When California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50 on Tuesday, they set in motion political and possibly legal maneuvers that will ultimately determine whether its overt purpose, increasing Democratic congressional members by five or more seats, becomes reality.
The first is a political scramble among politicians in both parties to determine who will run where in next year’s congressional elections.
Ambitious Democrats are lining up to run in the newly gerrymandered districts, some of which have been tailored to favor particular candidates.
The most obvious example is a district that stretches from the heavily Republican northeastern corner of the state to the northern suburbs of San Francisco, seemingly made to order for Mike McGuire, the outgoing president pro tem of the state Senate. In creating that district, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature aim to unseat Republican Doug LaMalfa, who now represents northeastern California in Congress.
The plan would, if successful, shrink Republican districts from nine to four, meaning that in some areas, such as in inland Southern California, current GOP incumbents would be compelled to either retire or joust among themselves for survival.
Prop. 50’s political impacts hinge on the assumption that maps ratified by the ballot measure actually are in effect for next year’s elections. While it’s likely they will be used, there’s a possibility that courts will intervene.
By happenstance, Prop. 50’s pro-Democrat gerrymander and the recent pro-Republican gerrymander in Texas are occurring just as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs a major case involving the federal Voting Rights Act. Its outcome could impact both.
The Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1965 to bolster the civil rights of minorities, particularly Black people in Southern states, prohibits any voting procedure “which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
While the law bars exclusionary voting laws, it has been widely interpreted to require creation of districts specifically to increase chances for racial groups to elect representatives from their communities.
California’s independent redistricting commission, in plans drawn after the 2010 and 2020 censuses, adopted that interpretation, and the newly gerrymandered districts do as well.
However, the interpretation is being challenged before the Supreme Court in a case out of Louisiana, and its conservative members, a majority, have indicated both during arguments and in past rulings that they may consider it to be racial discrimination against white voters.
“This court held that race-based affirmative action in higher education must come to an end,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his brief in the Louisiana case. The same is true, he said, for using the Voting Rights Act to draw legislative districts that are likely to elect Black or Latino candidates.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department monitored Tuesday’s voting and could contend that California’s new congressional maps are discriminatory and should be suspended until the Supreme Court renders its decision.
Trump seemed to hint about intervention in a Truth Social post Tuesday denouncing Prop. 50 as a “GIANT SCAM” and said that mailed ballots, by far the most prominent form of voting, disenfranchise Republicans and are “under very serious legal and criminal review.” He closed with “STAY TUNED!”
In 2001, the threat of intervention by Republican President George W. Bush’s administration thwarted plans by California’s Legislature for a gerrymander favoring Democrats, forcing them to make a deal with Republicans on maps that maintained the partisan status quo.
Even a brief interruption could undermine what Newsom and the Legislature seek in Prop. 50 because candidate filing for congressional districts opens on Dec. 19, and if the new maps are in legal limbo, current districts would be used for the 2026 elections.
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.
