Gavin Newsom’s Prop 50 gambit comes back to haunt California
Newsom poured hundreds of millions California couldn’t afford into Prop 50 to kneecap Republicans, only to watch the mapmaking arms race blow up in Democrats’ faces.
Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50 has delivered the opposite of the congressional dominance he sought. By spending hundreds of millions of dollars the state doesn’t have to scrap California’s independent redistricting commission, Newsom handed map control to the dominant party and eliminated roughly four Republican seats. The move was sold as retaliation against Texas Republicans, yet it ignited a nationwide redistricting war that Democrats are now losing.
Newsom didn’t wait for the Texas legislature to act. He rushed Prop 50 forward even after the Department of Justice warned that the targeted Texas districts, drawn to guarantee minority representation, were likely unconstitutional. Once California voters approved the measure, the score stood even: Texas had removed about four Democratic seats, California had removed about four Republican ones. A truce was possible. Democrats chose escalation instead.
The party’s next target was Virginia, where “moderate” Democrat Abigail Spanberger had explicitly promised not to gerrymander. Newsom backed an aggressive redraw that would have converted the state’s evenly split 6-5 Democratic-Republican delegation into a 10-1 rout. On Friday, Virginia’s Supreme Court struck the map down. The Republican gains triggered by that overreach, however, are likely to stand.
Republican-led states that had stayed on the sidelines responded in kind. Florida quickly approved a new congressional map projected to cost Democrats four seats. With the U.S. Supreme Court traditionally reluctant to second-guess state legislative mapmaking, those new Republican advantages are poised to survive legal challenges. The net result is that Democrats face the realistic prospect of losing ground in the midterms rather than consolidating power.
Newsom cast the entire enterprise as principled defense against Republican power grabs. In practice, he temporarily dismantled an independent commission, spent money California cannot afford, and led his party into a strategic cul-de-sac. The voters he disenfranchised in the process may soon watch their state’s influence in Washington shrink because of the backlash he courted.
When Democrats search for the architect of this self-inflicted wound, the address is in Sacramento. The question now is how many California seats the midterms will cost them before the lesson sinks in.
Original reporting: New York Post.
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