GOP

Newport Beach businessman Dale Dykema is a highly sought-after guest when potential Republican presidential candidates visit California.

He recently attended an intimate dinner with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a cocktail party headlined by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and a half-hour tete-a-tete with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

In the last quarter of a century, Dykema, 85, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to GOP candidates, party organizations and political action committees. He has yet to make up his mind on whom to back — and more importantly, whom to raise money for — in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“There are just so many candidates in the race. I’m completely on the fence,” said Dykema, founder of TD Service Financial Corp., a company that provides foreclosure services for the mortgage industry. In 2012, he said, he settled quickly on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, but for the upcoming election he may wait until after the first couple of primaries before deciding.

The size of the field — well over a dozen likely candidates — coupled with the lack of a clear favorite mean many Republican donors in California share Dykema’s reluctance to commit.

“Normally, there’s a candidate that the entire establishment is behind and there’s this huge fundraising juggernaut for one person,” said Jon Fleischman, a state GOP official from Anaheim Hills and publisher of an influential conservative blog. “This year, no one has the brass ring already in hand. We’re seeing a lot more listening and a lot less giving early.”

On the Democratic side, state donors are already uniting behind former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the party’s overwhelming favorite. She raised millions for her nascent campaign at events hosted earlier this month by entertainment and business leaders.

As Republican donors weigh their choices, they’re grilling the 2016 candidates on a range of issues, including immigration, religious freedom and net neutrality. They’re doing so in homes in Bel-Air, boardrooms in the Silicon Valley, parties in Orange County and GOP functions all over the state — a nod to California’s primacy in what is known in political circles as the “invisible primary.”

California probably doesn’t matter in the nominating fight. Its June 7, 2016, presidential primary is almost certainly too late to affect the GOP’s process. The state is also too Democratic to put it in play in next year’s general election. But California is the biggest source of campaign cash in the nation.

In the 2012 election, presidential candidates directly raised more than $112 million from California’s deep-pocketed donors. That’s almost the combined total raised in the next two most-generous states, Texas and New York, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. These figures do not include the millions donated to party committees and outside groups such as “super PACs” that are not controlled by a candidate.

Not surprisingly, given California’s tilt toward Democrats, President Obama was the biggest beneficiary then, raising $62.8 million here for his reelection bid, according to the center. But GOP candidates also filled their campaign coffers here — Romney collected $41.3 million, and the rest of the Republican field raised nearly $8 million.

Romney’s extensive fundraising network in California, which he cultivated over nearly a decade, became available to others when he decided in January not to run again.

“We’re talking a lot about it, but no one’s committing to anyone right now,” said Bret de St. Jeor, a Modesto businessman and Romney fundraiser in 2012. “It’s just flat-out too early…. Let’s hear a little bit more. Let’s hear the opening statements from the other candidates before we start jumping on somebody’s bandwagon.”

Donors “love the courting process,” said Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member from Surfside in Orange County. “Most of the serious candidates are coming to California repeatedly, and their mission is to establish a rapport as early as possible … and to try to meet as many folks as possible.”

Steel, who is undecided, recently co-hosted a meet-and-greet and intimate dinner for Walker at the tony Pacific Club in Newport Beach. He noted that the field includes multiple candidates who appeal to the same GOP faction, whether it’s establishment voters, social conservatives or tea party groups.

Many potential candidates, he added, have connections to California, or have the opportunity to grow support.

Former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina retains backers from her unsuccessful run against Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010, Steel said. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry developed ties to the state during his unsuccessful 2012 presidential bid, in part because one of his top strategists is a longtime and well-respected California GOP fundraiser.

Walker is a familiar face in California’s donor community, as he is across the nation, because of his fierce fight against unions in Wisconsin. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has spent considerable time wooing the libertarian streak that runs through Silicon Valley. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has blown away audiences with his oratory, Steel said. And Bush’s family has long-standing alliances in the state.

Jeb Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, was a prodigious fundraiser here, performing a “cash-ectomy on the California donor community” whenever he visited, Fleischman said. “It was staggering.”

Those relationships haven’t sealed the deal for Jeb Bush here, but they do provide an edge for the yet-undeclared candidate that was visible during a recent, lucrative fundraising swing through the state.

“I really wanted to see him run before his brother ran,” said venture capitalist William H. Draper III, who went to Yale with their father, President George H.W. Bush, and served as his finance chair in his unsuccessful 1980 presidential run.

Draper, a former president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, co-hosted an East Palo Alto fundraiser for Jeb Bush’s committee.

Susan McCaw, a major fundraiser for George W. Bush who served as his ambassador to Austria, said she was impressed by Jeb Bush’s record as governor of Florida and his support for education and immigration reform. She and her husband held a fundraiser for his political action committee at their Bel-Air home.

“I think he has the best chance of beating Hillary in the general,” she said.

Electability was the one quality nearly every donor — committed or not — mentioned as a priority.

John Jordan, a tech entrepreneur and vintner who has spent millions on Republican causes, plans to make a decision over the summer. He is hosting a dinner for Walker at his Healdsburg vineyard and expects to huddle with Paul soon. His sole focus, he said, is backing the candidate who could win the White House in 2016 by attracting the various factions of GOP voters as well as less ideologically driven general-election voters.

“In a pretty cold-blooded way,” Jordan said, “it has got to be someone that can unite the base, that they will like enough to turn out for … but at the same time isn’t someone that’s obnoxious.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @LATSeema

WASHINGTON – In the moments after the Supreme Court’s landmark healthcare ruling, Capitol Hill was unnervingly quiet as legislators took time to absorb the ruling. The silence did not last long.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) headed to the Senate floor to mark the milestone.

“Passing the Affordable Care Act was the greatest single step in generations toward ensuring access to affordable, quality healthcare for every person in America, regardless of where they live, how much money they make,” Reid said. “I’m happy and I’m pleased the Supreme Court put the rule of law ahead of partisanship.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner(R-Ohio) – and tea party groups — vowed to press forward on efforts to repeal the law.

“Today’s ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety,” Boehner said. “Republicans stand ready to work with a president who will listen to the people and will not repeat the mistakes that gave our country Obamacare.”

Republicans and their allies in this battle said the court ruling underscores the urgency of electing more conservatives to Congress to repeal the law.

“We are focused on taking control of the Senate, reinforcing our 2010 gains in the House, and defeating President Obama,” said Amy Kremer, chairman of Tea Party Express. “These key objectives will open the door for a wave of new conservatives in Washington who are committed to repealing Obamacare.”

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), the chairwoman of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, said: “Today’s Supreme Court decision raises the stakes for the coming months.”

House lawmakers from both parties had been meeting – separately – on Thursday morning behind closed doors before the decision became public. Boehner was expected to be reiterating to members not to “spike the ball” in the event of a favorable ruling. Both parties said they expect the fight to continue both in Congress and on the campaign trail.

“Our struggle isn’t over,’’ said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma), expecting congressional Republicans to continue to try to dismantle the law “piece by piece.’’

As the court’s decision became known – and initial television reports gave confusing accounts of the outcome — one congressman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego), was the among the first out with a statement: “In the wake of the Supreme Court declaring the ‘individual mandate’ portion of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, it is questionable as to whether the rest of the bill can stand,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later his office sent out an “updated” release: “Simply put, we cannot afford the president’s health care plan.”

Some Democrats, though, just savored the moment.

“We’re just ecstatic,’’ Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Lakewood) said. She was in a committee meeting, checking her iPad for word on the court ruling.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the minority leader – who had long predicted a 6-3 decision from the court – took her moment.

“This decision is a victory for the American people,” Pelosi said. “In passing health reform, we made history for our nation and progress for the American people.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) was also in a committee meeting when he got conflicting messages about the ruling.

“I rushed back to the office to watch the coverage with staff,’’ he said. “Along the way, I could hear hoots and hollers from various congressional offices as the staff of different members reacted with elation or upset. Needless-to-say, we were on the elated side.”

He said was pleased by the ruling but said he also was pleased for another reason: “The court was at risk of becoming yet another partisan institution if it threw out decades of precedent. The chief justice chose a different legacy, and this was not only the correct legal decision, it was also enormously important to maintaining the independence and reputation of the court.”

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) called it a “sad day for liberty.’’

“The court’s misguided decision is an attack on freedom, an insult to our Constitution, and it will ultimately destroy the best healthcare system in the world,’’ he said. “Chief Justice Roberts once said that the Supreme Court’s job is to apply the law – ‘to call balls and strikes, not to pitch or bat.’ He couldn’t have been more right in saying so, and he couldn’t have been more wrong by choosing to circumvent the Constitution this morning. Even worse, I fear that the high court has opened Pandora’s box by blatantly disregarding the law, and there will no longer be any real limits to what the federal government will be able to force the American people to do.’’

Twitter.com/LisaMascaroinDC

Twitter.com/RichardSimon11

DES MOINES — Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses in January, with Mitt Romney a close second, but neither was the true winner this weekend when the delegates who actually will vote at the Republican National Convention were selected. That would be Ron Paul.

The congressman from Texas finished a distant third in the Iowa caucuses more than six months ago, but of the 28 delegates selected Friday and Saturday to head to the national convention, 23 are Paul supporters – and they are not bound to support the victor of the state’s first-in-the-nation voting contest.

It’s part of a quiet strategy by Paul and his backers to amass an army of supporters at the GOP gathering in August in Tampa, Fla., to push Paul’s views on liberty, states’ rights, the monetary system and foreign policy. By working arcane electoral rules and getting supporters into positions of power in local, county and state party operations, the strategy is paying dividends across the nation.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Iowa GOP caucuses

Paul has stopped actively campaigning and has conceded that Romney will be the GOP nominee. It’s unclear whether Paul’s name will be submitted for nomination; mathematically, he does not have the numbers to derail Romney. But his supporters can have an effect on the party in other ways.

“We want to have a real big voice on the platform; we want to influence the direction of the party more than anything else,” said Joel Kurtinitis, a Paul supporter who was pleased after the Saturday vote.

He was Paul’s state director in Iowa until Paul suspended his presidential bid in May, and he said that although he would love to see Paul awarded a prime speaking spot at the convention, his followers’ efforts are about more than one man.

“We’re going to hold up our values and we’re going to bring conservatism back to the mainline of the Republican Party. That’s where my hopes are at and that’s my hope for this convention more than seeing Ron Paul do X, Y and Z,” Kurtinitis said.

Romney and his campaign have treated Paul and his followers deferentially, perhaps mindful of not alienating his incredibly loyal supporters. At the Iowa GOP convention, a Romney staffer who flew in from Boston watched the proceedings but did not get involved. At the Romney table, workers distributed three fliers to conventioneers – a general brochure about his candidacy, an invitation to a rally in Davenport on Monday and a news release that touted Romney’s endorsement by Paul’s son, Rand Paul, and effusively lavished praise on the Kentucky senator who many believe is the heir apparent for Paul’s movement.

