WATCH: Newsom optimistic about redistricting despite poll

By Dave Mason
The Center Square

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday said he’s proud of how quickly the California Legislature passed a congressional redistricting proposal that he signed, but he was reminded of a new poll showing voters may reject it.

The Election Rigging Response Act puts Proposition 50 on the Nov. 4 ballot in a special election. Voters will decide whether to redraw lines to enable Democrats to gain five seats in the U.S. House to counter five Republican seats that Texas plans to gain through redistricting.

A reporter pointed out to Newsom at a San Francisco press conference that a University of California, Berkeley poll shows 48% of voters support the maps drawn up by Democrats. But to pass on the Nov. 4 ballot, the measure needs more than 50%.

The poll released Friday by the university’s Institute of Governmental Studies shows 32% of respondents plan to vote against redistricting, with 20% undecided.

More people are likely to support the redistricting as they learn more about it, Newsom told the reporter at the press conference, which was intended to focus on California’s new green energy partnership with Denmark.

Already people such as former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, support the redistricting plan, Newsom said as Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Jesper Møller Sørensen, the Danish ambassador to the U.S., listened.

“You have [President Donald] Trump, Trump-aligned forces, spending upward of $100 million to defeat this initiative,” Newsom said, accusing Trump and his fellow Republicans of wanting to rig the 2026 midterm election. “Donald Trump knows he’s going to lose the midterms. Why else do you call a governor of a red state and say you’re entitled to five more seats?”

Newsom said he believes voters will approve congressional redistricting in California.

Democrats have said redistricting is necessary to counter gerrymandering in Texas, but on Thursday, legislators removed the clause saying the redistricting would take place only if Texas or other states proceeded with mid-decade redistricting.

Newsom said Trump is trying to get more Republican seats unfairly in Indiana, Missouri and Florida.

The governor said California is going about redistricting in a transparent manner.

“That’s in stark contrast to Texas where maps were drawn at Mar-a-Lago,” he said, referring to Trump’s residence in Florida.

But Republicans in the California Legislature, right up to Thursday’s party-line votes in the Assembly and Senate, accused Democrats of drawing maps behind closed doors and presenting them to Republicans with little time to review districts. When some GOP legislators during the floor sessions asked who drew the maps, Democrats didn’t answer them.

During interviews with The Center Square, Republican leaders in the California Legislature complained that the redistricting would split cities and counties into odd-shaped districts and threatened the GOP strongholds in San Diego and Orange counties and along the California-Nevada border. A Center Square review of the redistricting map found that’s correct.

For example, Lodi, a Northern California city of more than 66,000 people, would be divided into three congressional districts.

Another reporter on Friday asked Newsom about his recent meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star and Republican who, as governor of California, supported the creation of the independent redistricting commission. Proposition 50 would undo significant parts of the commission’s work.

Schwarzenegger has vowed to fight redistricting.

“I met with Arnold. We had a fantastic conversation. We have many of the same concerns about the current occupant of the White House,” Newsom said. “We had more areas of agreement than disagreement.”