I dislike everything about Proposition 50, the Gov. Gavin Newsom-led effort to gerrymander California’s congressional districts to attempt to add five additional seats.
But I am going to vote for it anyway.
My reasoning is straightforward: This is no time to stand on principle. If this bad idea has even a small potential to restrain Donald Trump, it’s worth doing.
That said, there are many reasons the “Election Rigging Response Act” shouldn’t become law. The first is that it’s a tremendous waste of money and energy for a single act of direct democracy.
The state recently sent nearly 23 million ballots to every registered voter in California to answer a single question: Should California suspend for the next three elections its wise, hard-fought nonpartisan commission that oversees how congressional districts are drawn?
While the accompanying voter guide (sent as a separate mailing, no less) says that the state will spend just $200,000 to implement Prop 50 if it is passed, (opens in new tab)the overall cost of the election looks to be $282 million. That’s about $251 million (opens in new tab)allocated to counties to conduct the election and another $31 million (opens in new tab)to print and mail the ballots. Remember, that’s for a single measure in a year San Franciscans, at least, would have had nothing else on which to vote. And this doesn’t count the oodles of cash being spent on both sides to promote their respective positions — at least $134 million (opens in new tab) as of Oct. 9.
I’m also not thrilled with how this ballot item, blatantly designed to screw five or so Republicans out of their Congressional seats, willfully disenfranchises voters who would prefer to be represented by Republicans. Seeing as GOP voters make up about 40% of the state electorate — a statistic that led to (opens in new tab)Katie Porter’s viral meltdown last week (opens in new tab) — it’s not only unfair and undemocratic, it’s likely not strategic to give them about 7% representation in Congress.
As former Congressman Tom Campbell, a Republican, commented to me by email: “There should be a place for minority views among California house members.”
What’s more, there’s something just generally icky about how Newsom is using Prop 50 to peacock ahead of his eventual presidential campaign. California’s governor has succeeded in getting people, by which I mean the media, to stop talking about the state’s highest-in-the-nation rates of unemployment, homelessness, and unaffordability. But Californians should understand they are pawns in a larger game here, namely to keep Newsom on the minds of U.S. voters as the leader of the anti-Trump resistance.
A nagging concern about Prop 50 is that it won’t work. Paul Mitchell, an architect of the measure, (opens in new tab)told (opens in new tab)the Chronicle’s (opens in new tab) editorial board (opens in new tab) that two of the five seats altered by Prop 50’s new congressional maps are no shoo-ins for Democrats and will be “a fight.” It would be a shame if all this expensive sound and fury netted the Democrats just three seats.
In spite of all that, this is still the time to hold one’s nose and do, not the principled thing, but the practical thing — which is to give Democrats every tool possible to stop Trump from strengthening his single-party rule over the country.
Remember: Newsom didn’t start this fight. His effort to gerrymander California’s congressional map came in response to the extraordinarily slimy move by Texas lawmakers, acting on Trump’s instructions, to do the same. Trump has little regard for Congress, but he knows it will be more difficult to ignore it if the opposition party controls at least one of its houses.
This is a president, after all, abetted by a quiescent Republican-controlled Congress, who has cancelled congressionally authorized foreign aid, ordered the indictment of his political enemies, and ruined the careers of countless public servants. (Did you hear the one about the Eisenhower Presidential Library director getting sacked because he wouldn’t release a sword for Trump to give as a gift to King Charles III? Ho hum. Things that once would have shocked our sensibilities as a nation no longer even register.)
And so it falls on California’s voters to do their part to stop him. Already, there is evidence (opens in new tab) that rising awareness of Trump’s gerrymandering machinations is leading to pushback in multiple states, including Indiana, Utah, and even Florida. Indeed, if you believe the worst in Trump, it’s possible to see suspending California’s superior approach to redistricting as the safest way to preserve it.
“It’s a no-brainer to me that we’re trying to save democracy and independent redistricting,” said Ditka Reiner, vice-chair of San Francisco’s redistricting task force that redrew the city’s supervisorial maps in 2022. “I’m so proud of Gavin for stepping up and doing this.”
You don’t have to like something to support it. Which is why I’m putting my extreme distaste aside to vote yes on Prop 50.