Newsom’s Gerrymandering Stunt Is A Desperate White House Bid
California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing for a special election this November on Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would transfer control of congressional redistricting from the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission back to the state legislature, where Democrats hold a supermajority. He frames this move as a response to Texas Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting efforts, which he accuses of gerrymandering to favor their party in future elections. Newsom’s aggressive social media campaign targets Texas Republicans wiht strong rhetoric,aiming to energize his base and bolster his national political profile,potentially ahead of a presidential run.
However, the article argues that Newsom’s actions are more about political maneuvering than democracy, noting that Texas is exercising its constitutional right to redistrict, supported by recent Supreme Court rulings limiting federal court intervention in partisan redistricting. These rulings have reinforced state legislatures’ authority in map drawing, leading to Texas proposing changes that would likely increase Republican seats but also create new majority minority districts.
While Newsom’s measure is expected to pass in the Democrat-controlled California legislature, public opinion polls show voters largely oppose removing the independent commission, which was established by a 2010 voter initiative. Former Republican governor arnold Schwarzenegger has also emerged from retirement to defend the commission. Despite these challenges and opposition, Newsom sees the battle as beneficial for his political ambitions, even as California faces economic difficulties.
Gavin Newsom, California’s gelled-up Democratic governor, is framing his latest political maneuver as a heroic stand against Texas Republicans and their supposed allegiance to President Donald J. Trump as they roll out a rare, but not unprecedented, mid-decade congressional redistricting map.
He’s calling for a special election this November on what’s been dubbed Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would wrest control of congressional redistricting from the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and hand it back to the state legislature — where Democrats hold a supermajority.
Newsom claims this is all about punching back against Republican gerrymandering in Texas, an effort he says is designed to rig the 2026 midterms for the GOP. But let’s be clear: Newsom’s gambit is nothing but performative politics in pursuit of the White House, cloaked as a run-of-the-mill naked power grab, itself dressed up as a defense of democracy.
Newsom’s official governor’s account on X is constantly posting videos and messages about “fighting fire with fire” and “punching back” against Trump, using language that’s inflammatory and devoid of nuance, much like how the left imagines Trump uses his platform — with all the hyperbole and ALL CAPS but not an ounce of the common sense.
HAS ANYONE NOTICED THAT SINCE I SAID “I HATE KID ROCK” HE’S NO LONGER ‘HOT?’ — GCN
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 20, 2025
And it’s working. His social media presence is exploding with aggressive posts criticizing Texas Republicans for “rigging” elections and labeling them as “corrupt” and their actions as what “dictators do.”
A new poll from POLITICO shows Newsom now leading former vice president and former California Sen. Kamala Harris by 25 percent to 19 percent among California’s registered Democratic voters and Democratic-leaning independents.
Newsom has compared Texas Republican redistricting efforts to “bending the knee to Trump” and “lighting our democracy on fire” and threatened to “poke the bear.”
“Gerrymandering” is as old as the Republic. The practice derives its name from signer of the Declaration of Independence Elbridge Gerry, who as governor of Massachusetts signed a law in 1812 redistricting state senate districts in a way that created a Boston-area district resembling a salamander to benefit his party. Gerry didn’t like the district maps, but they worked, ensuring a majority for the Democratic-Republicans — the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party.
But the real story here is that Texas is exercising its constitutional power to redistrict, a power granted to state legislatures under Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. This isn’t because Trump “told them to,” as Newsom alleges.
Rather, Texas’s actions result from a culmination of a series of federal court cases beginning in 2018 that have reaffirmed and returned discretion to state legislatures to draw district lines.
It started with Abbott v. Perez in 2018, a challenge to Texas’s 2011 maps that contended with racially discriminatory intent. The case was decided in a way that limited federal court involvement in subsequent partisan disputes.
The judicial reassessment of legislative redistricting was further advanced in 2019 with the landmark Supreme Court decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, in which the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering presents “political questions beyond the reach” of federal courts, meaning federal courts cannot intervene in cases of purely political map-drawing.
And lastly, in 2024, in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the court made it more difficult to prove racial gerrymandering.
These cases, and others, caused the Texas Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott to reassess what had been a very conservative map — as in low-risk for incumbents — in 2021.
The proposed Texas congressional districts would likely add five seats to what is today a 25 Republican to 13 Democrat division, moving it to 30 to 8 — though that would include more marginal Republican districts that, in a bad year or with a poor candidate, could be wrested away by Democrats. Texas’s proposed new districts also include two majority black districts where today there are none, as well as at least one additional Hispanic majority district.
Of note: Texas’ new district will provide slightly less of a political advantage than do California’s present districts, when considering the expected partisan makeup of the delegation as compared to the Democrat and Republican votes cast in the election.
In any event, Newsom’s Texas retort will have no trouble passing out of the California legislature, given the Democrats’ two-thirds supermajority in each chamber. Democrats can easily approve legislation for a November special election on new maps.
The problem will be with the voters, as a couple of polls have shown that the plan to wrest control of redistricting from a nominally independent redistricting commission created by a vote of the people in 2010 is underwater, one poll being 2:1 against Newsom’s power grab.
Further complicating Newsom’s scheme, the Governator — former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — is coming out of political retirement to defend one of his legacies — the independent redistricting commission.
With Schwarzenegger’s opposition and about $100 million expected to be raised to defend the status quo, Newsom is facing more than an uphill climb; he’s facing an ascent up Mount Everest without oxygen. Even so, Newsom sees the fight, win or lose, as a win for his presidential aspirations, especially as he terms-out next year and the California economy and state budget are in deep trouble.
Chuck DeVore is chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He’s the author of “The Crisis of the House Never United—A Novel of Early America.”
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