Elias: Republicans the real hypocrites on Congressional gerrymandering

For the better part of 20 years, Republican politicians across the nation have taken advantage of whatever privileges their status as state legislators gave them to assure themselves of staying in office perpetually, or at least as long as they wanted.

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This has all been done at the expense of Democratic politicians and the minority groups many of them represent in Congress thanks to districts that Republicans have drawn for themselves from Texas to Florida and from West Virginia to the Dakotas.

The GOP operatives never felt the slightest embarrassment or compunction about what they were doing, no matter how many times courts forced them to alter their maps and return to Square One in the gerrymandering wars.

That’s why it’s utterly laughable for figures like Joel Coupal, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association or the newly elected Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who runs a fundraising operation called “Reform California,” to toss around words like “hypocrite” and “apostate” when California Democrats try for once to turn the tables on them.

This all began when the order came down from Donald Trump in the Oval Office to Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, who despite his frequent toadying to the president nevertheless brags incessantly about what a political hotshot he is.

So when Trump essentially ordered Abbott early this summer to turn six minority Congressional districts in the mostly minority Houston area into five White Republican districts and just one minority district, it was clearly meant as a tactic to assure continued Trump or Trumpist rule in the House of Representatives in perpetuity.

Never mind that the Constitution very plainly says Congressional districts are to be drawn once every 10 years, just after the Census, and intended to last the full 10 years. Democrats have stood still for this chicanery every time it’s been tried in the past.

That’s likely why the GOP operatives who have pulled these trick plays so often in the past were taken aback when California Gov. Gavin Newsom, plainly running for president in 2028, decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Yes, California has a nonpartisan state elections commission to draw its decennial borders, and that’s how it worked in 2021, the year after the last Census. Newsom realized, though, that anything enacted by a California ballot initiative — such as the non-partisan election commission — can be undone by another initiative.

So he did the unprecedented: He decided to match Texas tit for tat, saying if they take away five Democratic districts in a 2026 election that figures to be extraordinarily tight, we’ll figure out a way to get them back, right here in California.

Hence, California’s Legislature quickly approved a new map with five districts that will likely switch from red to blue, mostly in the eastern and southern parts of the state. This didn’t sit too well with James Gallagher, the minority leader of California’s Assembly.

Gallagher had hoped to pick up one of the unknown number of changed seats due to come up after 2030. But James Gallagher, meet Jeff Stone.

Stone is a former Riverside County supervisor who devised another north-south split for California, this one intended to give the new eastern California state a couple more seats in Congress and two more Republican seats in the Senate. It was essentially the same things Gallagher wants to try now.

There’s no shame on Stone’s part in this attempted manipulation. It didn’t work, just like all the other 40-plus state-split schemes presented over the last half century. Meanwhile, Newsom’s lone-wolf attempt to thwart Trump’s attempt at self-perpetuation is the only significant effort trying to stop the Republicans from cementing themselves into power for years, maybe decades, to come.

It appears to be the sort of tactic frustrated Democrats want their 2028 hopefuls to attempt. So even if Newsom’s effort fails, at least he will have tried, putting himself ahead of rivals like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Breshears. For now, at least, it gives Newsom a leg up on the rest of the Democratic field, although no one knows how long that advantage may last.

Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.