Prop 50 is a stepping stone to Newsom’s presidential campaign

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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The odds are astronomically high that California voters will ratify Proposition 50Gov. Gavin Newsom’s scheme to grab five more congressional seats for his Democratic Party.

The passage, however, may have little or no impact on next year’s congressional elections, as it merely makes up for the five seats that Texas Republicans previously accepted at the behest of President Donald Trump.

What happens in terms of redistricting in other states, especially those controlled by Republicans, is more likely to shape the parameters of the 2026 election, increasing or decreasing the Republicans’ chances of retaining their very slim majority in the House of Representatives.

Still, Newsom’s bold confrontation with Trump is an important step toward winning over his party presidential nomination in 2028 — an award he still insists on, with rapidly diminishing credibility he hasn’t decided to pursue.

Forming Prop. 50 as a tool to block Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, Newsom has emerged as the de facto leader of a political party trying to find a way forward after last year’s embarrassing loss. Moreover, his extensive fundraising for the Prop. 50 gives him a list of thousands of potential supporters for a presidential campaign.

“I haven’t decided” Newsom insisted to Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”aired on Sunday before airing a a word salad of criteria for a 2028 candidate who seemed to be embracing, namely:

“I think whoever runs, and this is just my objective belief, subjectively, but I hope it’s objective for a lot of Americans, it reminds me a little bit of Isaiah. You have to be a breach repairer, spiritually and physically. But it’s not just about recovery, the forces of recovery. It’s also forces of transformation. And what I mean by that is what are the trend lines that define the future? You know, I’m here, first in California.

“I worry about the future of work,” Newsom continued. “I’m worried about the announcement from Amazon. I’m worried about rising profits, skyrocketing profits, and downsizing, which means fewer and fewer people have access and opportunity. I think whoever is running has to paint a vision for the future, a journey we can take together that’s not just about growth, but about inclusion, issues of debt and rights, issues of energy. And I still believe in climate issues. All of these issues should ultimately be front and center for whoever is nominated by our party.”

So if one makes the perfectly logical assumption that Newsom is running a shadow campaign, despite his insistence to the contrary, how does he build on the Prop. 50, which describes Trump as the devil incarnate and himself as main resistor?

During his interview on Meet the Press, Newsom hinted that he would continue to troll Trump on social media and engage in other unconventional maneuvers to bolster the opposition because Trump himself has used those tools.

“The rules of the game have changed,” Newsom told Welker. “Now we have to rewrite the new rules. I’m trying to repeat. I’m in the process of doing that.” His tactics, Newsom implied, were justified by Trump’s authoritarianism.

“This can’t go on forever, we’re all living in this state of fear and anxiety, on edge,” he said. “So of course we want to get back to some semblance of normalcy. But you have to deal with the current crisis. It’s just been 10, 11 months into this presidency. We’ve got three more years. It’s time to batten down the hatches. And it’s time to change if we want things to change. And that’s why our communications strategy has changed.”

It certainly sounds like Newsom wants to be the catalyst for that change.

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