To beat Texas Republicans, California Dems want to load the dice

Republicans in the Texas Legislature want to help their party capture as many as five additional seats in Congress by remapping the state’s districts, but Democrats in California are making countermoves to try to keep the status quo. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Election Rigging Response Act on Thursday, teeing up a statewide referendum on the matter in November.

At least one Republican assemblyman hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

“I would love to see all the states stop their efforts to redistrict midcycle,” Republican Assemblyman Josh Hoover told me, referring to the campaign to change congressional boundaries in between U.S. censuses. The process, known as gerrymandering, maps out districts based on voting patterns that favor one political party over the other. “I don’t think Texas should be doing it. I don’t think California should be doing it. I think it’s very inappropriate for any state to do that.”

The U.S. Constitution mandates that each state have representation in the House of Representatives proportional to its population as determined by a census taken every 10 years. Historically, states have adjusted their districts every 10 years, using data from Census Bureau.

California has a constitutional provision against redistricting between censuses, which is why Democrats must pass a statewide referendum before redrawing their congressional districts in a way that makes them more likely to win elections. Republican legislators from California who spoke to WORLD condemned the redistricting effort as a blatant partisan power grab. Democrats say Republicans opened the door; they are just walking through it.

President Donald Trump has cheered partisan gerrymandering efforts like the one in Texas. Last week, Newsom responded with a statement excoriating Trump and “his Republican lapdogs.”

“This moment calls for urgency and action—that is what we are putting before voters this November: a chance to fight back against his anti-American ways,” Newsom said.

California’s Election Rigging Response Act would allow the state to adopt new congressional maps if—and only if—Republican states actually go through with their plans. The maps are designed to help California Democrats win five more seats in Congress.

Currently, California puts the redistricting process in the hands of a commission composed of 14 members who can serve once every 10 years. Five member are from the largest political party based on state registration, five are from the second largest, and four are unregistered with any party. Commission members must have voted in two of the last three statewide general elections.

California put that commission in place through a constitutional amendment approved in 2008.

Republicans are betting that voters will chafe at the idea of having to reimplement a practice they already did away with.

“Among Republicans in the Capitol, the concern is the same: this is a dangerous precedent,” Republican Assemblywoman Heather Hadwick said. “If the independent commission can be bypassed here, it can be bypassed anywhere. That undermines the trust Californians placed in the system when they voted to remove politicians from the process in the first place.”

She declined to comment on the redistricting efforts in Texas.

Assemblywoman Diane Dixon also declined to comment on whether Texas lawmakers should continue their plan, but she noted that California’s effort actively looks to suspend part of existing law. That’s different from Texas—where there is no law against gerrymandering.

“Even ‘temporarily’ killing off a piece of democracy could be used by future politicians to undermine constitutional safeguards,” said Dixon, who is Republican. “We have a California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, which was created by voters to take the power of drawing political districts out of the hands of politicians and put it where it belongs—with the people.”

Early polling in California suggests that voters have mixed feelings about the redistricting effort.

Findings from TrueDot in partnership with Politico on Thursday found that as many as 70% of Democratic respondents believed gerrymandering is always unacceptable. The same findings showed that 63% of Democrats said they supported California’s effort in light of Texas’ plans.

“That is a very low start,” Assemblyman Hoover said in reference to the poll results. “Once there’s a campaign that is explaining what this really does, I think this fails by quite a bit.”