Gavinmandering Could Result in Long Term Changes
California Governor Gavin Newsom wants to call a special election to take the power to redistrict congressional seats from the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission and return the map drawing ability to politicians to create more Democratic seats.
Call it Gavinmandering.
Newsom has pledged to put a mid-decade redistricting plan on the November ballot if Texas politicians redistrict the state’s congressional seats to help Republicans hold the power in Congress after the 2026 midterm elections.
Politicians want to control redistricting authority to protect incumbents and secure their own party’s supremacy. As this current hot quarrel over mid-decade gerrymandering of congressional districts plays out, the question is will this dispute end up as another chapter in the long history of partisan gerrymandering, or might it lead to long term consequences for redrawing congressional and legislative seats.
How much voters care about drawing political lines is uncertain, but in this charged partisan atmosphere the debate boils down to which party will have the power in Congress and that likely will gain voters’ attention.
As I wrote previously, what Texas politicians are attempting is wrong. What California politicians did before the people took charge by passing two initiatives to strip legislators of redistricting powers was wrong. Voters, tired of this self-serving decennial exercise, created a Citizens Redistricting Commission in California to shape fairer political maps. Undoing the commission, even for a short time, is wrong.
This spotlight on redistricting across the country could lead to long term changes in the endless battle for the power to control congress and legislative houses.
A quick history on gerrymandering. The term comes from combining the last name of an early 19th century Massachusetts governor with an image of the mythological salamander, a creature based on a salamander but with extraordinary occult powers that is often represented as a monster. Gov. Gerry signed a bill shaping the state senate’s bizarrely drawn districts in 1812 with one artist depicting one of the districts like a dragon. (See the picture above).
There will a massive campaign if the Newsom maps make it on the ballot. Unlike Texas, the California changes will be on the ballot to step around the state constitution, which would make the Golden State the epicenter of the political wars this November drawing money from around the country.
What’s the most powerful political persuasion: stop Trump or stop self-serving politicians? Because that’s what a campaign over changing the congressional redistricting standards will come down to.
Charles Munger, Jr., who was central to the financing of Proposition 11 in 2008 (to take legislative redrawing power from the legislature) and Proposition 20 in 2010 (to take congressional district gerrymandering from the legislators), is already putting together a campaign to oppose the Newsom effort.
A leading voice in opposing Gavinmandering will be former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who not only strongly supported the ballot initiatives to end the state gerrymandering but through his Schwarzenegger Institute at USC took the effort to create independent redistricting commissions to a few other states.
Already, Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley of Northern California, whose district would be in peril if the new Democratic maps are adopted, has introduced a bill in congress prohibiting mid-decade re-drawing of congressional maps. The bill probably has little chance of success, especially since President Trump is seen as the instigator of the Texas effort.
However, Kiley’s attempt could be the forerunner of a push to create independent commissions in other states or even create a federal redistricting panel. Beyond that, the backlash against the political fight over mid-term changes to congressional district may re-charge the Schwarzenegger effort.
Another more worrisome outcome would lead emboldened politicians to kill off independent redistricting commissions and keep the power to themselves.
There is a lot riding on this election if Gavinmandering moves ahead.
No surprise that Newsom and the party leadership are willing to kinda/sorta dump the redistricting commission, since they’ve hated the idea from the beginning. In 2008, the Dem state central committee put up about $400K to fight Prop. 11, which set up the commission for state races. In 2010, the party put up another $400K or so to fight Prop. 20, which extended the commission to congressional races and pump for Prop. 27, which would have killed the commission entirely. Plenty of Democratic officeholders dumped campaign funds into the effort, including Padilla, Schiff and Pelosi. Convincing Democratic officeholders to give up some of their reliable voters might not be so easy, though. At the 2000 Democratic convention in LA, Terry McAuliffe, then head of the DNC, talked about how the Dems could get four or five more seats in CA through a tough, partisan redistricting. You saw how well that went down.
I like the idea of redistricting commissions taking control of the process away from the parties too. However the situation in Texas clearly also demonstrates the problem with the non partisan commissions making each state map fair individually. I wonder if instead of getting rid of the commission you fix them so that the incentive to do mid decade redistricting goes away by changing the goal of the commission. Instead of having the goal be to make the California map as fair as possible you could make it so that the goal is to make the national map as fair as possible (there may be some details about what makes the national map fair that would need to be worked out by better minds than mine). This has a few advantages over a just Newsomemandering (as you describe it ) in response to Texas republicans stealing five seats by making 5 new California democrats. These advantages include:
1. It, if anything, defends the idea that redistricting should be fair and that people should pick the politicians and not the other way around.
2.It gets rid of the problem of principled unilateral disarmament wherein democrats simply say “ well our state maps are fair” while allowing republicans to cheat the preference of people in their states.
3. This national fairness standard might be added to other state commissions which may reduce the disenfranchisement of republicans in any one state including California.