be done in about five weeks. Generally, redrawing the state’s electoral lines and certifying a measure to appear before voters on the ballot are processes that take months, if not more than a year.
Trump’s prodding of Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps to create five new GOP seats has kicked off redistricting battles across the nation.
That includes Florida, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri, where Republicans control the statehouse, and New York, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington, where Democrats are in power.
Democratic lawmakers in Texas fled the state to block the Republican-led legislature from approving a new map that would gerrymander congressional districts to favor of the GOP. The Democrats maneuver worked, because it prevented the legislature from have a quorum necessary to approve the measure. A second special session is expected to begin Friday. The absent lawmakers are facing threats of fines, civil arrest warrants and calls for being removed from office; Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has vowed to call repeated special sessions until the map is approved.
In California, the gerrymandering plan taking shape behind closed doors would increase the Democratic Party’s dominance in the state by making five House districts more favorable to Democrats, according to a draft map reviewed by The Times.
Those changes could reduce by more than half the number of Republicans representing California in Congress. The state has the nation’s largest congressional delegation, with 52 members. Nine are Republicans.
A Northern California district represented by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) could shift to the south, shedding rural, conservative voters near the Oregon border and picking up left-leaning cities in Sonoma County. Sacramento-area Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) would see his district shift toward the bluer center of the city.
The plan would also add more Democrats to the Central Valley district represented by Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), who has been a perennial target for Democrats.
Southern California would see some of the biggest changes: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) would see his safely Republican district in San Diego County become more purple through the addition of liberal Palm Springs. And Reps. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) and Ken Calvert (R-Corona) would be drawn into the same district, which could force the lawmakers to run against each other.
The plan would also shore up Democrats who represent swing districts, such as Reps. Dave Min (D-Irvine) and Derek Tran (D-Orange).
It could also add another district in southeast Los Angeles County, in the area that elected the first Latino member of Congress from California in modern history. A similar seat was eliminated during the 2021 redistricting.
Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report from Sacramento.
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