California’s Proposition 50, which began as a warning to Texas not to “poke the bear,” appears poised for victory, escalating a national battle over partisan gerrymandering. The measure was a direct response to a rare, mid-decade redrawing of congressional maps in Texas, a move pushed by Donald Trump to strengthen the GOP’s slim House majority ahead of the midterm elections.
The ballot initiative, championed by Governor Gavin Newsom and state Democrats, asks voters to temporarily set aside California’s independently-drawn congressional districts. In their place, new maps would be implemented to create five additional safe seats for Democrats, mirroring the five new Republican-friendly districts secured in Texas earlier this year.
Newsom has framed the proposition, officially the Election Rigging Response Act, as a necessary check on Trump’s power. “California will not sit idle as Trump and his Republican lapdogs shred our country’s democracy before our very eyes,” the governor declared at a rally announcing the initiative.
With voting ending Tuesday, November 4, early returns and polling suggest the measure is on track for a comfortable victory. Recent surveys show it passing by more than 20 points, and as of Saturday, nearly six million of the state’s mail-in ballots had been returned.
The success of the “Yes” campaign is largely attributed to its messaging, which has galvanized Democrats by focusing on opposition to Donald Trump. This strategy sidestepped a potentially complex debate on the merits of redistricting, a process that typically occurs only once a decade. The campaign’s closing ad featured prominent national Democrats, including Barack Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urging Californians to “stand up to Donald Trump.”
“Democrats have won the messaging war in California because they’ve successfully framed it as an anti-Trump campaign,” said Dave Wasserman, senior elections analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Republicans just did not cobble together the resources or the momentum to stop it.”
Opponents, who were significantly outraised and lacked national Republican support, largely abandoned television advertising in the final weeks. They centered their attack on Newsom, labeling the plan a “Gavinmander” designed to boost the governor’s national profile for a potential 2028 presidential run. They warned the measure would disenfranchise millions of conservative voters and undermine the state’s independent redistricting commission.
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Trump critic who championed the creation of the commission, condemned Proposition 50. Republican donor Charles Munger also invested over $30 million to prevent California from “returning to the evils of partisan gerrymandering.”
California Representative Kevin Kiley, a Republican whose district would be redrawn, has called for a nationwide ban on mid-decade redistricting, but the proposal has not gained traction. If the measure passes, the number of Republicans in California’s 52-seat House delegation could be cut by more than half from the current nine.
Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist advising the opposition, argued that the vote has little to do with district lines. “This is about sending a message to Donald Trump,” he said, suggesting most voters were more concerned with the Trump administration than with preserving fair maps.
This sentiment is reflected in recent surveys. A CBS News/YouGov poll found that nearly two-thirds of California voters believe the president treats their state “worse” than others, and 75% of the measure’s supporters cited opposition to Trump as a factor in their decision.
The national redistricting arms race has created a dilemma for good-governance groups. Common Cause, which has historically fought partisan gerrymandering, remained neutral on Proposition 50. “The question was, are we going to unilaterally disarm one side?” said CEO Virginia Kase Solomón.
While the ballot initiative could improve Democrats’ chances of winning the House majority next year by 10% to 15%, Wasserman noted that the party’s challenge is that “they don’t have enough Californias” to counter Republican redistricting efforts in states like Missouri and North Carolina.
Though central to the campaign, Trump himself was uncharacteristically muted on the proposition. He did, however, use Truth Social to preemptively discredit the election results without evidence and announced the deployment of federal monitors to California and New Jersey. In response, Newsom accused Trump of voter suppression, while Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state would dispatch its own observers to watch the federal monitors.
Despite expressing confidence in the outcome, the “Yes” campaign maintained its efforts through the final weekend. Newsom, who told supporters last week they could stop donating, traveled the state as volunteers worked to get out the vote. “We want to go back to some semblance of normalcy,” he said Sunday, “but you have to deal with the crisis at hand.”
Democrats in other states are watching closely, viewing California’s move as a critical counter-offensive. “We’re depending on California to help a friend out, to help us out as a country,” said Texas State Representative Nicole Collier. “The future direction of this country hangs in the balance.”
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