Copyright The Boston Globe
Backers of Prop. 50 are asking Californians to temporarily overrule the state’s independent redistricting commission — one voters themselves created at the ballot box in 2010 — and approve new maps that would carve up Republican districts, likely netting Democrats five House seats in the process. The redistricting is the only question on the statewide ballot before voters on Tuesday; if passed, the new maps would be in effect for the next three congressional elections. If Democrats are successful, the thinking goes, they’ll be on their way to neutralizing the redistricting that Texas Republicans did and preserving their chances to flip the House in 2026, their best chance to check Trump in his second term. Underscoring the national stakes, Newsom’s Ballot Measure Committee’s closing ad featured some of the party’s most prominent figures: from former President Barack Obama to Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York to Senator Elizabeth Warren. “You have the power to give America a fair midterm,” Warren says in the ad. But California Democrats also believe Prop. 50 has become their best chance yet to show the rest of the country that the resistance to Trump has, finally, gotten some teeth. The considerable energy and engagement around the ballot question, apparent across the state, speaks to how hungry many Californians are for a victory with national significance. “The Democrats that we talk to and the volunteers that come to the door are engaged because it gives us an opportunity to do something,” said Val Hinshaw, a coordinator at the Sonoma County Democratic Party overseeing local get-out-the-vote efforts for Prop. 50. “We’ve been waiting for Democrats to stand up and fight back, alright, so this is a way for us to do that,” she said. “So they don’t need convincing. It’s, ‘How can I help?’ ” Representative Jared Huffman, a Democrat who represents parts of Sonoma County, said Prop. 50 is “crushing it” and while he would like a big, statement-making victory, “the win is the most important thing.” “That’s what’s going to send the message, that the California Democrats, and anti-Trump independents, are so morally clear about this moment that they pass this extraordinary initiative, because this is extraordinary,” he said. That much is true on several levels: statewide, California voters have never before gone to the polls in an off-election year to decide the fate of just one ballot question. They also haven’t had much chance in recent years to shape national politics in such a direct way. Most public polls of Prop. 50 show it passing; one released last week from Emerson College found it hitting 57 percent support. Given the state’s blue hue, the measure would likely pass easily just with the support of anti-Trump independents and Democrats. California is in for major changes under Prop. 50, even if they’re temporary. State Democratic lawmakers have already drawn new maps if Prop. 50 passes that would eliminate five GOP-held congressional seats — likely reducing Republicans to just four seats total out of the state’s massive 52-member delegation. Few places illustrate the on-the-ground changes better than Sonoma County, on the northern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. The county would be split into three districts extending far into swaths of interior northern California, thus breaking up Republican districts by separating Republican voters and adding in Democratic ones. Huffman’s district would be among the most transformed, taking in both blue coastal enclaves like Sonoma and ruby-red rural counties in the northeast of the state that are hundreds of miles apart and have little in common culturally or politically. He would have the distinction of representing both California’s second-most Democratic county and its second-most Republican county. “This moment is so much bigger than me or the contours of my little congressional district,” Huffman said. “This is about whether American democracy survives.” These are the types of misshapen, easy-to-ridicule districts Californians wished to avoid by creating a politically balanced, citizen-led redistricting commission in 2010. It’s a different system than many states, including blue bastions such as New York and Illinois, where Democratic politicians have created favorable maps for themselves. Hinshaw, the Sonoma County Democratic volunteer, said that emphasizing the temporary nature of Prop. 50 often helps persuade people who were concerned about overriding the independent commission process. “Sometimes we feel that blue states are doing the right things while red states are doing what they want to overrule and override their own constituents,” she said. “So it was important for us to be able to understand the significant details of the ballot measure, which means that it’s temporary, and the redistricting commission will be reinstated back in 2030 for the next census.” With chances of defeating the measure flagging, opponents of Prop. 50 are framing the fight in different terms. The most prominent public face of the No on 50 effort is Carl DeMaio, a pugnacious Republican state lawmaker from San Diego. At a town hall rally in Santa Rosa on Friday, DeMaio avoided the argument that the measure should be defeated to preserve Republicans’ chances of holding Congress. “Prop. 50 is not about Trump or Texas,” said DeMaio. Instead, he described the stakes as part of a broader “war” to “take back our state,” in which Prop. 50 was just one of several instances of what he called overreach by a power-hungry Newsom and a corrupt state Democratic establishment. The most direct pitch to vote no on Prop. 50, underscored in TV ads run by DeMaio’s group Reform California, is “two wrongs don’t make a right.” In Santa Rosa, DeMaio asked attendees, many of whom were wearing pro-Trump and anti-Newsom hats and buttons, to appeal to Democrats’ and independents’ sense of fairness when they were out canvassing votes. He offered a suggested pitch: “I bet you acknowledge that it’s wrong, but you think that Trump is so bad and Texas is doing it, so you think that the end justifies the means.” Republicans are not optimistic about success, however; even DeMaio conceded Prop. 50 is likely to pass. “They all know it’s not right, but they need to get back at Trump,” said Peggy Maddock, of Healdsburg, a retired teacher, who was volunteering at the No on 50 event. “If it passes, Republicans, their voices will not be heard. It silences us.” But the same arguments could be easily made against Republicans in other states who sparked the redistricting back-and-forth in the first place. Over the summer, Texas GOP legislators, urged on by Governor Greg Abbott and Trump, enacted new maps that eliminated five Democratic districts by slicing up Democratic voters in urban areas and parsing them out to GOP-majority districts. Other Republican-led states have attempted to follow suit, hoping to further pad Republicans’ slim House majority. Moreover, if the Supreme Court overturns the principle of majority-minority districts in a case before it on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republicans could pick up even more seats, granting themselves a distinct advantage even with California’s changes. With other Democratic-led states like Illinois waffling on drawing new lines, California could represent Democrats’ only real chance to negate GOP efforts. At the anti-Prop. 50 rally, some attendees did allow the consideration that California Democrats would not have struck back — avoiding this contentious political fight in the first place — had Republicans elsewhere not moved first. But they declined to criticize Republicans in Texas and instead eschewed the broader political context of the redistricting fight. “Texas is doing it. Let Texas do whatever they’re going to do,” said Dave Salaun, a Sonoma County GOP volunteer and retired police officer.