But others say the move by the Iowa GOP is a black eye for the state’s caucuses and for the presumptive GOP nominee.

“Embarrassment is the word that comes to my mind,” said Jamie Johnson, who served as Santorum’s state coalitions director in Iowa. The former senator from Pennsylvania, who narrowly won the caucuses but has endorsed Romney since ending his presidential bid in April, appears to have one solitary Iowa delegate who supported him heading to the convention.

“I believe that it seriously puts the Iowa caucuses’ first-in-the-nation status in jeopardy,” Johnson said. “It will be a major embarrassment to Gov. Romney if there is a strong Ron Paul vote from the floor on the night in which the votes are counted.”

Paul is counting on having 200 delegates on the floor who can vote for him, and a few hundred more who are bound to vote for Romney but are his supporters.

“While this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!” Paul wrote in an email to supporters last week. “I hope every one of you continues the fight we have advanced so well this year. I hope you will finish your local and state conventions, and, if you were selected as a national delegate, that you will head to Tampa in August to force the Republican Party to listen to the voice of liberty.

“We have never had this kind of opportunity. There will be hundreds of your fellow supporters in Tampa who will be ready and willing to push the Republican Party back to its limited government, liberty roots.”

[email protected]

Reporting from Palm Desert — It was a cool and rainy day when elders of the Republican tribe recently gathered to honor one of their own.

The honoree, Stuart K. Spencer, was unmistakable in his white duck pants and a lime-green sport coat so bright it almost hurt to see. A reformed chain-smoker, he snapped merrily away on a wad of chewing gum.

The event marked Spencer’s 90th birthday, but the mood beneath the surface conviviality was unsettled and gray, like the clouds fringing the mountains outside.

If the occasion was intended as a personal celebration, it also had the feel of a wake for a time in politics long passed.

Spencer — savvy, irreverent, profane — spent decades as one of the most successful and admired consultants in the campaign business. The hundreds, both Democrat and Republican, who paid homage at a desert country club included the alumni of several past GOP administrations, in both Washington and Sacramento.

Along with former Vice President Dick Cheney and former California Gov. Pete Wilson, veterans of the Reagan years turned out in force. It was Spencer, more than anyone, who took a political long shot and washed-up B-movie actor and helped transform him into the Reagan of legend.

“This is the gang that could actually shoot straight,” said one longtime GOP operative, peering at the largely silver-haired assembly.

Inevitably, private conversation turned to the current occupant of the White House, a member, nominally, of the same political party as those Republicans present.

Feelings ranged from horror to perplexity. Not from jealousy; most of those in attendance had long ago held the reins of power and were comfortably settled in their memories. Rather, it was the startling dysfunction of the fledgling Trump administration.

Yes, said one veteran of the Reagan White House, there was infighting and jockeying early on then too, but not the public knife-fighting of competing Trump factions.

“We weren’t going on the Sunday TV shows to grandstand,” he said, requesting anonymity, still finding it uncomfortable to criticize a fellow Republican on the record. “We were nose to the grindstone, focused on policy” — which grew out of Ronald Reagan’s deep-seated philosophy, not the whims of a blustery, seemingly improvisational president.

When the time came for testimonials, there was plenty of impertinent humor and fond reminiscing: about midnight phone calls from Nancy Reagan, drinking North Carolina moonshine, and the time Spencer dropped an F-bomb in the Oval Office to advise President Ford to stick to the Rose Garden and not try to out-campaign Jimmy Carter.

“Stu called them as he saw them,” said former Gov. Wilson, dryly.

Jerry Lewis, not the comedian but a former congressman from the Inland Empire, offered one of several elegies.

Once among the most powerful members of Congress, he was known during 30-plus years representing Riverside and San Bernardino counties for a willingness to work across the partisan aisle, a facility — along with a desire to legislate and not just obstruct — that now seems almost quaint.

“I’d love to see us return to a time when people actually talked to each other,” Lewis said, to a ripple of applause.

Taking his turn at the microphone, Spencer was funny and poignant.

The thing he really likes about living a long life, he said, is that all of his enemies are now dead. Then he saluted some of them: liberals like Jesse Unruh, the legendary Assembly speaker, and Phillip Burton, the formidable San Francisco congressman, who fiercely battled Reagan and his policies. They were men of honor and principle, Spencer said, and he misses them.

His brand of Republicanism — support for legal abortion, certain gun controls and, most urgently, a need to reach out to voters who are not white or conservative — has grown largely out of fashion in the political party to which he devoted his life. He spent 70 years laboring on behalf of the GOP only to be called a RINO, or Republican In Name Only, Spencer said with wonder.

Among the behaviors he models is discretion — Spencer is one of the few insiders who didn’t cash in on his Reagan years — and an abiding respect for the political process and its practitioners. Though no fan of President Trump, he was measured in his critique.

“Today, half of America is holding its breath,” he said. “I’m one of them.”

He warned against lashing out in anger, or turning disappointment into hatred, even as he challenged some of Trump’s more preposterous claims, including the falsehood that he was victimized by millions of illegal votes cast for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“You need to win with class and lose with class,” Spencer said.

He took particular umbrage at those wrapping Trump — another political amateur who improbably made his way to the White House — in the Reagan mantle. The late president “had class and a totally different belief system,” Spencer said.

He wished Trump well. But, he said, “he is President Trump, not President Reagan.”

There was no audible dissent.

The program ended with a Sinatra impersonator singing a customized version of “My Way.” Then the guest of honor quietly slipped out the sliding glass doors, riding past Gerald Ford Drive as he made his way home.

[email protected]

@markzbarabak on Twitter

ALSO

Love or hate President Trump? It may all be in your head

Republicans think they’ve found the ideal candidate for governor. So why isn’t Kevin Faulconer interested?

A Californian for president in 2020? It could happen

Reporting from Washington — As they wrestle with how to replace the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republicans face a critical choice between cutting taxes or preserving health coverage for millions of Americans, two competing demands that may yet derail the GOP push to roll back the 2010 healthcare law.

House Republicans, who passed their own Obamacare repeal measure this month, skirted the dilemma by cutting both taxes and coverage.

Their bill — embraced by President Trump — slashed hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes, a key goal of GOP leaders and the White House as they seek to set the stage for a larger tax overhaul later this year.

At the same time, the House legislation cut more than $1 trillion in healthcare assistance to low- and moderate-income Americans, a retrenchment the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates would nearly double the ranks of the uninsured over the next decade to more than 50 million.

In the Senate, coverage losses on that scale are worrisome to many rank-and-file Republicans whose states have seen major coverage gains under Obamacare. That makes the preservation of benefits one of the biggest challenges confronting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other GOP leaders.

“Coverage matters,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, noting the importance of preserving Medicaid spending in the current law. “To someone [who] is lower-income, you’re going to need those dollars to cover that person.”

Yet moderating cuts to Medicaid and other government health programs without driving up budget deficits could force Republican senators to also dial back the tax cuts that many in the GOP want.

“It’s not that complicated. … If you want to use money for tax reform, you can’t have it for health coverage,” said Gail Wilensky, a veteran Republican health policy expert who ran the Medicare and Medicaid programs under President George H.W. Bush. “You can’t do both.”

McConnell convened a group of GOP senators — quickly panned for including only white men — to develop Obamacare replacement legislation, though the panel largely excluded Republican lawmakers who are most concerned about coverage, including Cassidy. McConnell has since said that all Senate Republicans would be involved in developing an Obamacare replacement.

The trade-off between cutting taxes and preserving Americans’ health protections reflects, in part, the legislative procedure that congressional Republicans have chosen to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

That process, known as budget reconciliation, allows Senate Republicans to pass their Obamacare repeal with a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote super-majority that is usually required to pass controversial legislation. (Republicans have only a 52-48 majority in the Senate.)

But to qualify for budget reconciliation under Senate rules, the bill must reduce the federal deficit over the next decade.

Tax cuts alone typically do the opposite, driving up budget deficits.

The tax cuts in the House Republican healthcare bill total more than $600 billion over the next decade, according to independent analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

They include most of the major taxes enacted in the 2010 health law to fund the law’s program for extending health insurance to more than 20 million previously uninsured Americans.

On the chopping block are taxes on medical device makers and health insurance plans, which together account for about $165 billion in tax cuts over the next decade.

Couples making more than $250,000 a year (and single taxpayers making more than $200,000) would see two tax cuts, including one on investment income, that the budget office estimated would cost the federal government nearly $300 billion over the next decade. (That estimate may be revised down as House Republicans delayed one of the tax cuts in the final version of their bill.)

Also eliminated would be a host of limits on tax-free spending accounts that many Americans use for medical expenses. Republicans argue these taxes are unnecessary and even undermine efforts to control healthcare costs.

“It’s bad for economic growth,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) told Fox News during the House debate.

The tax on health plans, for example, is widely seen as contributing to higher premiums, as insurers customarily pass the costs along to consumers.

But eliminating so many taxes isn’t cheap.

So the Republican healthcare bill — known as the American Health Care Act — slashes hundreds of billions of dollars in federal healthcare spending, including an estimated $880 billion in federal money for Medicaid, the state-run government health plan for the poor that currently covers more than 70 million Americans at any one time.

That would in effect cut federal Medicaid spending by more than a quarter over the next decade, an unprecedented reduction that independent analyses suggest would force states to sharply limit coverage for poor patients.

The House bill would also reduce insurance subsidies now available to low- and moderate-income Americans who get health plans through Obamacare marketplaces such as HealthCare.gov.

The reduction in federal aid would, in turn, dramatically increase the number of uninsured Americans. Overall, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 24 million fewer people would have health coverage by 2026 under the original version of the House bill.

By contrast, the wealthiest Americans stand to get a large tax break. By 2023, families making more than $1 million would see their taxes decrease by an average of more than $50,000, an analysis by the independent Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center suggests.

That means that in a country of more than 300 million people, nearly half of all the tax breaks in the House healthcare bill would go to only about 780,000 households.

The combination of tax breaks for wealthy Americans and historic reductions in assistance to low-income patients has fueled widespread criticism of the House GOP healthcare legislation, particularly on the left.

“The math is pretty clear,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “They are sharply cutting Medicaid and insurance subsidies to pay for tax cuts.”

Whether GOP senators will be able to moderate the reductions in healthcare assistance remains unclear.

The early version of the House bill was projected to reduce the federal deficit by about $150 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office analysis.

That number has likely shrunk slightly, as House Republicans added more spending to the legislation before it passed last week. An updated budget analysis is expected next week.

