Governor Gavin Newsom says California must counter GOP efforts to redraw congressional maps

Governor Gavin Newsom says Democrats can’t sit back and watch as Republican-led states, including Texas, make plans to redraw their congressional districts, a process that could dramatically swing power to the right in the U.S. House of Representatives. Instead, the governor said on Friday, California should “fight fire with fire” and reshape its own districts as a countermeasure.

Newsom argued California’s independent redistricting commission — a commission he previously supported — puts Democrats at a disadvantage in the U.S. House. The commission is designed to draw districts fairly, rather than manipulating boundaries to favor one political party, a process known as gerrymandering. In California, the process takes place at the start of a new decade, and typically not midway through.

 He called what could happen in Texas, where President Donald Trump is backing GOP efforts to aggressively redraw district maps, a “five-alarm fire for democracy.” 

“If we don’t put a stake into the heart of this administration, there may not be an election in 2028,” Newsom said at a press conference outside the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento. “They’re not screwing around. We cannot afford to screw around either. We have got to fight fire with fire.” 

Newsom was joined on Friday by Texas’ Democratic congressional delegation. While Newsom didn’t lay out a specific plan for California, he floated the possibility of a ballot initiative to undo the state’s current system. 

Is California an outlier? 

California is one of only 10 states that have an independent redistricting commission. Most of those states are controlled by Democrats, which puts that party at a disadvantage compared to GOP-led states willing to gerrymander to pick up more House seats. 

If Newsom pushes forward on efforts to redraw California’s maps mid-cycle, it wouldn’t be the first state to do so. 

“We have historic examples in Texas and Ohio where state lawmakers have tried to redraw district lines essentially mid-cycle in order to increase or maintain political power,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and constitutional law expert. 

What makes California different is that its voters passed two ballot measures giving the power to draw district lines to an independent redistricting commission. The most recent of these measures in 2010 passed with over 60% support and transferred the task of congressional redistricting from the legislature and governor to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. 

This would be the first time a governor presiding over a state with an independent redistricting commission is considering getting rid of the commission. 

Would voters back it? 

Paul Mitchell is the vice president of Political Data, Inc., a voter data firm in California. He said he believes Newsom may be serious, especially if Texas moves forward. He also thinks voters could be open to at least a temporary change. 

“Voters have always liked the commission,” he said. “Yet, voters are so offended by what’s happening in Texas right now that they seem willing to hit pause on the commission.”

Mitchell noted that a strategic redraw might help not just Democrats but also communities of color. He said in Sacramento, for example, redrawing U.S. Representative Kevin Kiley’s rural Sierra Nevada-based district to include some additional suburban communities in eastern Sacramento County, Roseville, Folsom and Placerville could flip it from red to blue.

In Los Angeles, Mitchell said Democrats could restore a Latino-majority district the commission previously eliminated. That change, he argued, could help elect another Latino representative in Los Angeles County, likely at the expense of a Republican seat in the Inland Empire. 

Still, Mitchell said he is skeptical voters would support permanently eliminating the commission. 

Political posturing? 

Wesley Hussey, a political science professor at Sacramento State University, sees this more as political theater than a policy proposal. 

“I don’t think this is a good idea from Governor Newsom, but I think he likes to throw out ideas and kind of openly speculate about them,” he said. “He’s done this with the constitutional amendment proposal to change the way we purchase guns and ammunition that really hasn’t gone anywhere.”

That 2023 proposal, called the Right to Safety amendment, sought to enshrine universal background checks and waiting periods into the U.S. Constitution. It would require support from 33 other states to even be considered. 

“He likes being in the spotlight, he likes throwing out ideas and he likes being in the public conversation,” the professor added. “He thinks that might help him if he runs for president, but I also think he’s being somewhat strategic, maybe suggesting this and encouraging others to think about this as a way to convince Republicans to back down.”

He warned that if Democrats moved forward, they’d be forced to draw maps so aggressively gerrymandered that it would even make some supporters upset. 

“We’re talking about combining the Democratic coast and having lines so gerrymandered inland crossing counties and cities and geographic boundaries,” he explained. 

Hussey said the bigger problem is California’s slowing growth. The state could lose as many as four House seats in the 2030 reapportionment because other states are adding population much faster. 

“This is what happened to New York for basically the last 70 years,” he said. “California might be in that camp for a while as our growth has slowed, so that’s going to be a problem.”

Hussey said even if Democrats took back control of the redistricting process, there’s no guarantee it would result in significantly more seats. That means the state’s population shift, not its maneuvering on congressional maps, could play a bigger role in dictating its influence in D.C.