Gavin Newsom’s Power Grab

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s a very controversial ballot measure here in California, Prop 50. It involves redistricting congressional districts in a special ballot mandate that would empower Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to draw up new congressional districts.

And the gist of it is that the Democrats feel that in the next midterms, they want to get at least five or six more congressional Democratic seats. They say it’s in reaction to what Texas has done. Texas has redistricted and it is going to pick up more Republican seats than it had before. Gavin Newsom, who was running for president in 2028, has thrust himself into the controversy and said: I will do what Texas did.

But there’s a problem. If you look at all the gerrymandered districts in all 50 states and you compare them with the national vote—contemporary national vote—of Democrat, Republican, they’re already gerrymandered in favor of Democrats.

Here in California, to take the most relevant example that involves Prop 50, we have 52 congressional districts—52. Currently, there are only nine Republicans out of that 52. That represents about 17% of the congressional district. However, in most statewide and national elections, Republicans usually poll about 40%.

So, in other words, California is 23% underrepresented in its congressional districts, in terms of Republican representatives, right now.

How did that happen? That happened because about a decade ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran as a conservative and metamorphosed into a centrist or moderate or maybe left-center in his last years in office, created what he said was a nonpartisan redistricting commission. But when you actually looked at the people on that commission, they were either Left or center-left, and they gerrymandered California under the guise of a nonpartisan or bipartisan commission that took politics, supposedly, out of the equation.

So, what am I saying? We’re going way beyond nonpartisanship. That wasn’t nonpartisan. We’re going into extremism that is going to end up with just four or five Republican Congress representatives out of 52 seats. And it’s even worse than that when you look at the map. It makes jigsaw puzzles look proportional. They’re stretching and pulling these districts well beyond any semblance to geographical reality.

And the point is, they want to combine Republicans into about five districts. And that way they would free up moderates and independents and Democrats and create the other 47 districts that would be sure winners for the Left. And in these five districts, these nine existing Republicans would be forced to run against each other. So, they would destroy half of the incumbents, and some of them serve on, you know, very important committees in Washington, they have seniority.

Gavin Newsom, moreover, when he’s been asked about that, he says that he wants to punch these people. I guess he was referring to Republicans in general or the Texas Republicans in particular. He wants to “punch them in the mouth.” He said he wants to punch President Donald Trump in the mouth.

The rhetoric is heating up, but will Proposition 50 pass in a state that is 60%, in most elections, voting toward the Left or for Democrats? It probably will. And we in California, who are on the conservative side, will go from 17% representation—not 40%, which reflects our actual numbers, but 17%—now to about 9% after Proposition 50 passes.

So, I would urge everyone to take a very good look in California at this proposition. And whatever your political affiliation is, you can see that this is a desperate attempt to destroy a once idealistic but not very good bipartisan commission, but far better than turning over redistricting to Gavin Newsom and hardcore leftists in the California Legislature.

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