But under the budget rules adopted by GOP lawmakers this year, Senate Republicans will not be able to add any spending into their legislation without enacting cuts elsewhere or shrinking the tax cuts further.

That is because according to those rules, their bill must reduce the deficit by as least as much as the House bill.

Obamacare vs. Trumpcare: A side-by-side comparison of the Affordable Care Act and the GOP’s replacement plan »

Obamacare 101: A primer on key issues in the debate over repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. »

[email protected]

@noamlevey

Reporting from Tampa, Fla. — Mitt Romney won the Florida presidential primary Tuesday, taking a long stride toward capturing the GOP nomination and dealing a potentially mortal blow to the hopes of the once-resurgent Newt Gingrich.

The television networks called the race for the former Massachusetts governor soon after polls in the westernmost part of the state closed; by that time Romney already held a big lead in the votes already tabulated. The result ended what had become a suspenseless campaign over the last few days, as multiple opinion surveys showed Romney opening a commanding lead.

FOR THE RECORD:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Mitt Romney the governor of Massachusetts. He is a former governor of that state.

His victory handed Romney Florida’s 50 delegates, the biggest cache yet, but more than that the win shows his ability to capture support in a big, costly and diverse state that will be a major battleground in the fall contest against President Obama.

Speaking to reporters before the polls closed, Romney said he learned a lesson from the double-digit loss he suffered at Gingrich’s hands 10 days ago in South Carolina.

“If we’re successful here, it’ll be pretty clear that when attacked you have to respond and you can’t let charges go unanswered,” Romney said after visiting campaign volunteers at a Tampa phone bank. “I needed to make sure that instead of being outgunned in terms of attacks that I responded aggressively. I think I have and hopefully that will serve me well here.”

For his part, Gingrich showed no signs of backing down, or leaving the race any time soon.

“This is a long way from being over,” the former House speaker said while shaking hands Tuesday morning at a church polling place in Orlando. “I’d say June or July, unless Romney drops out earlier.”

“The same people who said I was dead in June, or the people who said I was dead in Iowa, those people?” Gingrich said. “They’re about as accurate as they have been the last time they were wrong.”

Romney’s victory, while expected, marked a sharp turnabout in fortunes and could be a pivot point in the race for the Republican nomination.

From here, the contest heads Saturday to Nevada, a caucus state that will probably play to his organizational strength, then enters a relative lull. Just a few contests, all of them caucuses, are scheduled before the next big primaries Feb. 28 in Michigan — a Romney state, where his father served three terms as governor — and Arizona.

Gingrich came soaring into Florida after his landslide win in South Carolina and quickly surged to the top of some polls. But his momentum dwindled just as quickly after a pair of lackluster debate performances.

Romney, by contrast, revamped his approach in Florida to demonstrate a new, more pugnacious side onstage and undercut one of the major props of Gingrich’s candidacy: that he alone has the stuff to take it to Obama. Two-thirds of Florida voters said the debates were important in making up their minds, and Romney apparently helped himself with his well-received showings in Tampa and Jacksonville.

He also benefited from the diluted power of religious conservatives, a group that has been, at best, lukewarm to his candidacy. Fewer than 4 in 10 Florida voters described themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians; in South Carolina, they made up nearly two-thirds of electorate.

The issues Romney raised in Florida were not new. For weeks, he has assailed Gingrich over his conduct in Congress, which resulted in a bipartisan reprimand and record $300,000 ethics fine, and his inside-the-Beltway consulting work after leaving office.

Romney focused in particular on the $1.6 million that Gingrich’s firm received from Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage guarantor, which many Republicans blame for the housing crisis that ravaged the nation’s economy and imposed outsized pain on Florida. He accused Gingrich of “selling influence in Washington at a time when we need people who will stand up for the truth.”

With the help of a new speaking coach, Romney pressed his assault without letup, something he had not done since Gingrich’s fifth-place finish in Iowa — a performance that many thought was the end of the former speaker’s campaign.

Romney’s attacks also took on an unusually personal tone. At one point, he scoffed that Gingrich should “look in the mirror” to understand why his campaign was struggling.

The former congressman responded in kind, calling Romney “totally dishonest” and saying it was impossible to debate someone with his casual relationship with the truth.

But Romney was able to pack far more punch in his attacks. While the two candidates were at rough parity on TV in South Carolina, Romney and his allies outspent Gingrich on the Florida race by nearly 5-to-1, or more than $15 million for Romney to Gingrich’s roughly $3 million.

For all of that, Gingrich may end up sticking around longer than Romney and many party leaders would prefer. Because most of the delegates over the next two months will be awarded on a proportional basis, Gingrich can keep adding to his total even if he loses to Romney. Contests in big states like Ohio, New York, Texas and California are weeks or even months away.

Also lurking in the presidential contest are Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Both gave up on Florida, showing up for the debates but not mounting a serious effort.

Paul, who has a small but devout band of followers, is targeting organizationally intensive caucus states in an effort to win delegates to influence the party platform at the Tampa convention.

Santorum, the victor in Iowa by a small margin, has already proved his ability to wage a subsistence campaign and signaled his intention to compete in Colorado and Minnesota, two of this month’s caucus states.

[email protected].

Times staff writers Seema Mehta in Orlando and Maeve Reston in Tampa contributed to this report.

When 32-year-old theoretical physicist Ron Unz decided to run for governor, even some friends tried to talk him out of it.

“Politics is not the kind of thing you expect geniuses to go into,” said Eric Reyburn, who attended Harvard University with Unz.

Rivko Knox, Unz’s aunt, worried that the race would be brutal. “I said: ‘Can you take criticism? What if you speak and people laugh at you?’ ”

David Horowitz, the conservative activist, was more blunt. Instead of a politician, Unz “looks like a person who reads science fiction novels at night and spends all the rest of his time on a computer talking to other people about science fiction,” said Horowitz, who has spent hours discussing politics with Unz. “I told him: ‘You’re an intellectual. . . . Your passion is ideas. You’ll be murdered.’ ”

But Unz, the soft-spoken owner of a small computer software company in Silicon Valley, calculated the odds and made up his mind. A month ago he formally challenged Gov. Pete Wilson for the Republican nomination, launching a statewide media blitz financed with more than $1 million of his own money.

Ever since, Unz has blistered Wilson, calling him a hypocrite, an opportunist–even a closet Democrat. The ultraconservative long shot has attacked the more moderate incumbent for raising taxes, bashing immigrants and supporting “the pathology of the social welfare state.” Although he has been short on specific solutions, Unz’s relentless debating style and his willingness to spend freely have won over some skeptics.

“I was afraid he would embarrass himself. But he hasn’t. I’m glad he’s out there pushing,” said Horowitz, who has dubbed Unz’s campaign “The Revenge of the Nerds.”

Arnold Steinberg, a Republican strategist, said his reservations have been replaced by enthusiasm. He tried to talk Unz out of running, he said–but ended up signing on as an adviser.

*

Few people believe Unz can beat Wilson–Unz admits that his campaign is an “uphill battle.” Still, some Republicans worry that the young challenger will wound Wilson, making it easier for a Democrat to replace him.

The Wilson campaign, which at first attempted to ignore Unz, recently began responding to him, labeling one TV ad in which he accused Wilson of letting Los Angeles burn during the 1992 riots “a new low” in the campaign. Though their recent tracking polls show only about 8% of Republicans would vote for Unz, Wilson’s camp has begun to take him more seriously, poking into his background–and informing reporters of the results.

Dan Schnur, Wilson’s spokesman, said one call to First Boston Bank, one of Unz’s former employers, yielded this tidbit: Unz is remembered as the only job applicant ever to list his IQ on his resume.

In fact, Unz may have one of the few IQs worth noting on a resume. It has been estimated at 214, a statistic that one intelligence expert describes as “one in a million.” Educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford universities, he has mastered not only theoretical physics and computer programming, but also ancient Greek history. The author of several scholarly papers on the Spartan naval empire, he is probably the only gubernatorial candidate who warms to the subject of Plutarch.

“The history of the Greek city states really gives you a sense of how nations or states can decline,” said Unz, who claims that his many areas of expertise have each helped prepare him for executive office. “People told me that politics can be frustrating. But when you have sat month after month working on the same computer program, you get used to . . . incremental change.”

Braininess does not necessarily yield political savvy. Unz used the mathematical concept of “expected return” to assess whether he should enter the race. Multiplying the probability by the possible payoff, he concluded that if he had at least a one-in-five chance, running would be worth it. But most political experts say he drastically misjudged the odds.

If Unz’s intellect is unique among political candidates, Unz says that is not the reason to vote for him. Instead, he wants people to respond to his ideas–among them, smaller government, fewer regulations and traditional values. He claims he, not Wilson, is in the Republican mainstream.

He rails against bilingual education and affirmative action (policies that he says amount to “ethnic separatism”) and bad-mouths welfare programs that he says foster “irresponsibility, illegitimacy and a total sense of disconnection from the work ethic in American society.”

To hear Unz’s current ideology, one might never guess at his background.

Unz’s ads describe him as “the Republican for governor,” but he grew up a Democrat. He was born in the San Fernando Valley in 1961 and had his first involvement with politics at age 11 when he donned a McGovern T-shirt and accompanied his mother door to door, stumping for the Democratic presidential candidate.

The candidate who vows to “roll back” public assistance programs once relied on those programs for survival–when growing up in North Hollywood, he and his mother were on welfare. Unz, who today describes the culture of illegitimacy as a root cause of crime, was born out of wedlock–a fact that made the young Unz feel “very ashamed,” he said.

Some politicians might use such personal details to bolster their arguments. Unz, by contrast, prefers to keep them at a distance, discussing his childhood only at a reporter’s request.

“I really don’t think my personal background has had much of an impact on my views,” Unz said recently, moments after comparing his mother, Esther–a former high school teacher who he says “made some stupid mistakes”–to TV’s “Murphy Brown.” “The ‘Murphy Brown’ case works great on TV, but it’s not clear to me that it works in practice.”

In his case, Unz says, “the system worked.” Enrolled in public schools, he proved a top student–a math and debating whiz who as a senior in high school became the third Californian ever to win first place in the national Westinghouse talent search competition. Despite his own success story, he firmly believes that welfare does more harm than good.

“The truth is that the cost of living in America, if you’re talking about living relatively simply, is pretty low. The marginal cost of eating simple foods and not starving is minimal. And there . . . would be more charitable organizations in society if these (welfare) programs didn’t exist,” he said, adding that he does not believe that the assistance he and his mother received “was that much of a help.”

Esther Unz recalls things differently. To cut costs, she said, she and her young son lived with her parents. But when she fell ill and was unable to work, she applied for aid. The money she received from the government was essential, she said.

