There is no guarantee that CA MPs win redrawn congressional seats

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom scored a three-point political game when the Legislature and voters approved a mid-decade reconfiguration of the state’s 52 congressional districts.

The gerrymander was intended to shift five congressional districts held by Republicans to Democratic control, thus neutralizing the five seats that Texas Republicans were grabbing at the behest of President Donald Trump as two parties are fighting for control of Congress.

The GOP now holds a majority in the House of Representatives, and Republicans are worried — with good reason — that Trump’s unpopularity and the incumbent’s tradition of losing seats could shift control.

Newsom saw an opportunity to capitalize on Californians’ deep disdain for Trump, help his party regain its majority in the House of Representatives, and advance a shadow campaign for the White House in 2028. Voters cooperated in a special election by approving Proposition 50 by almost a 2 to 1 margin.

This month’s primaries showed how creative political cartography can change results.

Democrats may not win all five seats that Prop. 50 is meant to move, but they will get at least a few. Republicans have a good chance of retaining one of the five — that of San Joaquin Valley Rep. David Valladao — and outside chances in two others.

Valadao’s hopes of survival were clarified when progressive Randy Villegas defeated moderate Democrat Jasmeet Bain. While Democrats have an 18 percentage point lead in voter registration in the 22nd District, their Democratic voters are trending toward the middle. Villegas, who is backed by U.S. Sen. Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, may lean too far left for Central Valley voters.

Two other cheat areas are also in play.

Congressman Kevin Kiley has given up his GOP credentials and is running for re-election in the 6th District, a string of suburbs that more or less surrounds Sacramento. Kylie survived the primary and will face Democrat Richard Pannformer state legislator, in November. The Democratic voter registration lead is less than 9 percentage points, so Kylie has a chance to win.

Meanwhile, in the recently redrawn 48th District in San Diego and Riverside counties, Congressman Darrell Issa is retiring, but Republican Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor, is competitive. His Democratic foe, Marnie Von Wilpert, is a member of the San Diego City Council and has only a slight edge in Democratic voter registration.

The bottom line is that Democrats can win as many as five seats in November and only two. Whether Prop. 50 will be a deciding factor in the battle for control of Congress depends on what happens in other states.

Dueling gerrymanders in Texas and California has sparked efforts in a handful of other countriesred and blue, which accelerated after the US Supreme Court declared in April that a longstanding interpretation of the operation of the Voting Rights Act regarding redirection is null and void.

Acting on a case from Louisiana, the court said that the deliberate creation of districts for certain ethnic and racial communities was “racial fraud” and unconstitutional. Very quickly the Louisiana Legislature eliminated one of its two districts represented by black Democratsand redrew him as a Republican.

Some red states followed suit, and politicians in blue states tried to emulate California, most obviously in Virginia. However, the Supreme Court of Virginia canceled a measure to redistribute elections and the US Supreme Court declined to intervene.

In general, it turns out that Republicans come out on top in gerrymander warbut by how much is not yet certain. Efforts to redraw Alabama’s congressional districts are still up in the air. If it succeeds, The GOP could gain up to 10 new seatscalculated CNN.

However, there is one clear winner in California: Gavin Newsom. Regardless of what happened in November, his sham campaign, framed as a rebuke of Trump, strengthened his position as one of the leading potential candidates for the presidency two years later.

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