independent redistricting

As Californians start voting on Democrats’ effort to boost their ranks in Congress, former President Barack Obama warned that democracy is in peril as he urged voters to support Proposition 50 in a television ad that started airing Tuesday.

“California, the whole nation is counting on you,” Obama says in the 30-second ad, which the main pro-Proposition 50 campaign began broadcasting Tuesday across the state. The spot is part of a multimillion-dollar ad buy promoting the congressional redistricting ballot measure through the Nov. 4 election.

Proposition 50 was spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democratic leaders this summer after President Trump urged GOP-led states, notably Texas, to redraw their congressional districts to boost the number of Republicans elected to the House in next year’s midterm election, in an effort to continue enacting his agenda during his final years in office.

“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama says in the ad, which includes footage of ICE raids. “With Prop. 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks. Prop. 50 puts our elections back on a level playing field, preserves independent redistricting over the long term, and lets the people decide. Return your ballot today.”

Congressional districts were long drawn in smoke-filled chambers by partisans focused on protecting their parties’ power and incumbents. But good-government groups and elected officials, notably former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have fought to take the drawing of congressional boundaries out of the hands of politicians to end gerrymandering and create more competitive districts.

Obama, long a supporter of ending gerrymandering, had already endorsed the ballot measure.

In California, these districts have been drawn by an independent commission created by voters in 2010, which is why state Democrats have to go to the ballot box to seek a mid-decade partisan redistricting that could improve their party’s chances in five of the state’s 52 congressional districts.

The ad featuring Obama, who spoke Monday on comedian Marc Maron’s final podcast about Trump’s policies testing the nation’s values, appears on Californians’ televisions after mail ballots were sent to the state’s 23 million registered voters last week.

The proposition’s prospects are uncertain — it’s about an obscure topic that few Californians know about, and off-year elections traditionally have low voter turnout. Still, more than $150 million has been contributed to the three main committees supporting and opposing the proposition, in addition to millions more funding other efforts.

Obama is not the only famous person to appear in ads about Proposition 50.

In September, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the independent redistricting commission while in office and has campaigned for similar reforms across the nation since then, was featured in ads opposing the November ballot measure.

He described Proposition 50 as favoring entrenched politicians instead of voters.

“That’s what they want to do, is take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Proposition 50,” the Hollywood celebrity and former governor says in the ad, which was filmed last month when he spoke to USC students. “The Constitution does not start with ‘We, the politicians.’ It starts with ‘We, the people.’ … Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”

Millions of dollars worth of political TV ads are expected to start airing Tuesday in an effort to sway Californians on a November ballot measure seeking to send more Democrats to Congress and counter President Trump and the GOP agenda, according to television airtime purchases.

The special-election ballot measure — Prop. 50 — will likely shape control of the U.S. House of Representatives and determine the fate of many of Trump’s far-right policies.

The opposition to the rare California mid-decade redistricting has booked more than $10 million of airtime for ads between Tuesday and Sept. 23 in media markets across the state, according to media buyers who are not affiliated with either campaign. Supporters of the effort have bought at least $2 million in ads starting on Tuesday, a number expected to grow exponentially as they are aggressively trying to secure time in coming weeks on broadcast and cable television.

“This early start is a bit stealthy on the part of the no side, but has been used as a ploy in past campaigns to try to show strength early and gain advantage by forcing the opposing side to play catch up,” said Sheri Sadler, a veteran Democratic political media operative who is not working for either campaign. “This promises to be an expensive campaign for a special election, especially starting so early.”

Millions of dollars have already flowed into the nascent campaigns sparring over the Nov. 4 special-election ballot measure that asks voters to set aside the congressional boundaries drawn in 2021 by California’s independent redistricting commission. The panel was created by the state’s voters in 2010 to stop gerrymandering and incumbent protection by both major political parties.

The campaign will be a sprint — glossy multi-page mailers arrived in Californians’ mailboxes before the state Legislature voted in late August to call the special election. Voters will begin receiving mail ballots in early October.

Redistricting, typically an esoteric process that takes place once a decade following the U.S. Census, is receiving an unusual level of attention because of partisan efforts to tilt control of Congress in next year’s midterm election. Republicans have a narrow edge in the U.S. House of Representatives, but the party that wins control of the White House often loses congressional seats in the following election.

Earlier this summer, Trump asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to redraw his state’s congressional districts to add five GOP members to the House, setting off a redistricting arms race across the nation. California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a campaign to redraw the state’s congressional districts in an effort to boost the number of Democrats in Congress, negating the Texas gains for Republicans, but it must be approved by voters.

