Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation intended to add five congressional seats for Democrats while framing the move as protecting democracy. A statewide mailer denounced the gerrymander and featured a League of Women Voters chapter statement opposing mid-cycle redistricting and urging protection of commission-drawn districts. The League chapter later clarified it was not affiliated with the coalition that sent the flier. Voters will consider Proposition 50 in a November special election amid an expected flood of campaign mail and media spending. The measure faces a potential Department of Justice lawsuit and could affect control of Congress and gubernatorial political calculations.
Last week, as Gov. Gavin Newsom was signing legislation aimed at giving his Democratic Party five more congressional seats, contending that it would protect democracy, postal workers throughout the state were delivering a four-page flier denouncing the gerrymander as a threat to democracy. Newsom declared that Democrats should play hardball in response to President Donald Trump's drive for Texas and other red states to conduct their own gerrymanders to shore up the slender majority for Republicans in the House of Representatives.
The flier, however, featured a statement from Gloria Chun Hoo, president of the California chapter of the League of Women Voters, denouncing Newsom's effort to set aside temporarily, he promises the districts drawn by an independent, bipartisan commission four years ago. The organization later emphasized it was not affiliated with the coalition that sent it. California has become a national model for independent redistricting, Hoo's statement read in the mailer.
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