“Ron’s father was out of the picture very soon. . . . But my parents’ home was paid for. What saved us financially completely was there were no rent payments,” she said, adding that her son’s conservative views are something of a mystery to her. “For some reason he turned to the other side. I never tried to structure him as far as (political) party. He just kind of came out this way.”

Despite their differences, she is immensely proud of her son and believes his sincerity and industriousness would make him an effective governor. She has long worried, however, that his penchant for hard work has left him without a fully rounded life.

“Now all I can hope for is he will have time for some extracurricular life,” she said. “And get a girl. Because he has had very few in his life.”

Unz says he wants to marry and have children, eventually. But when he puts his mind to something, he says, he focuses completely. For several years his financial software company, which devises specialized “code” to help Wall Street firms manage their investments efficiently, has been his primary fascination. So far he has not given his personal life the same kind of attention.

A visit to Unz’s large Spanish-style home in Palo Alto reveals a life completely built around work. Three of the five bedrooms–which house his company, Wall Street Analytics Inc.–are filled with files and computer equipment. The rest of the house appears largely unoccupied. He sleeps on a mattress and box spring set on the floor. His spacious living room not only lacks furniture–it is utterly empty.

“I’ve only lived here a year,” he says, nodding toward a well-appointed kitchen he has never used. “Monomaniacal” is the word one friend says Unz uses to describe himself. Asked what he does for fun, he answers: “I’ve been very busy.”

When asked the same question, Unz’s best friends from Harvard do not hesitate. For fun, they said, Unz has always loved to talk politics. “Ron’s idea of a good time at a party is to have five or six people stand around and talk about the issues of the day,” said Reyburn, who fondly remembers a nightly college ritual: dinner, spiced with spirited political debate.

“He’s an intellectual, not a party animal,” recalled Robert Dujarric, another friend who remembers those dinners warmly. “He likes to talk to people. Even though he’s very much at home in the realm of computer software and numbers, he likes to socialize.”

Unz graduated in 1983 with a double major in theoretical physics and ancient history and headed to England. There on a Churchill Science Fellowship, he studied quantum gravitation under Stephen Hawking.

*

While continuing his studies at Stanford in 1986, Unz and two of his former junior high school teachers developed a plan to create a public academy for Los Angeles County’s high-ability students. Despite winning the support of some educators, the proposal was rejected by officials who worried that if an elite school drained off the best students, ordinary schools would become less challenging.

Unz describes this incident, his first deep involvement on a public policy issue, as an eye-opener. He came to believe that if he wanted to improve society, he would have to get rich enough to champion the causes important to him.

He took a summer job on Wall Street in 1987, working in mortgage finance at First Boston Bank. He taught himself computer programming and soon wrote “The Solver,” a program that used the computer to carve up mortgage loans into securities–a series of calculations that until then had been done by hand.

Unz’s work was outstanding, his colleagues recall, and he accepted a full-time job. But some who worked with him said he could be inflexible when he believed he was right. It was that single-mindedness that ultimately led to his departure, they said.

David Warren, a managing director at First Boston who was hired the same day as Unz, recalled: “He came from an academic background where if your professor told you to do x, and you did y because it was better than x, and then you explained your reasoning–your professor shook hands with you and said: ‘Congratulations, you were right.’ He felt that was the way he was going to behave.”

Unz’s bosses did not share this approach. A few months after taking the job, Unz left to start his own company. For the next six years, Unz worked seven days a week, up to 20 hours a day, writing computer code in his modest apartment in Queens.

New York City appalled him. The crime and the poverty proved to Unz that welfare programs not only were not working but were the cause of society’s decline. He began reading Commentary magazine, and was so impressed that he ordered 15 years of back issues. When his long hours started to pay off (his first sale, to a Wall Street investment firm, netted nearly $200,000), he used the money to fund conservative projects.

*

Unz will not say what he is worth, but says he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute in New York City and to Linda Chavez’s Center for the New American Community in Washington, D.C. Even before moving back to California two years ago, Unz sought out the Los Angeles-based Horowitz to see if he needed funding.

“I wanted to do this book ‘Surviving the PC University,’ ” recalled Horowitz, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. “He said: ‘How much will it cost?’ I said $10,000, and he pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check.”

“I don’t care much about money,” said Unz, who drives a compact car and has spent more on clothing while preparing to become a candidate than he had during the previous several years. “The whole reason I wanted to make money was to be able to influence policy.”

Late last year, when Unz realized that no other Republican was likely to challenge Wilson, that attitude made it easy for him to volunteer. To others, spending a hard-earned personal fortune to run what in all likelihood will be a losing race might seem crazy. To Unz, it was civic duty.

“The odds are, you lose. But if you don’t try it, you’re sure to lose,” he said, adding that he plans to spend a lot more of his money before the June 7 primary. “A lot of this is patriotism. . . . At some stage, individuals have to decide whether they’re going to make an effort.”

So far, Unz’s rhetoric has been dominated by criticism of Wilson. His lack of specific alternatives has hurt him even among some Republicans who dislike Wilson.

“He’s not for me,” Dieter Holberg, a retired engineer, said after hearing Unz speak at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. “You can say, ‘Cut things.’. . . But it would have been long done if it was easy to do.”

But at times he strikes a chord. The California Republican Assembly, a conservative grass-roots organization, has endorsed him. And recently, after hearing Unz blast programs such as prenatal care, drug rehabilitation and “New Age self-esteem counseling,” a few members of UC Berkeley’s College Republicans came away impressed.

“You get a strong sense that here is a fundamentally competent person who is intelligent enough to grasp everything–though that is not the same thing as being able to command or lead. But I don’t particularly think that Wilson leads,” said Gregory Sikorski, 27, a history major. “I will support him now and support the Republican (nominee) later.”

MIAMI — A statement issued by Cuban-American powerbroker Jorge Mas Canosa after a meeting earlier this week with Democrat Bill Clinton has caused a furor among Republicans here while fueling speculation that defectors from what was once considered the most solid of Republican voting blocs could help give Florida’s 25 electoral votes to the Democrats for the first time since 1976.

Mas, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, went to Tampa on Tuesday to thank Clinton for his support of the anti-Castro Cuban Democracy Act. In a statement signed by Mas and three other CANF directors, Mas went on to say: “Any fears that the Cuban-American community may have had about a Clinton Administration with regard to Castro’s Cuba have dissipated today.”

Many interpreted Mas’ remarks as all but blessing Cuban-Americans who wanted to vote for Clinton. Republican stalwarts expressed surprise and dismay over what some characterized as a betrayal.

“I have a serious problem with (the statement),” said Alberto Cardenas, co-chairman of the Bush-Quayle campaign in Dade County and a co-founder of CANF. “Advising the Cuban-American voter that Clinton is an acceptable choice is without merit, and at best premature, and doesn’t speak well for 12 years of Republican support. I told that to Mr. Mas.”

Democrats downplayed Mas’ influence, insisting a slight shift was under way long before the meeting.

“Cuban-American voters could make the difference, could be that swing vote,” said Grace Prieto, a coordinator with the Clinton-Gore campaign in Dade County. “Dukakis got about 7% of the Cuban-American vote in 1988. I am sure that this time the Democrats will get 25% to 30%.”

Statewide, the race between the Arkansas governor and President Bush is rated pretty much a tossup, and Cuban-American voters make up only 4% of the Florida total.

Still, according to a poll released Tuesday by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research, what was once an overwhelming majority for Bush among Cuban-Americans has begun to erode, from 73% to 55%. Meanwhile, Clinton’s support among the same group rose from 19% to 36%.

Those poll results were released about the same time that Mas was meeting privately with Clinton in Tampa, and do not reflect the subsequent political fallout from his statement.

Mas, along with several CANF directors, met with Clinton after the Democratic candidate addressed 18,000 people at a rally. Also present at the meeting were Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.) and Maria Arias, Clinton’s Cuban-born sister-in-law.

Mas’ overture to Clinton was widely seen as a political hedge by an ambitious man who has made no secret of his intention to be a leading player–perhaps even president–in a post-Castro Cuba.

But his conciliatory statement caused such an uproar among so many Cubans here that Mas went on a Spanish-language radio station Thursday to affirm his support for Bush. “My affiliation is Republican, my vote is for President Bush, but my work for Cuba is much more important than my partisan preferences,” he said during an interview over radio station WQBA.

Mas’ political maneuvering “is the topic in the Cuban community,” said Los Angeles-based political pollster Sergio Bendixen, working here for the Univision television network. “Many people feel it was treason for (Mas) to suggest it might to OK to vote for Democrats, perceived for many years as next to Communists. Others accept that Mas’ one objective is the liberty of Cuba, and see it as a genius move.”

Prieto said she has been busy assuring Cuban-American Democrats that the controversial Mas “will not control the Clinton Administration.” Mas’ goal, added Prieto, “is to persist as leader if Bill Clinton wins, and keep power and control.”

Arias, a Miami attorney married to Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, said: “We welcome any statements from Mas or anyone else who says they believe in Bill Clinton. My reading is that he does have impact. I don’t think (his statement) can hurt.”

Tomas Garcia Fuste, news director of WQBA, said he believes that Bush’s son, Jeb, a Miami businessman, is the difference. “He is a good friend here. Cuban-Americans are Republicans, no matter what happens.”

In its report on the controversy, the Miami Herald mentioned rumors that before traveling to Tampa to meet with Clinton, Mas was confronted at his home by an angry Jeb Bush, who demanded that he not go. In the same account, Jeb Bush denied that any confrontation took place.

President Trump’s tight grip on the GOP, long assumed to be an inevitable feature of American life (like gravity or the McRib’s seasonal return), has started to loosen.

Republicans are now openly defying him. The man who once ruled the GOP like a casino boss can’t even strong-arm Indiana Republicans into gerrymandering themselves properly.

This sort of resistance didn’t emerge overnight. It fermented like prison wine or bad ideas in a faculty lounge. First came the Iran bombing: an early shock that suggested “America First” might also mean “Israel First,” at least to the populist-nationalist camp inside the GOP.

Then came the effort to muffle the Jeffrey Epstein files, a notion so foreign to MAGA’s ethos that the subsequent drama, according to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), “ripped MAGA apart.”

Greene also expressed concern that the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies are set to lapse, and that Republicans have no plan to fix the imminent premium spikes — an occurrence that threatens to alienate the very working-class voters that MAGA now insists it represents.

All the while, another MAGA soap opera was churning. Tucker Carlson decided to “platform” white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, leading to an outcry of criticism that prompted the Heritage Foundation’s president to defend them (sparking another Republican “civil war” subplot).

The common thread in these stories is the sense that Trump’s days are numbered. The question of “Who gets MAGA when Dad can no longer operate the remote?” has become unavoidable.

