While some Republicans are whining about “voter fraud” or whatever, the easy passage of Proposition 50 on Tuesday shouldn’t be a surprise.
As of this writing, 57.1% of Orange County voters backed the measure, 60.8% of San Diego County voters and nearly 57% of Riverside County voters so far voted “Yes,” along with 55% of early results statewide.
That fits with what a standard statewide election looks like. In Nov. 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris got 58.47% of the vote to Donald Trump’s 38.33%. In Nov. 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom was re-elected with 59.18% of the vote to Republican Sen. Brian Dahle’s 40.82%. In Sept. 2021, Newsom fended off a recall with 61.88% of California voters rejecting the recall.
You get the picture. California is very much a blue state. If you put a Democrat or a Democratic interest up against a Republican or Republican interest, it’s a cakewalk for the Democrats if they can successfully simplify it to Democrat vs. Republican.
That’s exactly what happened with Proposition 50, which is all the things opponents say it is: a cynical power grab that tosses aside the work of the Citizens Redistricting Commission in favor of gerrymandered congressional maps put together by Democratic operatives.
But Democrats successfully couched everything in very simple terms: Vote yes on Prop. 50 to stand up to Donald Trump. Simple, straight to the point and gave Californians angry about Trump a way to register their anger in an off-year special election. If voters wanted to delve deeper, Democrats had a straightforward rebuttal: the Republicans started this in Texas and so we’re matching what they did. Again, simple and straight to the point.
Republicans, meanwhile, had a much bigger lift. As a starting point, they had to either ignore or find a way of dismissing the fact that this gerrymandering fight started with President Trump demanding Texas and now other states gerrymander in favor of Republicans. Then they needed to act like they were civics crusaders who really, really care about independent redistricting. And then they had to somehow do all of this as the minority party that generally loses statewide contests by a wide margin.
Meanwhile, the few ostensibly nonpartisan good government groups like Common Cause that initially opposed Newsom’s gerrymandering scheme ultimately decided they didn’t want to get involved and, in effect, aid Republicans. Despite pundit-driven speculation his input against Prop. 50 might be a factor, it turns out no one really cares what Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks about things, which isn’t surprising because it’s been 19 years since anyone voted for him for anything.
Making matters worse, the campaign against Prop. 50 pretty died after Charlie Munger Jr. blew $30 million on ads. National Republicans realized Prop. 50 was an uphill battle and so former Speaker Kevin McCarthy only managed to scrape together $7 million out of $100 million he thought he could raise against Prop. 50. And while I’m pretty sure the California Republican Party still exists, it seems really bad at its job, as I have no idea what they did.
Unsurprisingly, Republicans couldn’t overcome this and Democrats cruised to victory with Prop. 50.
For Republicans bitter about this outcome, they really only have President Trump, the Republican Texas Legislature and Republican congressional leaders to blame. It was Trump and the Texas Legislature who kicked this gerrymandering fight off. Then Republican congressional leaders ignored proposals to ban mid-decade redistricting. This left a wide open opportunity for Democrats to score and expand their electoral advantages in California even further than they already have.
All of this said, is Prop. 50 good? Nope. Gerrymandering distorts our democratic process, undermines fair representation and will reinforce cynicism about California’s elections. As someone who doesn’t care for either the Democratic or Republican parties, all I see are two parties in a race down the drain solely concerned with short-term wins at the expense of the long-term repercussions of what they’re doing.
Oh well.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com