President Trump is responsible for the noxious redistricting war currently festering in multiple states. For weeks this summer, he hectored Republican lawmakers in Texas to find him five more House seats before next year’s midterms, and they scurried to do just that.
But that doesn’t mean Democrats are the only ones upset about the situation. Which is why I reached out to the handful of California Republicans most likely to lose their House seats if their Democratic-controlled state chases Texas down the redistricting tracks. How are they feeling about the rush to redraw?
“Gerrymandering is a big problem wherever it occurs. It’s a plague on democracy,” Kevin Kiley, who represents California’s Third Congressional District, told me. “It’s especially bad happening in the middle of the decade,” he said, when “partisanship is literally the only purpose.”
“What we have right now — this domino effect or this redistricting war of mutually assured destruction — that’s just total chaos,” he added.
”Where,” Mr. Kiley asked, “does this end?”
This is a politically existential question for Mr. Kiley and some of his Republican colleagues. Looking to clap back at Texas, Gov. Gavin Newsom is spearheading a plan for his state’s Democratic-led Legislature to engage in some retaliatory gerrymandering. In a Nov. 4 special election, voters will decide on Proposition 50, a measure that would sideline the state’s independent redistricting commission and make way for a new map proposed by the Legislature to add Democratic seats. The shift would be temporary. The commission’s authority would be restored after the 2030 census. But that is cold comfort for the Republicans whose constituencies are poised to be sliced and diced.
“My district will be torn into six different pieces!” Mr. Kiley said, speaking of the proposed map. “People think that’s crazy.”
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