[Noozhawk’s note: We republish news articles and commentaries from CalMatters on state and local policy issues that affect Santa Barbara County readers.]
Last year, after Texas Republicans reconfigured their congressional districts to grab five more seats, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and its Legislature countered with a gerrymander to shift five seats their way.
Both partisan maneuvers, and those in a few other states, were designed to either bolster or erase the paper-thin GOP majority in the House of Representatives.
On Nov. 3, the Texas two-step failed spectacularly. Democrats won four of the five targeted districts there, while California’s counterplay succeeded even more spectacularly as five Republican members of Congress were wiped out.
The GOP held just eight of California’s 52 congressional seats going into the election, plus one Republican-turned-independent. Their ranks now shrink to a miniscule four, even though a quarter of the state’s voters are Republicans.
It’s a testament not only to the determination of Newsom and Democratic legislators to affect the national power struggle over Congress, but also to the professional competence of Paul Mitchell, the Sacramento-based political guru Democrats recruited to draw the new, gerrymandered redistricting maps.
The plan, which was pushed through the Legislature and onto a special election ballot as Proposition 50 last year, didn’t go exactly as envisioned, but the result was exactly what Newsom & Co. intended.
And it burnishes Newsom’s status as a partisan warrior for his almost certain bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidacy in 2028.
As it turns out neither the failed Texas gerrymander nor California’s successful one played decisive roles in the “blue tsunami” that swept Democrats into solid majorities in both houses of Congress.
California now has five new members of Congress, most likely for at least six years. But what then?
The gerrymandered maps of 52 congressional districts will legally be in effect through the 2030 election, after which the state, under current law, will revert to the prior districts drawn by an independent commission for the 2032 elections and beyond.
However, it’s not that simple. Political ambition and demography will likely combine to create a dilemma for California’s dominant Democrats.
The five new members will presumably want to keep their seats after 2030. But that year’s census will confirm that California has had scant population growth since the 2020 census, or even a slight decline.
The size of each state’s congressional delegation hinges on its population trend over the previous decade.
California’s stagnant population will almost certainly result in a loss of three to five of the nation’s 435 congressional seats.
If redistricting reverts to the independent commission, as current law says it will, it probably would pare down — or even erase — the extra five gerrymandered seats, even if there is no overall decline in the delegation.
With a likely decline, a fair commission plan would probably end the careers of more than five Democratic members and return a few to the GOP.
Democrats will still dominate levers of control after 2030. And their leaders must decide whether to allow the commission to do its work or abolish it via another ballot measure in the 2028 or 2030 election.
Party leaders have never liked commission redistricting, a process forced upon them by a pair of initiative ballot measures in 2008 and 2010 championed by Republican former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Abolishing the commission system would return the drafting of new maps to the Legislature, thus allowing Democratic leaders (and possibly Mitchell again) to redraw districts that maximize their party’s share of seats.
That’s what they did, or at last tried to do, after the 1980, 1990 and 2000 censuses, and what they probably would prefer to do after the 2030 count.
We shouldn’t be surprised if gerrymandering becomes permanent.
This commentary was originally published on CalMatters and is reposted with permission. Click here to sign up for CalMatters newsletters.
