Newsom’s maps give this MAGA town an ultra-liberal congressman

from Maya S. MillerCalMatters

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California may have a reputation as a bastion of blue, but there are only so many Democratic voters to go around.

Under Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to rig California’s congressional maps in favor of Democrats, no incumbent Democrat would win more Republican voters than Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach.

Garcia’s new district, rather than extending north from his hometown in liberal Los Angeles County, would instead shift south to encompass a coastal swath of conservative Orange County — specifically the conservative cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

Absorbing those GOP voters in the 42nd Congressional District is a point of pride for the 47-year-old Peruvian immigrant, a gay progressive whose scathing condemnations of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have catapulted him into the party leadership as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, the chamber’s main investigative arm.

He also serves on the committee’s viral “DOGE” subgroup, where he and a group of other young progressives use their speaking time to lobby sardonic rhetorical questions who blasted the proceedings and the chair, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, as absurd and even laughable.

“Are Burt and Ernie Part of an Extreme Homosexual Program?” Garcia asked Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service, during a hearing in March, when his employee held up a life-size image of the beloved Muppet duo.

If his party regains control of the House next year, Garcia will almost certainly ascend to chairman of the committee, which has vast subpoena powers, and become the face of congressional Democrats’ resistance to Trump.

But don’t expect Garcia, a former Long Beach mayor and city councilman, to give up his anti-MAGA pulpit just because he’ll be representing a city whose city council has embraced the “MAGA Magnificent Seven” moniker.

“People ask, ‘Hey, you know, you’re pretty progressive. Is that going to affect how you treat Trump or the oversight committee?” Garcia told political commentator Katie Pang during a virtual fundraiser for Prop. 50 last month.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

Garcia’s certainty that he will win re-election next year regardless of which maps are used is precisely the problem with creating non-competitive districts as Prop. proposes. 50, said state Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican and former mayor of Huntington Beach.

The city is currently represented by a Democratic member of Congress, Congressman Dave Min of Irvine, who succeeded Democrat Katie Porter when she ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate last year. But with the district now drawn as a competitive seat, Strickland said, Min must curry favor with at least some conservative voters if he wants to stay in office. That won’t be the case for Garcia if Prop. 50 passed.

Strickland and other local officials in coastal Orange County are skeptical that Garcia — a former Long Beach mayor who said he was excited his new district would include the entire city — will prioritize the needs of their cities, especially if he doesn’t need their votes to win.

“The problem with Prop. 50 is that you have predetermined elections. You already know who your congressman is before Election Day,” Strickland said. “As a pretty conservative town, both Newport and Huntington are going to have some of the most liberal members of Congress. And I just don’t think that’s healthy.”

“We want to govern ourselves”

While Huntington Beach has long asserted its conservative bent by resisting compliance with state laws it deems too liberal (such as requirements for residential construction), the city has in recent years embraced the national culture wars and grabbed headlines for leading a conservative backlash of the state’s ruling Democrats in Sacramento.

Residents last March approved the ban on flying the LGBTQ Pride rainbow flag on city property. They gave the go-ahead to a controversial ordinance requiring voters to carry ID to vote, which Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber argued violates state election laws. (Oral arguments before an appellate court are scheduled for October 22).

And the simmering battle over sexual content in children’s books and the Huntington Beach Public Library came to a head in June.

The City Council previously approved a controversial ordinance to create a community review board for library books – what critics have called book banning – and also briefly considered the privatization of the librarypolicies they saw as a counterbalance to the ultra-liberal, “woke” laws of state law. But this summer, in a special election, voters overwhelmingly supported repealing the review board and limiting the city’s ability to outsource library services.

“We really just want home control. We want to govern ourselves,” said Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns. He didn’t know Garcia personally, but as a former Long Beach police officer, he was familiar with the former councilman’s left-wing politics.

“We hope he’s willing to help us, but if he comes in and tries to break us, you know, break our community and try to crush our council in some way,” Burns said, speaking of Garcia, “well, we’re going to fight back. We’re not going to get along.”

Garcia argued that the successful rejection of the crackdown on the library is evidence that the city council’s right-wing approach does not fully reflect the values ​​of residents.

“The majority of Huntington Beach are good, hard-working, middle-class people who want a fair future for themselves,” Garcia said in an interview with CalMatters. “That’s who I’m going to represent.”

Garcia reiterated that he is not afraid to speak out, even when he disagrees with decisions made in the cities he represents. However, he said he would be proud to represent everyone in the proposed new district and fight hard to bring federal dollars home to support local projects. He said he would prioritize issues that “everyone cares about,” such as increased affordability, combating climate change and curbing corruption.

Still, Garcia has repeatedly noted that the proposed district would still be solidly Democratic. He expressed confidence that he will easily win re-election next year and, he hopes, will help Democrats regain control of the House.

Democrats have come under fire for drawing up the new maps behind closed doors without input from the public or the Independent Redistricting Commission. But Paul Mitchell, the election data guru and redistricting expert who wrote the proposed maps, said that in redrawing Garcia’s district to include coastal Orange County, he and his team closely followed the proposals. advocacy groups introduced earlier of the independent commission.

Garcia’s redistricting in Orange County was critical in bolstering support for three vulnerable Democrats — Min along with Reps. Derek Tran and Mike Levin — and creating two newly redrawn districts currently held by Republicans Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa that Democrats believe they can flip.

“It was a critical piece of the puzzle,” Mitchell said in an interview. “It makes everything easier in Southern California.”

Fellow California Democrats praised Garcia for graciously allowing his district to go from one that Vice President Kamala Harris won by more than 32 percent last November to one where Democrats have just a 10 percentage point registration advantage.

“Robert Garcia is an incredible team player,” said Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, chairwoman of California’s Democratic congressional delegation, in a written statement. “It’s taking some historically Republican districts, but it’s still going to be a Democratic district.”

At the same virtual fundraiser in September, Garcia told viewers that accepting more Republican voters was “the right thing to do” because “our democracy is at stake.”

“This is not the time to worry that we don’t have competitive seats or that we’re going to be in Congress for life,” Garcia said. “This is about winning the majority to protect the people and save our country.”

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