The coalition opposing the effort is an intriguing mix: former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wealthy Republican donor Charles Munger Jr., former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-San Jose), the chair of the Legislative Progressive Caucus, and Gloria Chun Hoo, president of the League of Women Voters of California.

Many partisans — in both political parties — opposed independent redistricting when it was championed by Schwarzenegger and Munger in 2010.

Jessica Millan Patterson, the former state GOP chairwoman who is leading McCarthy’s effort to oppose new congressional boundaries, demurred when asked about the dissonance. Voters, she said, made their choice clear at the ballot box about their preference to have an independent commission draw congressional districts rather than Sacramento politicians.

“The people of California have spoken,” she said, adding that most voters agree that an independent commission is preferable to partisan politicians drawing districts.

The “Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” committee that Patterson leads plans to focus on conservative and right-of-center voters, and will be well-funded, she said.

McCarthy was a prodigious fundraiser while in Congress and his long-time friend, major GOP fundraiser Jeff Miller, is raising money to oppose the ballot measure.

Schwarzenegger is not part of the McCarthy effort, instead backing the good-government message of the Munger team. Patterson argues that anything the former governor does only brings more attention to their shared goal, even if he isn’t part of their effort.

“Gov. Schwarzenegger is Gov. Schwarzenegger,” Patterson said, pointing to an X post of the global celebrity wearing a T-shirt that said “Terminate Gerrymandering” while working out on Aug. 15. “He is a celebrity, a box-office guy. He’s going to make sure reasonable people know that we don’t want to put this power back in Sacramento. He will bring the glitz and glamour, like he always does.”

Schwarzenegger has long championed political reform. During his final year as governor, he prioritized the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting. Since leaving office, he made good governance a priority at his institute at the University of Southern California and campaigned for independent redistricting across the nation.

“Here are some of the things that are more popular than Congress: hemorrhoids, Nickelback, traffic jams, cockroaches, root canals, colonoscopies, herpes,” Schwarzenegger said in a 2017 Facebook video. “Even herpes, they couldn’t beat herpes in the polls.”

The former governor is reportedly backing the effort by Munger, the son of a billionaire, who bankrolled the ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting in 2010. Munger has donated more than $10 million to an effort opposing the November ballot measure; the organization he funded has booked more than $10 million in television spots through Sept. 23.

“These ads are the start of our campaign’s effort to communicate directly with voters about the dangers of allowing politicians to choose their voters and abandoning our gold standard citizen-led redistricting process,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Munger-backed Voters First Coalition.

Supporters of the effort to redraw the districts argued that Republicans are trying to cement GOP control of the nation’s policies.

“Trump cronies … are spending big to defeat [Prop.] 50 and help Trump rig the 2026 election before a single person [has] voted,” said Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for the campaign. “They are spending big — and early — to trick California voters into allowing Trump to keep total control over the federal government for two more years.“

SACRAMENTO — California Republicans again asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to block Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan from the November ballot, arguing that the hastily assembled initiative violates the state Constitution.

In a 432-page lawsuit, Republican lawmakers said the effort by Democrats to unwind the state’s nonpartisan congressional districts is a violation of Californians’ rights to fair and nonpartisan electoral maps. The party made a similar argument last week in an emergency petition to the state Supreme Court that was denied without a hearing.

The ballot measure was crafted by Democrats as a retaliatory strike against the GOP-led Texas Legislature, which has passed new congressional districts that would help Republicans pick up five seats in the 2026 midterm elections.

The California plan, which is headed to voters Nov. 4 under the name Proposition 50, would throw out the state’s nonpartisan maps in favor of boundaries that would tilt the scales for Democrats.

The lawsuit filed Monday against California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber and the state Legislature argues that the ballot measure is actually asking voters to answer two questions: first, whether Congress should amend the U.S. Constitution to require independent redistricting nationwide; and second, whether to scrap the nonpartisan districts in the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections in favor of partisan lines that help Democrats.

That double-barreled question is an “illegal, take-it-or-leave-it choice,” said Michael Columbo, an attorney for the plaintiffs, that “forces a person in favor of independent commissions into a conundrum” and violates the state constitution, which limits ballot measures to a single issue.

That argument is “weak,” said David A. Carrillo, the executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center.

“The common subject here obviously is redistricting,” Carrillo said.

President Trump said Monday that the Justice Department will sue California over the plan “pretty soon, and I think we’re going to be very successful in it.” He didn’t explain what legal standing the administration would have to challenge the state Legislature.

In a post on the social media site X, Newsom said of the Trump threat: “BRING IT.”

A spokesperson for Weber said the department had no comment on the lawsuit.

“Trump’s toadies already got destroyed once in court,” said Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for the Yes on 50 campaign, in a statement. “Now they are trying again, to protect Trump’s power grab and prevent voters from having their say on Prop 50. They will lose.”