True, pundits have been prematurely writing Trump’s political obituary since he first came down that escalator. But it feels different this time. The question is why.

There are likely numerous reasons, but I’ve zeroed in on the five that I think are the most important.

The first, and most obvious, reason is that Trump is now a lame duck, and everyone knows it.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) made the logic explicit when, during the Epstein-file fight, he warned his colleagues: “Donald Trump can protect you in red districts right now … but by 2030, he’s not going to be president, and you will have voted to protect pedophiles if you don’t vote to release those files.”

Once politicians and influencers start imagining their post-Trump resumes, his spell over them shatters. This probably explains why Trump has dangled the idea of an unconstitutional third term.

The second reason we are seeing Trump’s grip weaken is that, frankly, Trump’s not popular. In fact, according to a new Reuters poll, his approval rating is just 38%.

This rating plummets when it comes to the issues that divide Republicans. For example, according to that same survey, a mere 20% of American adults — including just 44% of Republicans — approve of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files.

The third reason is that Trump is increasingly isolated from the constituency that once fine-tuned his political instincts.

The Trump of 2016-2020 essentially crowdsourced his political instincts at rallies, where he learned to read the room like a comedian. Now he’s physically isolated and increasingly out of touch with his base. His inner circle consists of ideologues and billionaires — people who don’t worry about the price of milk.

So when Trump insists the economy is thriving, as he hosts Gatsby-themed soirees and tears down the East Wing of the White House to build a new ballroom, populists look up from their grocery bills, spy Trump on TV meeting with the Saudi crown prince, and are suddenly flooded with buyer’s remorse. This creates an opening, and the movement’s would-be heirs can sense it.

Of course, Trump could conceivably adjust his policies and rhetoric in an effort to restore his populist appeal.

But the fourth reason for Trump’s loss of power within the GOP concerns his mortality: Trump is the oldest person to win the presidency in U.S. history. He has had two “annual” physicals this calendar year — including an MRI no one will adequately explain (this is not part of a routine physical).

This brings us to the fifth and final reason the cracks are starting to show: Trump’s 2024 coalition was always like a game of Jenga.

It was a convenient alliance of disparate factions and individuals whose interests converged because Trump’s charisma (and lack of a coherent political worldview) was like the glue holding incompatible pieces together. But as that binding force weakens, the contradictions become clear, and open warfare is inevitable.

For years now, Trump imposed peace the way an aging rock frontman keeps peace within a band. But once that star starts forgetting lyrics or showing up late, his bandmates start imagining solo careers.

We’re watching MAGA realize that the Trump era is ending, and that the next battle is about what — or who — will fill the vacuum when he’s gone.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

WASHINGTON — A federal court has blocked Texas from moving forward with a new congressional map hastily drawn in recent months to net Republicans up to five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.

The ruling on Tuesday is a major political blow to the Trump administration, which set off a redistricting arms race throughout the country earlier this year by encouraging Texas lawmakers to redraw its congressional district boundaries mid-decade — an extraordinary move bucking traditional practice.

The three-judge federal court panel in El Paso said in a 2-1 decision that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” ordering the state to revert to the maps it had drawn in 2021.

Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who at Trump’s behest directed GOP state lawmakers to proceed with the plan, vowed on Tuesday that the state would appeal the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

Californians responded to Texas’ attempted move by voting on Nov. 4 to approve a new, temporary congressional map for the state, giving Democrats the opportunity to pick up five new seats.

Initially, the proposal pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as Prop. 50, had trigger language that would have conditioned new California maps going into effect based on whether Texas approved its new congressional districts.

But that language was stripped out last minute, raising the possibility that Democrats enter the 2026 midterm election with a distinct advantage. The language was removed because Texas had already passed its redistricting plan, making the trigger no longer needed, said Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the maps for Prop. 50.

“Our legislature eliminated the trigger because Texas had already triggered it,” Mitchell said Tuesday.

Newsom celebrated the ruling in a statement to The Times, which he also posted on the social media site X.

“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom said. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”

Legal scholars had warned that Texas’ bid would invite accusations and legal challenges of racial gerrymandering that California’s maps would not.

The new Texas redistricting plan appears to have been instigated by a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who threatened Texas with legal action over three “coalition districts” that she argued were unconstitutional.

Coalition districts feature multiple minority communities, none of which comprises the majority. The newly configured districts passed by Texas redrew all three, potentially “cracking” racially diverse communities while preserving white-majority districts, legal scholars said.

While the Supreme Court’s rulings on redistricting have been sporadic, the justices have generally ruled that purely political redistricting is legal, but that racial gerrymandering is not — a more difficult line to draw in southern states where racial and political lines overlap.

In 2023, addressing a redistricting fight in Alabama over Black voter representation, the high court ruled in Allen vs. Milligan that discriminating against minority voters in gerrymandering is unconstitutional, ordering the Southern state to create a second minority-majority district.

The Justice Department is also suing California to attempt to block the use of its new maps in next year’s elections.

Times staff writer Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.

Nov. 13 (UPI) — California Republicans are challenging their state’s voter-approved redistricting plan, adding to the ongoing partisan court struggle over gerrymandering.

The lawsuit, filed a day after voters decisively approved Proposition 50 in a special election, claims the new congressional map was drawn in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments because race was unjustifiably a factor.

Proposition 50 amends the state constitution to allow state legislators to redraw California’s congressional map in an effort to counteract Texas’ new map. The map will remain until 2031 when the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission draws a new congressional map.

The congressional map approved by Texas this year was drawn at the behest of President Donald Trump who called on state lawmakers to add five more likely-Republican congressional seats before the 2026 midterm election.

Richard Hasen, professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, told UPI voters historically are opposed to partisan redistricting, making this a novel development.

More than 5.6 million Californians voted in favor of Proposition 50 while about 3.2 million voted against it, according to the vote count by the California Secretary of State’s office.

“It is unusual to say the least for voters to approve a partisan gerrymander through a ballot measure,” Hasen said. “Instead we have typically seen voters approving measures that make redistricting less political. But this can be seen as the voters’ response to Donald Trump for pushing Texas to do a new Republican partisan gerrymander. It is a kind of tit-for-tat that may become the new normal in future redistricting wars.”

The California Republican Party is joined in the lawsuit by several residents, state lawmaker David Tangipa and former congressional candidate Eric Ching. Tangipa represents District 8 at the state assembly. Ching ran an unsuccessful campaign to represent District 38 in 2024.

The complaint by the California Republican Party and co-plaintiffs says the new congressional map was drawn to boost the voting power of Hispanic voters by creating two new districts to “empower Latino voters to elect their candidates of choice.”

“However, California’s Hispanic voters have successfully elected their preferred candidates to both state and federal office, without being thwarted by a racial majority voting as a bloc,” the lawsuit reads. “This is unsurprising because Latinos are the most numerous demographic in the state and California voters nearly always vote based on their party affiliation, not their race.”

State legislatures are not prohibited from considering race when drawing district lines, Justin Levitt, constitutional law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, told UPI.

The issue for the complainants is whether they can prove race was considered too much. If that can be proven to a court, they must also prove that there was no justification for considering race.

“The complaint seems to lower the standard or wants to wishcast a far lower standard where the simple act of drawing the district to be compliant with the Voting Rights Act is racial predominance,” Levitt said. “They want to skip past the racial predominance subordinating all others line and suggest that because some of the districts pay attention to race that means they’ve got to be super closely justified. But that is not where the line is currently.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Alexander vs. the South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP raised the standard for proving racial gerrymandering. A lower court ruled that South Carolina lawmakers diluted the voting power of Black voters by drawing one majority-Black congressional district, violating the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court overturned the decision. Justice Samuel Alito, writing the opinion for the majority, said that state legislatures must be presumed to be working “in good faith” when submitting redistricting plans.

Alito added another requirement, ordering that plaintiffs must submit an alternative congressional map proving that districts could be drawn in a way to meet “greater racial balance.”

The questions at hand in the Proposition 50 complaint are at the heart of a case in the U.S. Supreme Court: Louisiana vs. Callais. The court heard rearguments over the case, which weighed whether the Voting Rights Act is in conflict with the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment, in October.

Levitt expects an opinion on Louisiana vs. Callais may be months away, as late as June, but it could have a bearing on the California GOP’s lawsuit and other redistricting cases.

“Only nine people know what the court’s going to do and I’m not one of them,” Levitt said. “And if the Supreme Court sets off an earthquake then that earthquake will also reach California.”

The California GOP lawsuit already faces challenges set out by the Supreme Court. The court has agreed that partisan gerrymandering does not fit the principles of the democratic process but it also has also ruled that the courts are not the place to resolve these issues.

In the 2019 ruling on the case Rucho vs. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion said partisan gerrymandering presents a “political question beyond the competence of the federal courts.”

Because of this limitation, lawsuits alleging gerrymandering must demonstrate that race was a predominant but unjustifiable factor in redistricting.

“The Supreme Court said that it’s really hard to prove that race predominated, particularly when there are political reasons for drawing the lines as a jurisdiction has,” Levitt said. “That standard in the South Carolina case made it really difficult for plaintiffs to win these types of cases. And in a context like Prop. 50, where it’s pretty apparent to everybody that the overriding reason to draw the districts was to try to pick up Democratic seats, that makes it super hard to prove.”

It is, by both candidates’ admission, a Republican primary race without issues, conflict or many campaign dollars. The low-budget, low-profile contest does not bode well for the eventual nominee’s prospects against Democratic Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman of Tarzana in November.

Attorneys Tom Franklin of Beverly Hills and Edward Brown of Sherman Oaks are competing in the June 7 primary for the GOP nomination in the 43rd Assembly District. The affluent, heavily Democratic district stretches from Studio City to Topanga Canyon and over the Santa Monica Mountains to Beverly Hills, Westwood and Brentwood.

The campaign for the hearts and minds of the district’s 64,237 registered Republicans is being waged at GOP gatherings and door-to-door; neither candidate has raised enough money to mail any brochures or flyers. Both Franklin and Brown seek to contrast themselves with Friedman–who they maintain is too liberal for the district–rather than each other.

“I’m running against Terry Friedman,” Franklin said last week. “I don’t really know Mr. Brown’s interest in the major issues.”

Asked why Republican voters should choose him over Franklin, Brown replied, “I don’t know that they should. I’m not going to lower myself to some kind of mudslinging contest.”

Friedman, meanwhile, responds that his priorities of protecting the Santa Monica Mountains, upgrading education and aiding the elderly and underprivileged “are right in the mainstream of the district.” Democrats enjoy a 54%-to-36% registration advantage, although President Reagan carried the district in 1980 and 1984 and fellow Republican Gov. George Deukmejian won it in 1986.

