WASHINGTON — How did Proposition 50, the California redistricting ballot measure, pass handily this week when Golden State voters initially disapproved of the measure?
“There were any number of people who were not paying any damned attention,” former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson told me over the phone Wednesday.
Money-wise, the campaign to fight Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pet measure was running on empty, Wilson explained, while the “yes” campaign was rolling in other people’s money. “The Democrats did not only have the money, but they spent it,” Wilson offered, as he touched upon conservative discontent about the weak “No on 50” campaign.
Like everything in American politics today, this episode starts with President Donald Trump, who pushed Texas and other red states to adopt new district maps mid-decade to stack the House deck in the GOP’s favor. The general practice is to redistrict after the decennial census.
In short, Trump invited the Golden State’s backlash.
Nearly 64% of voters supported Newsom’s “Election Rigging Response Act.” Many were especially ready to go to war against Trump because they believed the ICE raids he sanctioned were too aggressive. (But really, many progressives do not believe federal immigration law should be enforced at all.)
The problem is, Newsom doubled down on an already rigged setup — one tilted in his party’s favor.
The California system disproportionately favors Democrats, despite a 2010 reform measure that transferred the drawing of district maps to an independent citizens commission.
Under the pre-Proposition 50 system, California’s delegation in the House of Representatives consists of 43 Democrats and nine Republicans. That ratio doesn’t come close to matching statewide partisan makeup. In 2024, 58% of Golden State voters supported Vice President Kamala Harris and 38% voted for Trump.
Soon, Newsom and those who supported Prop 50 will be able to boast that they moved the divide to 48 or 49 Ds versus four or five Rs. That would leave the GOP with less than 10 percent of the delegation.
Double-rigging, that’s Newsom’s idea of the outcome of “fair and free” elections.
It would be wrong to leave out Newsom’s most infamous act of having his cake and eating it too.
Readers may recall that in 2020, while he was telling his constituents to avoid Thanksgiving get-togethers to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Gov. Handsome dined with fellow big shots at the tony French Laundry. Because he could.
Wilson is especially mindful of the disparity of campaign funding for and against Proposition 50. “All told, proponents spent roughly $99 million on advertising online and on television compared with nearly $39 million in opposition, according to data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking service,” The New York Times reported.
All that talk about big money favoring the right. Not in California.
“The business community are the biggest wimps in the world,” political strategist and Wilson whisperer Sean T. Walsh noted, “and they can so easily be intimidated.”
That’s another way Newsom is so very much like Trump.
Or, as Walsh predicted, “The Democrats are going to have plenty of money.”
Ditto Gavin Newsom. Trump’s maneuver backfired completely. And now Newsom — not former Vice President and California Sen. Kamala Harris — is the likely Democratic front-runner in the 2028 race for the White House.
Sure, the next Republican nominee can slam Newsom for California’s dysfunction: The High-Speed Rail project, also known as the Train to Nowhere. The lack of affordability and the huge number of illegal immigrants who think that ICE has no right to arrest them for breaking immigration laws.
Newsom will make a big target. But he’ll be cushioned by all the millions he is likely to draw thanks to Trump’s blunder. And he’ll be able to tell the country that he went up against Trump and won.
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.