Representative Ami Bera has been in Congress for more than a decade, but he still isn’t sure which House district he’ll run for next year in California.
Dr. Bera, a six-term Democrat and a physician, might stick with his Sixth District, based in Sacramento County. Or, he said, he might challenge Representative Kevin Kiley, a Republican whose largely rural conservative Third District could soon gain a large swath of Democratic neighborhoods.
A Nov. 4 ballot measure could scramble the political landscape in California by gerrymandering its congressional districts and creating new possibilities even for longtime House members. Before a single vote has been tallied, the shadowboxing has already begun in earnest among California Democrats, who are looking to gain as many as five seats in 2026 if the maps change.
Prospective candidates are jockeying for position, letting it be known that they have eyes on districts that don’t actually exist yet. Some have declared their designs publicly by opening campaign accounts and rolling out websites with endorsements. Others have worked behind the scenes, leaving campaign strategists to signal to one another who might run for which seat and even begin passing around opposition research — as long as voters approve Proposition 50.
“You’ve got a bunch of people in a holding pattern,” said Dan Newman, a Democratic consultant in California and an adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has championed the ballot measure. “It’s like they’re trying to complete a puzzle where they’re missing a piece.”
Proposition 50 has prompted a free-for-all among state Democrats, from veteran lawmakers to first-time candidates and failed former challengers. It was created as a response to a similar gerrymandering effort passed by Republicans in Texas and spurred by President Trump in an attempt to bolster their party’s control of Congress next year.
Mr. Newsom has raised far more money than Republican opponents of Proposition 50, and recent polls show a majority of voters approve of the measure. Still, California elections can be difficult to predict, and Republicans have vowed to file lawsuits if it passes.
The additional job opportunities for Democrats are obvious if Proposition 50 passes. Beyond the House possibilities, there would be a trickle-down effect through vacancies in other seats left behind by the new Democratic House candidates.
“Even if you aren’t running for the congressional district, ‘Maybe so-and-so will run, and I can run for their seat,’” said Paul Mitchell, a Democratic data guru who is considered the architect of the redrawn congressional maps.
House candidates have some flexibility because they do not have to live in the districts they represent, as long as they live in the same state.
If Dr. Bera leaves the Sixth District, who might run for that seat? The political class in Sacramento has taken note that the Wikipedia page of Angelique Ashby, a Democratic state senator, was edited around the time that the new map was unveiled to note her childhood in Roseville, a large suburb in Placer County that would become part of the new Sixth District.
Ms. Ashby has not publicly indicated her intentions. “The focus of California voters should be on Proposition 50,” Ms. Ashby said in an interview, “and any decision about congressional candidates in new districts would be improper before voters had an opportunity to weigh in.”
Not everyone agrees.
Dr. Richard Pan, a former Democratic state senator and a pediatrician who made headlines pushing to eliminate religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates, announced two weeks ago that he would run for the Third District seat that Dr. Bera is considering.
Dr. Pan said he had jumped into the race after growing frustrated with the government shutdown and cuts to Medicaid. Declaring early, he said, was “a signal to the Republican congresspeople, particularly Kevin Kiley, that he’s going to have an opponent — a serious opponent.”
But announcing early can be tricky: Dr. Pan gave an ambiguous answer when a television reporter pressed him on whether he would still run if Proposition 50 failed and the district remained overwhelmingly Republican.
In Southern California, at least a half-dozen Democrats are vying to defeat Representative Ken Calvert, a Republican whose Riverside County district would disintegrate under the Proposition 50 redistricting. The field includes several candidates, like Brandon Riker, who are in the unusual position of running against two incumbents at once.
Mr. Riker, an investment manager, lives in the heavily Democratic Palm Springs area currently represented by Mr. Calvert. If Proposition 50 fails and the maps stay the same, Mr. Riker said, he will run against Mr. Calvert in his existing district.
If Proposition 50 passes, his neighborhood would be drawn into the San Diego-area district held by Representative Darrell Issa, another vulnerable Republican. He has said he will continue his campaign in that instance — but switch his focus from Mr. Calvert to Mr. Issa.
Mr. Riker has hedged his bets, already starting to host events and recruit volunteers in areas represented by Mr. Issa.
But he said that both Republicans were vulnerable to similar attacks and that voters understood the unusual situation.
“People get that it’s kind of quirky, that all this change is happening, but they want to know that whoever is going to represent them is listening to them,” Mr. Riker said.
Mr. Issa has several other Democratic challengers who have declared their campaigns, including Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego city councilwoman, and Ammar Campa-Najjar, who has run for Congress twice unsuccessfully, against Mr. Issa and another Republican.
Mr. Campa-Najjar has a deep-pocketed ally: He is in a relationship with Representative Sara Jacobs of San Diego, the granddaughter of a co-founder of Qualcomm and one of the wealthiest members of Congress.
Mr. Campa-Najjar is not the only challenger back for another round after having lost before. Audrey Denney, a consultant and educator who ran against Representative Doug LaMalfa, a Republican, in 2018 and 2020, is trying to oust him again. But this time, Proposition 50 would add a swath of liberal Bay Area voters to his rural Northern California district.
“It wasn’t a viable option for me to run for a third time in 2022,” Ms. Denney said. “That calculus definitely changed when I got a look at what the new maps look like.”
And Mr. Mitchell, the Democratic data expert, said he had been flooded with phone calls from would-be candidates in recent months, wanting to know how they would fare in the Proposition 50 districts he drew.
“I’ve had candidates that ran in previous cycles call me up and say, ‘Hey, you think I can win in this district now?’” Mr. Mitchell said. “I’m like, ‘Well, go for it!’”
Christian Martinez, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, suggested the new maps amounted to a “power grab” by Mr. Newsom.
“Democrats are too busy drawing themselves safe seats instead of fighting for working families,” Mr. Martinez said.
The state’s capital region would become a hive of political activity if Proposition 50 passes. Several other Democrats are said to be mulling congressional runs in one district or another, including Thien Ho, the Sacramento County district attorney, and Jim Cooper, the local sheriff. Mr. Bera’s wife, Janine, was considering a bid at one point, Mr. Bera said, but decided against it.
Mr. Bera said his thought process had included making sure that his party had strong candidates in all of the open races and that heavyweight candidates would not all square off in the same primary.
“Who are the other Democrats that are considering running?” he said. “Where would they be the most competitive?”
The Sacramento area is ripe for gerrymandering districts away from Republicans: It’s not hard for mapmakers to draw swaths of deep-blue Sacramento into nearby rural and suburban Republican areas to the east and north. That’s what would turn Mr. Kiley’s conservative district into a Democratic-tilting one.
It’s little surprise, then, that Mr. Kiley has emerged as a vocal opponent of gerrymandering in any state, arguing that it would cause districts like his own to be “butchered.” He said he planned to run for re-election but was not thinking about the Proposition 50 maps.
“I’m consciously not thinking about a hypothetical scenario that we’re doing everything possible to avoid,” he said.
While Mr. Kiley did not want to discuss scenarios, strategists and Sacramento-area politicians have suggested that he may wind up running in a different district if Proposition 50 passes.
Matt Rexroad, a Republican political consultant in California, suggested that the frenzy was being intensified by the fact that the state’s Democratic congressional delegation had held on for so long. Younger Democrats biding their time and looking for any opening for higher office may finally have gotten tired of watching incumbents run for re-election, he said, pointing to intraparty challenges against California Democrats like Representatives Doris Matsui, Mike Thompson, Brad Sherman, and Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker.
“Eventually people just say, ‘Screw it, I’m running,’” Mr. Rexroad said.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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