Inside Track

Franklin, 29, appears to have the inside primary track because he has a base of support among Republicans in Beverly Hills, where he has been active, and has been more visible, according to GOP activists such as Shirley Whitney, chairman of the 43rd District Republican Committee. The committee does not endorse candidates in the primary.

Franklin has served as president of the Beverly Hills Republican Assembly, a 150-member volunteer organization that registers voters and supports candidates, and has been active in GOP politics since he was University of Southern California recruitment chairman for Reagan’s 1980 presidential bid.

The self-styled conservative has also garnered more campaign dollars than Brown, although Friedman has raised 100 times more money than each Republican. Franklin reported raising $1,395 and spending $531 as of March 22, when he filed a campaign statement with the secretary of state. He has a $15-a-person event scheduled Sunday at his parents’ Beverly Hills home but is well short of the pace he needs to attain his original goal of $200,000.

Brown, who says the subject of campaign finances is too personal to discuss, said he has raised less than $500. “I won’t take anything more than $10,” Brown said. “I don’t want to have any special pleading.”

He failed to file a campaign fund-raising report with the secretary of state in mid-March as required by state law, media director Caren Daniels-Meade said. He faces a possible fine, which would be determined by how much he has spent but not reported, she said.

Strongly favored to win a second term, Friedman reported raising $122,575 and having $127,678 on hand in his March 22 campaign statement. He said last week he subsequently took in $40,000 more at a fund-raiser. Many of his contributions are from fellow attorneys.

“Substantially, those are people who know me from my past work as executive director of Bet Tzedek Legal Services,” said Friedman, referring to the Los Angeles legal-service program for low-income elderly. “And from my work on several committees in the Legislature.”

Robert Townsend Leet of Tarzana, a Libertarian candidate, and Marjery Hinds of Los Angeles, the Peace and Freedom candidate, filed March campaign reports with the state stating they had not raised as much as $1,000 and didn’t expect to do so.

Brown, 58, is an ex-Democrat who unsuccessfully sought election to a municipal court judgeship and Congress in the 1960s and to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors in the early 1970s. He describes himself as a conservative who is also concerned about protecting individual constitutional rights.

Bush or Kemp

Franklin and Brown did differ in which candidates they favor for the 1988 Republican presidential primary. Franklin says he supports Vice President George Bush, the apparent nominee; Brown says U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) is his choice.

Franklin and Brown concur, however, in criticizing Friedman’s opposition to a bill to allow local and state police to eavesdrop electronically on suspected drug dealers. Advocates called it a tool to combat gang violence. It passed the Assembly on a bipartisan 48-18 vote last month and was sent to the Senate, which had previously approved a more sweeping bill.

“I don’t think these punks call each other up to decide where they’re going to do a drive-by shooting,” said Friedman, who says the measure is marred by loopholes and inconsistencies and would be financially inefficient. “That’s not how they plan their evil.

“I believe that the police sweeps in South-Central Los Angeles have been much more effective than any attention-grabbing attempt in Sacramento to appear tough on crime.”

Franklin ridiculed Friedman’s reasoning.

“It’s common knowledge that many gang members bring their beepers with them into the classrooms and that’s how they are informed they have a pending drug deal to consummate,” Franklin said. “It just shows how out of the mainstream he is, even in his own party.”

Brown said, “I’d like to bring in the National Guard. Every four or five blocks you’ll have a cop standing there in a little shed and you won’t have any more gangs.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump made historic gains with Latinos when he won reelection last year, boosting Republicans’ confidence that their economic message was helping them make inroads with a group of voters who had long leaned toward Democrats.

But in this week’s election, Democrats in key states were able to disrupt that rightward shift by gaining back Latino support, exit polls showed.

In New Jersey and Virginia, the Democrats running for governor made gains in counties with large Latino populations, and overall won two-thirds of the Latino vote in their states, according to an NBC News poll.

And in California, a CNN exit poll showed about 70% of Latinos voting in favor of Proposition 50, a Democratic redistricting initiative designed to counter Trump’s plans to reshape congressional maps in an effort to keep GOP control of the House.

The results mark the first concrete example at the ballot box of Latino voters turning away from the GOP — a shift foreshadowed by recent polling as their concerns about the economy and immigration raids have grown.

Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill celebrates with supporters after being elected New Jersey governor.

(Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

If the trend continues, it could spell trouble for Republicans in next year’s midterm elections, said Gary Segura, a professor of public policy, political science and Chicana/o studies at UCLA. This could be especially true in California and Texas, where both parties are banking on Latino voters to help them pick up seats in the House, Segura said.

“A year is a long time in politics, but certainly the vote on Prop. 50 is a very, very good sign for the Democrats’ ability to pick up the newly drawn congressional districts,” Segura said. “I think Latino voters will be really instrumental in the outcome.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are feeling optimistic that their warnings about Trump’s immigration crackdown and a bad economy are resonating with Latinos.

Republicans are wondering to what degree the party can maintain support among Latinos without Trump on the ticket. In 2024, Trump won roughly 48% of the Latino vote nationally — a record for any Republican presidential candidate.

Some Republicans saw this week’s trends among Latino voters as a “wakeup call.”

“The Hispanic vote is not guaranteed. Hispanics married President Donald Trump but are only dating the GOP,” Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida said in a social media video the day after the election. “I’ve been warning it: If the GOP does not deliver, we will lose the Hispanic vote all over the country.”

Economic issues a main driver

Last year Trump was able to leverage widespread frustration with the economy to win the support of Latinos. He promised to create jobs and lower the costs of living.

But polling shows that a majority of Latino voters now disapprove of how Trump and the Republicans in control of Congress are handling the economy. Half of Latinos said they expected Trump’s economic policies to leave them worse off a year from now in a Unidos poll released last week.

In New Jersey, that sentiment was exemplified by voters like Rumaldo Gomez. He told MSNBC he voted for Trump last year but this week went for for the Democratic candidate for governor, Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

“Now, I look at Trump different,” Gomez said. “The economy does not look good.”

Gomez added he is “very sad” about immigration raids led by the Trump administration that have split up hardworking families.

While Latino voters fear being affected by immigration enforcement actions, polling suggests they are more concerned about cost of living, jobs and housing. The Unidos poll showed immigration ranking fifth on the list of concerns.

In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats’ double-digit victories were built on promises to reduce the cost of living, while blaming Trump for their economic pain.

Marcus Robinson, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Democrats “expanded margins and flipped key counties by earning back Latino voters who know Trump’s economy leaves them behind.”

“These results show that Latino communities want progress, not a return to chaos and broken promises,” he said.

Republicans see a different Trump issue

GOP strategist Matt Terrill, who was chief of staff for then-Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the election results are not a referendum on Trump.

Latino voters swung left because Trump wasn’t on the ballot, he said.

Last year “it wasn’t Latino voters turning out for the Republican party, it was Latino voters turning out for President Trump,” he said. “Like him or not, he’s able to fire up voters that the Republican party traditionally does not get.”

With Trump barred by the Constitution from running for a third term, Republicans are left to wonder if they can get the Latino vote back when he is not on the ballot. Terrill believes Republicans need to hammer on the issue of affordability as a top priority.

Mike Madrid, a “never Trump” Republican and former political director of the California Republican Party, has a different theory.

“They’re abandoning both parties,” Madrid said of Latinos. “They abandoned the Republican party for the same reasons they abandoned the Democratic party in November: not addressing economic concerns.”

The economy has long been the top concern for Latinos, Madrid said, yet both parties continue to frame the Latino political agenda around immigration.

“Latinos aren’t voting for Democrats or Republicans — they’re voting against Democrats and against Republicans,” Madrid said. “It’s a very big difference. The partisans are all looking at us as if we’re this peculiar exotic little creature.”

The work ahead

Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected governor in Virginia in part because of big gains in Latino-heavy communities. One of the biggest gains was in Manassas Park, where more than 40% of residents are Latino. She won the city by 42 points, doubling the Democrats’ performance there in last year’s election.

The shift toward Democrats happened because Latinos believed Trump when he promised to bring down high costs of living and that he would only go after violent criminals in immigration raids, said Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, who worked with Spanberger’s campaign on outreach to Spanish-language media.

Instead, she argued, Trump betrayed them.

Cardona said Medicaid cuts under Trump’s massive spending package this year, along with the reduction of supplemental nutrition assistance amid the government shutdown, have Latinos families panicking.

“What Republicans misguidedly and mistakenly thought was a realignment of Latino voters just turned out to be a blip,” she said. “Latinos should never be considered a base vote.”

Political scientists caution that the election outcomes this week are not necessarily indicative of how races will play out a year from now.

“It’s just one election, but certainly the seeds have been planted for strong Latino Democratic turnouts in 2026,” said Brad Jones, a political science professor at UC Davis.

Now, both parties need to explain how they expect to carry out their promises if elected.

“They can’t sit on their laurels and say, ‘well surely the Latinos are coming back because the economy is bad and immigration enforcement is bad,’” Jones said. “The job of the Democratic party is now to reach out to Latino voters in ways that are more than just symbolic.”

Republicans are licking their wounds after Tuesday’s ballot box defeats. But there is a lesson to be learned here. The various elections in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, viewed collectively, reminded us yet again of a perennial political truth: Americans still care first and foremost about their wallets.

Culture war-type issues often generate the most salacious headlines — and many of the Trump administration’s fights on these fronts, such as immigration enforcement and higher education reform, are just and necessary. Still, the economy remains the top political issue. Unless Republicans get more serious about advancing an actionable economic agenda to provide real relief to middle- and working-class Americans, the party risks losing even more ground in next year’s midterm elections.

When voters went to the polls in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, they were often asking the simplest, most urgent questions: Can I pay the rent? Can I fill up my truck at the pump? Can I fill the fridge? Will my job still exist next year? Do I have reliable healthcare for my children? Across too many districts and communities, those answers remain uneasy. Inflation, while well down from its Biden-era peak, is still stubbornly higher than the Fed’s 2% target. Purchasing power is still eroded, and cost-of-living anxieties persist for far too many.

For Republicans, this is both a warning and an opportunity. Despite a concerted effort in recent years to rebrand as the party of the common man, including but hardly limited to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien getting a coveted speaking slot at last year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, too many voters still associate the GOP with tax cuts for the donor class and a general indifference toward the tens of millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. That’s the blunt truth. The perception of corruption in some of the highest corridors of power in Washington, especially when it comes to the influence wielded by the über-wealthy emirate of Qatar, doesn’t exactly assuage voters’ concerns.

If the GOP wants to regain the public’s trust, it must present a compelling vision of what a sound conservative economic stewardship entails in the 21st century.