The lawsuit also argues that the state Legislature violated the state Constitution by proposing new congressional districts, despite the fact that voters in 2010 passed a measure giving that power to an independent panel.

Republicans argue that in order to comply with the state’s current redistricting laws, Democrats should have first asked voters to suspend independent redistricting, then passed new maps afterward.

At the heart of the legal fight, Carrillo said, is voters’ tremendous power to amend the California Constitution, including who drafts the state’s congressional districts.

“Voters gave this power to the commission they created,” Carrillo said. “The voters can therefore modify or withdraw the power they conferred.”

The California Supreme Court has occasionally removed voter initiatives from the ballot, Carrillo said, but it’s rare, controversial and reserved for the most extreme cases. It’s “very unlikely the court would reach for the nuclear option,” he said.

Also Monday, opponents of the ballot measure filed a public records act request with state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, seeking communications between his office, Newsom and prominent Democratic strategists about how Prop. 50 will appear on the ballot.

The group, formed by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and run by former California GOP chair Jessica Millan Patterson, said Democrats had called for transparency and ought to provide it too.

“Voters deserve to know if these top Democrats are actively trying to put their thumb on the scale for how their partisan power grab will be portrayed in what should be an impartial analysis,” Patterson said.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — California Democrats on Monday kicked off the process to redraw the state’s congressional districts, an extraordinary action they said was necessary to neutralize efforts by President Trump and Texas Republicans to increase the number of GOP lawmakers in Congress.

If approved by state lawmakers this week, Californians will vote on the ballot measure, labeled Proposition 50, in a special election in November.

At a news conference unveiling the legislation, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said they agreed with Gov. Gavin Newsom that California must respond to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the 2026 midterms by working to reduced by half the number of Republicans in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation.

They said doing so is essential to stymieing the president’s far-right agenda.

“I want to make one thing very clear, I’m not happy to be here. We didn’t choose this fight. We don’t want this fight,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park). “But with our democracy on the line, we cannot run away from this fight, and when the dust settles on election day, we will win.”

Republicans accused Democrats of trying to subvert the will of the voters, who passed independent redistricting 15 years ago, for their own partisan goals.

“The citizens seized back control of the power from the politicians in 2010,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), flanked by GOP legislators and signs in the Capitol rotunda that said, “Rigged map” and “Defend fair elections.”

“Let me be very clear,” DeMaio said. “Gavin Newsom and other politicians have been lying in wait, with emphasis on lying … to seize back control.”

After Trump urged Texas to redraw its congressional districts to add five new GOP members to Congress, Newsom and California Democrats began calling to temporarily reconfigure the current congressional district boundaries, which were drawn by the voter-approved independent redistricting commission in 2021.

Other states are also now considering redrawing their congressional districts, escalating the political battle over control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressional districts are typically reconfigured once every decade after the U.S. census.

Newsom, other Democratic lawmakers and labor leaders launched a campaign supporting the redrawing of California’s congressional districts on Thursday, and proposed maps were sent to state legislative leaders on Friday.

The measures that lawmakers will take up this week would:

• Give Californians the power to amend the state Constitution and approve new maps, drawn by Democrats, that would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 congressional elections, if any GOP-led states approve their own maps.
• Provide funding for the November special election.
• Return the state to a voter-approved independent redistricting commission to redraw congressional districts after the 2030 census.

Whereas Texas and several other GOP-led states are considering an unusual mid-decade redistricting to keep the Republican Party’s hold on Congress, Ohio is an anomaly. If its congressional districts are not approved on a bipartisan basis, they are valid for only two general elections and can then be redrawn.

McGuire said California would go forward if Ohio does.

“The state of Ohio has made it clear that they are wanting to be able to proceed. They’re one of the few states in the United States of America that actually allow for … mid-decade redistricting,” he said. “We firmly believe that they should cool it, pull back, because if they do, so will California.”

Republicans responded by calling for a federal investigation into the California Democratic redistricting plan, and vowed to file multiple lawsuits in state and federal court, including two this week.

“We’re going to litigate this every step of the way, but we believe that this will also be rejected at the ballot box, in the court of public opinion,” DeMaio said.

He also called for a 10-year ban on holding elected office for state legislators who vote in support of calling the special election, although he did not say how he would try to do that.

McGuire dismissed the criticism and threats of legal action, saying the Republicans were more concerned about political self-preservation than the will of California voters or the rule of law.

“California Republicans are now clutching their pearls because of self-interest. Not one California Republican spoke up in the Legislature, in the House, when Texas made the decision to be able to eliminate five historically Black and brown congressional districts. Not one,” he said. “What I would say: Spend more time on the problem. The problem is Donald Trump.”