The campaign arm for House Democrats sent the California Legislature proposed new maps for the state’s congressional districts.
The new, partisan maps come on the heels of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s launch of California’s redistricting campaign on Thursday, an effort he touted as meant to favor Democrats in California in the upcoming midterm elections as a counter to similar efforts in Republican-led states elsewhere in the country.
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The proposal from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee isn’t final. State legislators still need to approve the maps, which would then be decided by voters in a special election in November. And the redistricting effort is only “triggered,” Newsom has said, by similar partisan gerrymandering in red states.
Still, this is an early picture of what changes could be made to California’s congressional districts for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections — should that ultimately happen.
Under this proposal, only four of the state’s 52 congressional districts would include a majority of registered Republican voters. Now, nine districts have more registered Republican voters than Democrats, according to the latest data from the California secretary of state.
“Our proposed map was created using traditional redistricting criteria, consistent with guidelines laid out by the California’s Citizen Redistricting Commission,” Julie Merz, the DCCC’s executive director, said in a letter to California legislators, obtained by the Southern California News Group. “It allows for more compact districts than in the current Commission-drawn map, keeps more communities and neighborhoods together, splits fewer cities and makes minimal disruptions to the Commission-drawn map so as to impact as few residents as possible.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign operation for House Republicans, blasted the proposal, saying, “Out of touch Washington Democrats just hand-delivered their gerrymandered wishlist to Sacramento. Backroom deals in broad daylight, and they’re bragging about it.”
Take a look at the proposed maps — and more of what the DCCC told the state legislature — below.