That redefinition begins with a renewed focus on work, dignity and resilience. The Republican Party must build an economic narrative that centers on taming inflation, boosting wages, rebuilding America’s industrial base and greater healthcare security for the paycheck-to-paycheck class. Conservatives should pursue a pragmatic economic nationalism — one that ties together trade policy, manufacturing, energy production, workforce development and family formation. All proposed economic policies must be explained in concrete, local terms. The relevant questions each and every time should be: How does this policy tangibly benefit the average American, and how can the policy be messaged so that the benefit is clearly understood?

The voters Republicans need to reach are not tuning in to wonky policy seminars. They want results: lower energy bills, affordable groceries, job security and an economy that rewards hard work. The GOP must speak directly to these priorities with honesty and humility.

If economic anxiety persists through next fall’s midterms, voters will punish whichever party appears more indifferent to their struggles. The Trump administration and Republicans across the country need to get to work fast. That means more Trump-signed executive orders, within the confines of the law, that can provide real economic relief and security to the working men and women of America. And it certainly means a concerted congressional attempt to bolster the economic prospects of the middle and working classes, perhaps through the Senate’s annual budget reconciliation process.

Inflation must finally be tamed — including the Fed raising interest rates, contra Trump’s general easy-money instincts, if need truly be. Private health savings account access must be expanded and the ease of acquiring private healthcare must finally be divorced from the particular circumstances of one’s employment. More jobs and supply chains must be reshored. Concerns about child care affordability and parental leave availability must be addressed. And even more of our bountiful domestic energy must be extracted. These are just some of the various policies that voters might reward at the ballot box next fall.

Our searing cultural battles will continue — and they matter, greatly in fact. But when a family can’t afford its groceries or gas, such debates tend to fade into the background. Republicans must rebuild trust with voters on the most fundamental issue in American politics: the promise of economic opportunity and security.

It’s always dangerous to over-extrapolate and glean clear national lessons from a few local elections. But all three of the biggest recent races — for New York City mayor and for New Jersey and Virginia governors — had final winning margins for Democrats greater than most polling suggested. That seems like a clear enough rebuke. Accordingly, the Trump administration and Republicans across the country must deliver real economic results on the real economic issues facing the American people. If they don’t present a compelling economic vision and execute that vision capably and efficiently, there likely will be even greater electoral damage next fall.

That could all but doom the remainder of the Trump presidency. And what a disappointment that would be.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

California Republicans in Congress are vastly outnumbered by their Democratic counterparts in the state — and it may get worse.

Five of the nine GOP seats are at risk after California voters passed Proposition 50 in Tuesday’s special election. The measure, put on the ballot by the Democratic-led state Legislature, reshaped California congressional districts in a way that was specifically designed to unseat Republican incumbents.

The new maps target areas held by Reps. Kevin Kiley and Doug LaMalfa in Northern California, Rep. David Valadao in the Central Valley, and Reps. Ken Calvert, Young Kim and Darrell Issa in Southern California. The radical reconfiguration not only put Republicans in danger, but probably protects vulnerable Democratic officeholders by adding more voters from their own party into their reconfigured districts.

Already, California’s Republican members hold just nine seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, while Democrats have 43.

Proposition 50’s passage also sets off an intraparty fight for a newly created Republican seat in Riverside and Orange counties, which will pit two GOP incumbents against one another — Calvert of Corona and Kim of Anaheim Hills — knocking one of them out of office. Calvert and Kim on Wednesday announced they planned to run for that seat.

“With the passage of Prop. 50, Californians were sold a bill of goods, allowing [Gov.] Gavin Newsom and his radical allies in Sacramento an unprecedented power grab to redraw the Congressional map and silence those who disagree with his extreme policies,” Calvert said in a statement.

Newsom and other Democratic leaders argue that redistricting, which normally happens once a decade by an independent commission, was necessary after GOP leaders in Texas redrew their own congressional districts — at the request of President Trump — in a bid to add more seats for their party and retain Republican control of the House.

The passage of Proposition 50 will boost Democratic efforts to win control of the House after the 2026 election, a victory that likely would stifle parts of Trump’s agenda and open the president and his administration to a litany of congressional investigations.

Proposition 50 is expected to exacerbate the political isolation that millions of Republicans in California already feel, especially in the state’s vast northern and inland territories, and conservative suburban enclaves.

Trump won 38% of the presidential vote in California last year. About a quarter of the state’s registered voters are Republicans. Yet, Democrats have held every statewide office since 2011, and have an iron grip on the California congressional delegation.

Some California Republicans may be left asking: “Who in Congress is representing our views and who do we turn to?” said Mark Baldassare, survey director of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Cook Political Report, which tracks elections, changed 11 California congressional district race ratings Tuesday, with all but one district moving in Democrats’ favor.

Political consultant Rob Stutzman remains skeptical that Democrats will win all five congressional seats targeted by Newsom in the 2026 midterm elections. Some of the GOP representatives have deep roots in the community and have survived past challenges by Democrats, Stutzman said.

Newsom and others “may have overpromised what Prop. 50 could do,” Stutzman said.

Here are the top six Republicans whose districts were changed by Proposition 50 and who may find their political future at risk.

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale)

In Northern California, LaMalfa appears likely to run in one of two redesigned districts: One that stretches toward Mendocino National Forest and south toward Santa Rosa, or another that runs along the Oregon border and down the coast to the San Francisco Bay Area.

His current district, which spreads across the deeply conservative northeast corner of California to the Sacramento suburbs, was carved up by Proposition 50 and replaced with three districts that favor Democrats.

“They’re not going to kidnap my district here without a battle,” LaMalfa, 65, said Tuesday.

Democrats running for Congressional District 1’s seat — the seat that includes Mendocino National Forest — include Audrey Denney, an education director who unsuccessfully challenged LaMalfa in 2018 and 2020.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin)

Kiley’s new district takes in neighborhoods in and around Sacramento, pulling in Democratic voters and losing former Republican communities along the Nevada border.

He hasn’t said which district he’ll seek.

“My current district is split six different ways,” Kiley, 40, said Wednesday. “In that sense, I have a lot of options.”

On Tuesday night, he promised to “work across party lines to find a national solution to the age-old plague of gerrymandering, and in particular, to the more recent affliction of mid-decade gerrymandering.”

Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford)

Valadao’s predominantly Latino district in the Central Valley extends north post-Proposition 50, gaining more registered Democrats.

Still, more Democratic voters doesn’t necessarily translate to a Democratic victory, given the conservative attitudes in the region. A dairy farmer, Valadao, 48, has survived past challenges, in part due to poor turnout among Democrats and his popularity among moderate voters in the Central Valley.

Among those who have announced their intention to challenge Valadao is Visalia school board trustee Randy Villegas, a Democrat.

Valadao was among the few Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, increasing his appeal to Democratic voters. But he could also be vulnerable because of his support for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which cut medical benefits for roughly two-thirds of his constituents. The representative argued his district will get concessions for rural hospitals, water infrastructure and agricultural investments in the legislation.

A Valadao spokesperson didn’t immediately respond for a request for comment Tuesday night.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) and Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills)

Nearly all of Calvert’s district was moved north, and now takes in the Los Angeles County communities of Pomona, Ontario and Fontana.

However, Calvert, 72, announced he would run for the newly formed 40th Congressional District, which includes western Riverside County and eastern Orange County, including his hometown of Corona, as well as Murrieta and Mission Viejo. It’s a strongly Republican district now shared by Republican colleague Kim of Anaheim Hills.

“Californians in the newly drawn 40th District deserve a proven conservative they can trust and a fighter who has delivered results for Riverside and Orange County for decades,” Calvert said in a statement Wednesday. “No one else comes close to my record of service to the new 40th. I’ve lived here my entire life and already represent the majority of this district in Congress.”

Calvert praised Trump’s economic record and efforts to “secure our borders,” a direct appeal to the president’s MAGA base living in the region.

Michael Moodian, public policy researcher at Chapman University, expects Calvert will face a “tough fight” with Kim in the 2026 election.

Calvert is the longest-serving Republican member of California’s congressional delegation and is well known among voters in the area, while Kim is a strong fundraiser and has a moderate tone given that her current district is politically divided, Moodian said.

Kim, 63, one of the first Korean American women elected to Congress, last year won a third term.

Kim on Wednesday boasted that she was one of the most prominent Republican fundraisers in Congress and had a proven record of winning tough races.

“I’m running because California needs proven fighters who will stand with President Trump to advance a bold America First agenda that restores law and order in our communities, strengthens our national security, and protects the American Dream for future generations,” Kim said in a statement.

Calvert has survived previous redistricting rounds, including in 2021, when the overwhelmingly liberal Palm Springs — the first city in the nation to elect an all-LGBTQ+ city council — was added to his district and the Republican-heavy Temecula was taken out.

In 2024, Calvert fended off former federal prosecutor Will Rollins, besting the young Democrat 51.7% to 48.3%.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall)

Post-Proposition 50, Issa’s Republican stronghold in Southern California becomes more narrowly divided among Democrats and Republicans and gets a larger share of Latino voters. Like Calvert and Kim, Issa may decide to run in the new Republican-majority seat in Riverside and Orange counties.

“California is my home,” Issa said Tuesday night. “And it’s worth fighting for,”

He called Proposition 50 “the worst gerrymander in history” and vowed to continue to represent “the people of California — regardless of their party or where they live.”

Issa, 72, lost a legal challenge last week over the new maps, which he sought to block.

According to the complaint filed in federal court, Issa claimed he would be harmed because he would lose “seniority advantages in committee proceedings” and have “reduced influence over legislative priorities and committee work affecting my constituents,” NBC7 in San Diego reported.

Democratic San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert and perennial candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar are among those challenging Issa in his new seat.

WASHINGTON — The hurried push to revise California’s congressional districts has drawn national attention, large sums of money, and renewed hope among Democrats that the effort may help counter a wave of Republican redistricting initiatives instigated by President Trump.

But if Democrats succeed in California, the question remains: Will it be enough to shift the balance of power in Congress?

To regain control of the House, Democrats need to flip three Republican seats in the midterm elections next year. That slim margin prompted the White House to push Republicans this summer to redraw maps in GOP states in an effort to keep Democrats in the minority.

Texas was the first to signal it would follow Trump’s edict and set off a rare mid-decade redistricting arms race that quickly roped in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom devised Proposition 50 to tap into his state’s massive inventory of congressional seats.

Californians appear poised to approve the measure Tuesday. If they do, Democrats potentially could gain five seats in the House — an outcome that mainly would offset the Republican effort in Texas that already passed.

While Democrats and Republicans in other states also have moved to redraw their maps, it is too soon to say which party will see a net gain, or predict voter sentiment a year from now, when a lopsided election in either direction could render the remapping irrelevant.

