Deep in the badlands of defeat, Democrats have soul-searched about what went wrong last November, tinkered with a thousand-plus thinkpieces and desperately cast for a strategy to reboot their stalled-out party.<\/p>\n
Amid the noise, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has recently championed an unlikely game plan: Forget the high road, fight fire with fire and embrace the very tactics that virtue-minded Democrats have long decried.<\/p>\n
Could the dark art of political gerrymandering be the thing that saves democracy from Trump\u2019s increasingly authoritarian impulses? That\u2019s essentially the pitch Newsom is making to California voters with his audacious new special election campaign. <\/p>\n
As Texas Democrats dig in to block a Republican-led redistricting push<\/a> and Trump muscles to consolidate power wherever he can, Newsom wants to redraw California\u2019s own congressional districts to favor Democrats. <\/p>\n His goal: counter Trump\u2019s drive for more GOP House seats with a power play of his own.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a boundary-pushing gamble that will undoubtedly supercharge Newsom\u2019s political star in the short-term. The long-game glory could be even grander, but only if he pulls it off. A ballot-box flop would be brutal for both Newsom and his party. <\/p>\n The charismatic California governor is termed out of office in 2026 and has made no secret of his 2028 presidential ambitions. <\/p>\n But the distinct scent of his home state will be hard to completely slough off in parts of the country where California is synonymous with loony lefties, business-killing regulation and an out-of-control homelessness crisis. To say nothing of Newsom\u2019s ill-fated dinner<\/a> at an elite Napa restaurant in violation of COVID-19 protocols \u2014 a misstep that energized a failed recall attempt<\/a> and still haunts the governor\u2019s national reputation. <\/p>\n The redistricting gambit is the kind of big play that could redefine how voters across the country see Newsom.<\/p>\n The strategy could be a boon for Newsom\u2019s 2028 ambitions during a moment when Democrats are hungry for leaders, said Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio. But it\u2019s also a massive roll of the dice for both Newsom and the state he leads. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great politics for him if this passes,\u201d Maviglio said. \u201cIf it fails, he\u2019s dead in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n The path forward \u2014 which could determine control of Congress in 2026 \u2014 is hardly a straight shot.<\/p>\n The \u201cElection Rigging Response Act,\u201d as Newsom has named his ballot measure, would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state\u2019s voter-approved independent redistricting commission<\/a>. <\/p>\n Under the proposal, Democrats could pick up five seats currently held by Republicans while bolstering vulnerable Democratic incumbent Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, George Whitesides, Derek Tran and Dave Min, which would save the party millions of dollars in costly reelection fights.<\/p>\n But first the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot and then it must be approved by voters.<\/p>\n If passed, the initiative would have a \u201ctrigger,\u201d meaning the redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own gerrymandering effort.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what Governor Newsom and other Democrats are doing here is exactly the right thing we need to do,\u201d Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not bringing a pencil to a knife fight. We\u2019re going to bring a bazooka to a knife fight, right? This is not your grandfather\u2019s Democratic Party,\u201d Martin said, adding that they shouldn\u2019t be the only ones playing by a set of rules that no longer exist.<\/p>\n For Democrats like Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who appeared alongside Newsom to kick off the effort, there is \u201csome heartbreak\u201d to temporarily shelving their commitment to independent redistricting. But she and others were clear-eyed about the need to stop a president \u201cwilling to rig the election midstream,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Friedman said she was hearing overwhelmingly positive reactions to the proposal from all kinds of Democratic groups on the ground. <\/p>\n \u201cThe response that I get is, \u2018Finally, we\u2019re fighting. We have a way to fight back that\u2019s tangible,\u2019\u201d Friedman recounted. <\/p>\n Still, despite the state\u2019s Democratic voter registration advantage, victory for the ballot measure will hardly be assured. California voters have twice rallied for independent redistricting at the ballot box in the last two decades and many may struggle to abandon those beliefs. <\/p>\n A POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found<\/a> that voters prefer keeping an independent panel in place to draw district lines by a nearly two-to-one margin, and that independent redistricting is broadly popular in the state. <\/p>\n (Newsom\u2019s press office argued<\/a> that the poll was poorly worded, since it asked about getting rid of the independent commission altogether and permanently returning line-drawing power to the legislators, rather than just temporarily scrapping their work for several cycles until the independent commission next draws new lines.)<\/p>\n California voters should not expect to see a special election campaign focused on the minutia of reconfiguring the state\u2019s congressional districts, however. <\/p>\n While many opponents will likely attack the change as undercutting the will of California voters, who overwhelmingly supported weeding politics out of the redistricting process, bank on Newsom casting the campaign as a referendum on Trump and his devious effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress. <\/p>\n Newsom employed a similar strategy when he demolished the Republican-led recall campaign against him in 2021, which the governor portrayed as a \u201clife and death\u201d battle against \u201cTrumpism\u201d and far-right anti-vaccine and antiabortion activists. Among California\u2019s Democratic-heavy electorate, that message proved to be extremely effective. <\/p>\n \u201cWake up, America,\u201d Newsom said Thursday at a Los Angeles rally launching the campaign for the redistricting measure. \u201cWake up to what Donald Trump is doing. Wake up to his assault. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who has worked on national and statewide campaigns, said his D.C. and California-based political group chats had been blowing up in recent days with texts about the moment Newsom was creating for himself.<\/p>\n Much of Liao\u2019s group chat fodder has involved the output of Newsom\u2019s digital team, which has elevated trolling to an art form on its official @GovPressOffice<\/a> account on the social media site X.<\/p>\n The missives have largely mimicked the president\u2019s own social media patois, with hyperbole, petty insults and a heavy reliance on the \u201ccaps lock\u201d key. <\/p>\n \u201cDONALD IS FINISHED \u2014 HE IS NO LONGER \u2018HOT.\u2019 FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME \u2014 GAVIN C. NEWSOM \u2014 HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS \u2018STEP,\u2019 \u201d one of the posts read last week, dutifully reposted by the governor himself. <\/p>\n Some messages have also ended with Newsom\u2019s initials (a riff on Trump\u2019s signature \u201cDJT\u201d signoff) and sprinkled in key Trumpian callbacks, like the phrase \u201cLiberation Day,\u201d or a doctored Time Magazine cover with Newsom\u2019s smiling mien. The account has garnered 150,000 new followers since the beginning of the month.<\/p>\n Shortly after Trump took office in January, Newsom walked a fine line between criticizing the president and his policies and being more diplomatic, especially after the California wildfires \u2014 in hopes of appealing to any semblance of compassion and presidential responsibility Trump possessed. <\/p>\n Newsom had spent the first months of the new administration trying to reshape the California-vs.-Trump narrative<\/a> that dominated the president\u2019s first term and move away from his party\u2019s prior \u201cresistance\u201d brand.<\/p>\n