As California pushes to eclipse Texas’ gerrymandering effort to win the House of Representatives at midterm elections, the first draft of the newly drawn congressional maps became public Friday.
This came a day after Governor Gavin Newsom held a news conference in LA’s Little Tokyo to announce a special election in November to ask for voters’ approval on the new maps. He also had said the redrawn maps would become available this week.
The five California Republican-held seats that Newsom was eyeing to squeeze out include Ken Calvert’s District 41, which includes Riverside County, and Darrell Issa’s District 48, which includes parts of San Diego county.
One of the most notable changes in the new maps is District 41, which, under the proposal, would be moving to an entirely different part of Southern California.
Currently, Calvert’s district is in the southeast portion of California, including Idyllwild, Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs.
But under the new proposed maps, his district would include Lakewood, Bellflower, Downey as well as Brea and La Habra.
Darrell Issa won’t be seeking reelection for District 48, but his successor would face a different pool of constituents as the district stretches out into the Palm Springs area as well as more parts of San Diego County.
Julie Merz of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a letter to the state legislature that she believes the new maps would “serve the best interest of California voters” as the deep blue state tries to push back against Texas’ effort to gerrymander and drive out Democratic congressmembers.
” It allows for more compact districts than in the current Commission-drawn map, keeps more communities and neighborhoods together, splits fewer cities, and makes minimal disruptions to the Commission-drawn map so as to impact as few residents as possible.,” Merz said.
This is a developing story.