GOP leaders in North Carolina and Missouri approved new maps that likely will yield one new GOP seat in each, Ohio Republicans could pick up two more seats in a newly redrawn map approved Friday, and GOP leaders in Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas and Florida are considering or taking steps to redraw their maps. In all, those moves could lead to at least 10 new Republican seats, according to experts tracking the redistricting efforts.

To counter that, Democrats in Virginia passed a constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would give lawmakers the power and option to redraw a new map ahead of next year’s election. Illinois leaders are weighing their redistricting options and New York has filed a lawsuit that seeks to redraw a GOP-held district. But concerns over legal challenges already tanked the party’s efforts in Maryland and the potential dilution of the Black vote has slowed moves in Illinois.

So far, the partisan maneuvers appear to favor Republicans.

“Democrats cannot gerrymander their way out of their gerrymandering problem. The math simply doesn’t add up,” said David Daly, a senior fellow at the nonprofit FairVote. “They don’t have enough opportunities or enough targets.”

Complex factors for Democrats

Democrats have more than just political calculus to weigh. In many states they are hampered by a mix of constitutional restrictions, legal deadlines and the reality that many of their state maps no longer can be easily redrawn for partisan gain. In California, Prop. 50 marks a departure from the state’s commitment to independent redistricting.

The hesitancy from Democrats in states such as Maryland and Illinois also underscores the tensions brewing within the party as it tries to maximize its partisan advantage and establish a House majority that could thwart Trump in his last two years in office.

“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Bill Ferguson, the Maryland Senate president, wrote in a letter to state lawmakers last week.

In Illinois, Black Democrats are raising concerns over the plans and pledging to oppose maps that would reduce the share of Black voters in congressional districts where they have historically prevailed.

“I can’t just think about this as a short-term fight. I have to think about the long-term consequences of doing such a thing,” said state Sen. Willie Preston, chair of the Illinois Senate Black Caucus.

Adding to those concerns is the possibility that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could weaken a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act and limit lawmakers’ ability to consider race when redrawing maps. The outcome — and its effect on the 2026 midterms — will depend heavily on the timing and scope of the court’s decision.

The court has been asked to rule on the case by January, but a decision may come later. Timing is key as many states have filing deadlines for 2026 congressional races or hold their primary election during the spring and summer.

If the court strikes down the provision, known as Section 2, advocacy groups estimate Republicans could pick up at least a dozen House seats across southern states.

“I think all of these things are going to contribute to what legislatures decide to do,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice. The looming court ruling, he added, is “an extra layer of uncertainty in an already uncertain moment.”

Republican-led states press ahead

Support for Prop. 50 has brought in more than $114 million, the backing of some of the party’s biggest luminaries, including former President Obama, and momentum for national Democrats who want to regain control of Congress after the midterms.

In an email to supporters Monday, Newsom said fundraising goals had been met and asked proponents of the effort to get involved in other states.

“I will be asking for you to help others — states like Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and more are all trying to stop Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts. More on that soon,” Newsom wrote.

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun called a special session set to begin Monday, to “protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair.”

In Kansas, the GOP president of the state Senate said last week that there were enough signatures from Republicans in the chamber to call a special session to redraw the state’s maps. Republicans in the state House would need to match the effort to move forward.

In Louisiana, Republicans in control of the Legislature voted last week to delay the state’s 2026 primary elections. The move is meant to give lawmakers more time to redraw maps in the case that the Supreme Court rules in the federal voting case.

If the justices strike down the practice of drawing districts based on race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated the state likely would jump into the mid-decade redistricting race.

Shaniqua McClendon, head of Vote Save America, said the GOP’s broad redistricting push underscores why Democrats should follow California’s lead — even if they dislike the tactic.

“Democrats have to be serious about what’s at stake. I know they don’t like the means, but we have to think about the end,” McClendon said. “We have to be able to take back the House — it’s the only way we’ll be able to hold Trump accountable.”

In New York, a lawsuit filed last week charging that a congressional district disenfranchises Black and Latino voters would be a “Hail Mary” for Democrats hoping to improve their chances in the 2026 midterms there, said Daly, of FairVote.

Utah also could give Democrats an outside opportunity to pick up a seat, said Dave Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. A court ruling this summer required Utah Republican leaders to redraw the state’s congressional map, resulting in two districts that Democrats potentially could flip.

Wasserman described the various redistricting efforts as an “arms race … Democrats are using what Republicans have done in Texas as a justification for California, and Republicans are using California as justification for their actions in other states.”

‘Political tribalism’

Some political observers said the outcome of California’s election could inspire still more political maneuvering in other states.

“I think passage of Proposition 50 in California could show other states that voters might support mid-decade redistricting when necessary, when they are under attack,” said Jeffrey Wice, a professor at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute. “I think it would certainly provide impetus in places like New York to move forward.”

Similar to California, New York would need to ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment, but that could not take place in time for the midterms.

“It might also embolden Republican states that have been hesitant to redistrict to say, ‘Well if the voters in California support mid-decade redistricting, maybe they’ll support it here too,’” Wice said.

To Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communications & Public Policy at Northwestern University, the idea that the mid-decade redistricting trend is gaining traction is part of a broader problem.

“It is a symptom of this 20-year trend in increasing polarization and political tribalism,” he said. “And, unfortunately, our tribalism is now breaking out, not only between each other, but it’s breaking out between states.”

He argued that both parties are sacrificing democratic norms and the ideas of procedural fairness as well as a representative democracy for political gain.

“I am worried about what the end result of this will be,” he said.

Ceballos reported from Washington, Mehta from Los Angeles.

SAN DIEGO — As a bemused crowd of would-be illegal immigrants looked on from a makeshift hilltop refreshment stand, Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan on Tuesday stepped into a confrontational arena that sums up his often confrontational campaign: the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I am calling attention to a national disgrace,” Buchanan told reporters, his suit and shoes dusty from a Border Patrol tour of the rugged terrain. “The failure of the national government of the United States to protect the borders of the United States from an illegal invasion that involves at least a million aliens a year. As a consequence of that, we have social problems and economic problems. And drug problems.”

Saying that up to 1,000 illegal immigrants were among those arrested during the Los Angeles riots, Buchanan repeated his previous calls to fortify key sections of the border with ditches and concrete-buttressed fences and to deploy U.S. military forces there if necessary.

Buchanan also advocated doubling the size of the Border Patrol to 6,600 agents, staffing immigration checkpoints on Interstates 5 and 15 24 hours a day and charging a $2 toll on legal crossings to pay for tougher enforcement.

“I don’t believe in being brutal on anyone,” he said. “But I do think that any country that wants to call itself a nation has got to defend its borders.”

Illegal immigration lies at the heart of Buchanan’s vision of what is wrong with America; the issue is perhaps the strongest attention-getter in Southern California for his fading GOP challenge.

Buchanan’s first visit to the San Diego-Tijuana border made for strange media theater. The candidate arrived by four-wheel-drive vehicle to a hot, dusty ridge overlooking Smuggler’s Canyon, a prime crossing area, where a new corrugated steel barrier meets an old, battered chain-link fence. Buchanan supporters in suits and ties reached across the international line to buy soft drinks at a makeshift refreshment stand.

About 25 Mexican migrants, most of whom had heard only vaguely of Buchanan, chatted with security agents and tried to make sense of the pin-striped visitor.

“He’s a presidential candidate?” asked a man named Guillermo. “Does he speak Spanish? Ask him if he can pull the migra out of here for 24 hours, then he can do whatever he wants. Ask him if he can give me a ride to Los Angeles.”

Filoberto, a wiry 23-year-old from Mexicali, scoffed when informed that Buchanan advocates sealing the border and giving the Border Patrol more agents and equipment.

“They have all kinds of technology,” said Filoberto, who was waiting to make his fourth attempt at crossing in a week. “But we are smarter; people are smarter than machines. We are still going to cross. In fact, as soon as all of you people get out of here, we are going to go for it.”

To the discomfort of Buchanan aides, neo-Nazi Tom Metzger showed up with a handful of raucous supporters.

Metzger’s group hovered at the edges of the press conference, yelling insults about illegal immigrants, Republicans and Democrats.

Metzger, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Aryan Resistance, was recently convicted of unlawful assembly in a Los Angeles cross-burning. He was sentenced to six months in jail but released after 46 days because of his wife’s illness and subsequent death. He said he wanted to talk to Buchanan about getting “action” to control the border.

But Buchanan rejected Metzger, saying that if Metzger contributed money to his campaign it would be returned. “I don’t have anything to do with him,” he said.

Buchanan said he thinks that he can influence President Bush’s policy–despite the fact that Bush has the GOP nomination locked up. “I think we are going to get George Bush to do something about this before that election, or at least speak to this,” he said. “He’d better do it, or he’s going to have problems.”

Oct. 31 (UPI) — Ohio’s representatives approved a bi-partisan redistricting map that might help Republicans gain more seats, but Democrats OK’d the plan because the others offered were worse for them.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission approved the measure unanimously Friday.

“Coming to an agreement that is in the best interest of the state, not just the most vocal elements of either party, I think is some of the toughest things that we can do as elected leaders in 2025,” said state Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

But Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio said it was the best option among bad ones.

“Facing this impossible challenge with no certain path to preserve a fair map, we worked toward compromise,” said Antonio, D-Lakewood.

Democrats faced a Friday deadline because the Ohio constitution allows Republicans to create a map without Democrats in November. They were also concerned about a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act.

Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes of Akron will get a slightly more favorable northeast Ohio district, but it will still be very competitive, Punchbowl News reported.

Toledo Rep. Marcy Kaptur‘s district will be more difficult to win, but not impossible. She’s the longest-serving representative in the United States, and she won a close race in 2024. Her district chose President Donald Trump by seven points.

“Let the Columbus politicians make their self-serving maps and play musical chairs, I will fight on for the people and ask the voters for their support next year,” she wrote on X.

Cincinnati Rep. Greg Landsman also saw his chances at re-election diminished.

Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, said all of Ohio’s Democratic congresspeople could still win.

“This is a district Greg Landsman can and will win in, and that’s what the people of Cincinnati deserve,” Isaacsohn said.

Ohio had a failed ballot measure in 2024 that would have put residents in charge of making district maps.

“There’s a lot of anger and frustration in this room, and it’s not just the result of this most recent betrayal. The anger and frustration has been years in the making,” said Mia Lewis, associate director at Common Cause Ohio, the Dispatch reported.

“You have shown all of us, all of Ohio, that politicians cannot be involved in drawing district lines.”

Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said the people were denied being part of the process. “Republican and Democratic voters feel like their parties sold them out — and they’re both right.”