Gerrymandering will join coastal and rural San Diego

from Nadia LathanCalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Fredrich Barke moved to Lakeside 25 years ago, drawn to the ranch-style homes that dot its open landscape and the slower pace of life in the city of 63,000.

“I’ve always been a country boy. Country life is more comfortable for me,” Barke said.

This part of San Diego County, known as East County, is divided by the rural and urban areas on the US House maps. Lakeside stands in contrast to the eastern, urban core of the county on the outskirts of the Democratic cities of El Cajon and La Mesa.

Rural areas like Lakeside and Blossom Valley in the 48th House are represented by a longtime Republican Congressman Darrell Issawhile the nearby towns of El Cajon and Lemon Grove are represented by Democratic Rep. Sarah Jacobs of the 51st District.

Proposition 50, the November ballot measure to temporarily redraw House maps to give California Democrats an edge, proposes grouping rural and urban areas of eastern San Diego County together in an effort to weaken the Republican vote in an area known for its staunch conservatism.

“I don’t like that they’re changing this and piling us up in urban areas,” said Barke, a 65-year-old former naval officer. “It’s going to put us in a district with people with very different views in our district.”

Drawing new Republican partisan maps in Texas is not the same as California’s experience because the state constitution allows it, Barke said.

Under the proposed maps, the 48th District, which Issa now represents, would welcome more Latino voters to make it more competitive in the 2026 midterm elections and the next two election cycles.

Once head of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa represented parts of San Diego County for decades and built a strong reputation in the Republican Party for leading a series of investigations into the Obama administration.

Issa managed to win re-election in the last two elections, but took a two-year hiatus when he did not seek re-election in 2018 after his previous district became increasingly Democratic.

Fusion of ideologically different communities

Lakeside Republicans are 64 percent white and have a median household income of $103,000 — 14 percent higher than the $90,000 median in La Mesa, where about half the population is white, according to San Diego County Report 2023.

Liberal Palm Springs, which would move into the proposed 48th district, is nearly 64 percent white and has a household income of $69,000, according to city ​​report 2023.

Candidates running in the proposed new district will likely need to focus on affordability to appeal to rural and urban areas, according to UC San Diego political scientist Thad Kousser.

“This will create a dynamic where the Democratic candidate will be looking to both attract moderate voters and galvanize voters in deep-blue Palm Springs,” Kusser said.

This marriage of ideologically different communities would be among the many under proposed false cards such as The remote farm towns of Northern California being associated with parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some districts would also move to completely different parts of the state. East of San Diego, the Republican area Representative Ken Calvert represents would move entirely out of Riverside County into Los Angeles County, giving Democrats more than a 10 percentage point advantage in voter registration.

Calvert, who represents the 41st District, is a 17-term member of Congress and one of Washington’s longest-serving legislators. He has faced some of the most competitive races of his political career since the last census in a decade redrawn his U.S. House seat, prompting millions of dollars from both parties to pour into his last two races. Calvert narrowly defeated his Democratic opponent, former U.S. Attorney Will Rollins, in 2022 and 2024.

If voters approve Proposition 50, many residents who currently live in Calvert County will move to the 48th District and the Republican-controlled 40th District in Orange County.

Nestled in the San Jacinto Mountains southwest of Palm Springs, Mary Ryder, a retired counselor at Idyllwild Community College, said her support for Prop. 50 is a “moral decision”.

She and other Riverside County voters would be moved to the more competitive 48th District if voters approve the measure.

“If we have to break a rule, so to speak, to make sure what’s best for everybody happens, we break that rule,” Ryder said. She agrees with the argument that Prop. 50 is the only way to respond to Republican manipulation in Texas and other states.

Districts are usually drawn at the beginning of the decade following the US Census. Most state legislatures create their own congressional maps, but in California, voters approved an independent, grassroots redistricting commission to draw the maps. Prop. 50 is asking voters to temporarily suspend independent maps for three cycles in favor of those drawn by Democrats.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said the measure was in response to Texas Republicans drawing their own GOP-friendly maps ahead of the 2026 election to make it easier for them to retain control of the House.

Several Democratic candidates are eyeing seats in both districts, including a public school teacher and a member of the San Diego City Council. But all prospective candidates, including deeply held Congressmen Calvert and Issa, are in limbo until after the special election in November.

So far, the Yes campaign has grossed a whopping $97 million and is supported by star-driven ads featuring the likes of former President Barack Obama. No country has withdrawn less than half of that, at $42 million.

A message to the deputies

Nikki Watts, of Palm Desert, sees Proposition 50 as a tool to hold Calvert accountable.

“I’ve never seen it. You don’t really hear about it,” said Watts, who says she’s lived in Palm Desert for decades. “He’s like an invisible man.”

Calvert, like the majority of GOP members across the country, has refrained from holding in-person town halls where voters outraged by Republican support of President Donald Trump’s policies have become commonplace.

“Redistricting because you disagree with the outcome of the election is politics at its worst,” spokesman Calvin Moore said of voters supporting Prop. 50, in response to Calvert’s record.

Issa has similarly faced growing criticism from his constituents for not holding any in-person town halls this year.

A spokesman for Issa, Jonathan Wilcox, dismissed the idea that voters upset by Issa’s voting results could play a role in the passage of Prop. 50.

“I’m not disputing that Democrats across the country oppose the policies of the congressman and the Republican Party,” he said.

Marie Doden, a 74-year-old former city employee in Palm Desert, said she is a Democrat but worries about the precedent that approving partisan maps would set. She said that Texas’ manipulation of his own cards was not a serious enough reason for retaliation.

“I’m not a fan of President Trump,” she said. “But it just seemed like you’re taking a process and now you’re saying, ‘Let’s dump this process and all the work we put into it and throw it out the window.’

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.