Newsom Announces Redistricting Special Election as Poll Shows Support for Independent Commission
“We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has vowed for weeks to retaliate against Texas and President Donald Trump if the Lone Star state moved forward with Trump’s suggestion last month to redraw the Texas Congressional maps to add four or five more seats that potentially would favor the GOP.
With the Texas Senate approving redrawn maps earlier this week, and as Democrats on the House side pledged to stay away until the special session is over, Newsom made it official on Thursday that he was calling for a special election in November to try and counter the likely 2026 GOP gains under the proposed new Texas maps with a California map that would benefit Democrats.
California, you have the power on November 4 to stand up to Trump and his lapdogs. pic.twitter.com/OTubnROghG
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) August 14, 2025
Voters will be asked to vote on effectively temporarily suspending the voter-approved independent redistricting commission process in favor of maps drawn by California state lawmakers, where Democrats have a supermajority in the state legislature:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday his state will hold a Nov. 4 special election to seek voter approval of new congressional map drawn to try to win Democrats five more U.S. House seats in 2026.
[…]
“We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country,” Newsom said, joined by prominent labor leaders and Democratic politicians.
California lawmakers must officially declare the special election, which they plan to do next week after voting on the new maps. Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers, and Newsom said he’s not worried about winning the required support from two-thirds of lawmakers to advance the maps.
Where Newsom may have to worry, however, is how voters will respond to this proposal. And the polling so far shows widespread support in California for the independent redistricting commission across party lines:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a major hurdle in his quest to revamp his state’s congressional lines, according to a new poll: Californians’ deep support for its current independent redistricting commission.
By nearly a two-to-one margin, voters prefer keeping an independent line-drawing panel to determine the state’s House seats, the latest POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey found. Just 36 percent of respondents back returning congressional redistricting authority to state lawmakers.
[…]
Independent voters were the most enthusiastic backers of the panel, with 72 percent in favor of the commission keeping its line-drawing authority. Support among Republicans and Democrats was roughly equal — 66 percent and 61 percent, respectively — marking a rare spot of bipartisan agreement in this hyper-polarized political moment.
A new POLITICO poll shows California voters prefer keeping an independent line-drawing panel to determine the state’s House seats “by nearly a two-to-one margin” (64%) while only “36% of respondents back returning congressional redistricting authority to state lawmakers pic.twitter.com/O8QOzzcHib
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) August 14, 2025
Wow
61% of California *DEMOCRATS* oppose Gavin Newsom’s thirsty power grab to abolish their independent redistricting commission to gerrymander their already wildly gerrymandered state further. https://t.co/ZWW8K2a9fr
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 14, 2025
The new proposed California maps haven’t been released to the public yet, but the LA Times got its hands on a draft copy:
Those changes could reduce by more than half the number of Republicans representing California in Congress. The state has the nation’s largest congressional delegation, with 52 members. Nine are Republicans.
A Northern California district represented by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) could shift to the south, shedding rural, conservative voters near the Oregon border and picking up left-leaning cities in Sonoma County. Sacramento-area Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) would see his district shift toward the bluer center of the city.
The plan would also add more Democrats to the Central Valley district represented by Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), who has been a perennial target for Democrats.
Southern California would see some of the biggest changes: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) would see his safely Republican district in San Diego County become more purple through the addition of liberal Palm Springs. And Reps. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) and Ken Calvert (R-Corona) would be drawn into the same district, which could force the lawmakers to run against each other.
Newsom said the proposed maps would be released in the coming days.
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Comments
More grease from Greasy Gavin. Sliming Californians into submission is his forte, but maybe not this time. What will be his next cynical gimmick?
Polls may show opposition, but there’s no reason to have any confidence that the election process in California will bear out the True Result
Guess he is running for Dictator 2028
As is every Democrat presidential hopeful.
Subotai Bahadur
Remember it doesn’t matter who votes, even if half of them are illegals.
It’s who counts the votes.
So this is probably going to happen.
It’s going to be interesting. I expect that even if they get to gerrymander, it wouldn’t fly through the DOJ Civil Rights division. It tries to cut Republican representation from 9 to 4 out of 52. Less than 10%. Maybe more worrisome, if they reopen redistributing, the Supreme Court may, by then, have ruled against (or at least cut back) majority-minority districts, which are the sole, legal, justification for non compact (and thus gerrymandered) districts. And, with redistributing open, then their districts can, by court order, be redrawn to be more compact – losing the Dems maybe even more seats than they expected to steal..
Why would DOJ have a problem with that? What civil rights law would it violate?
In any event, DOJ doesn’t get an automatic say any more. Section 5 preclearance has been gone for 12 years now. And even before that, only a handful of counties in CA were covered by that.
Damn, messed up the </blockquote> tag again. LI, can we please have an edit button? There are several WP plugins that do it for you, no muss no fuss, and seem pretty reliable.
We will get editing and WP plugins around the time Pasadena Phil returns or destroycommunism discovers the [shift] key.
He is a laughably bad politician. Every thing he touches turns to coal.
Someone appears desperate to get in the news cycle every day
CA districts 82% voting dem already. Newscum wants 100%?
One party rule. Controlled opposition. Other party allowed to exist but never win.
It fascinates me that there don’t seem to be any significant questions asked about why his energies aren’t being directed toward restoration after the fires. And, wasn’t there a high-speed railway coming? And, aren’t they supposed to be hosting the Olympics within the next few years?
Newsom is a stone leftist loser.
Disenfranchising 40% of the voting public will not just hurt Republicans, it will send an unmistakable message to all voters that elections in the State are a sham, serving only to anoint the Party selectees. That should hasten the exodus, and since the number of representatives is based on the total population, they will lose the seats regardless, unless they can import enough illegal migrants to offset these losses and get them counted in the next Census.