{"id":210646,"date":"2025-09-08T16:43:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/210646\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T16:43:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:43:12","slug":"california-republicans-say-redistricting-battle-should-play-out-in-the-state-not-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/210646\/","title":{"rendered":"California Republicans say redistricting battle should play out in the state, not Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

California Republicans are facing the possibility of a new congressional district map<\/a> ahead of next year\u2019s midterms, one that would make their reelection prospects more difficult. But what are they doing\u00a0from Congress\u00a0to keep their jobs in Congress?<\/p>\n

Not much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been here. I\u2019ve had a long career,\u201d Rep. Darrell Issa told NOTUS. \u201cI continue to serve because the voters of my district want me to. But I\u2019m not clinging to this job. I can do other things, and it won\u2019t bother me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked by NOTUS what measures he may take to protect his seat, Issa replied: \u201cNothing.\u201d He then waited in silence for three full seconds before adding that he would let voters in November decide what happens.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Californians will vote on a ballot proposition on whether they approve of a new partisan map aimed at favoring Democrats, drawn in response to Texas\u2019 new Republican-friendly map<\/a>. California Republicans are taking some steps to fight the initiative,\u00a0Proposition 50<\/a>, including a statewide campaign against it and several legal challenges<\/a> that, so far,\u00a0have failed in state courts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But those efforts have not translated to the congressional level, where Rep. Kevin Kiley, whose Northern California district would\u00a0change drastically in favor of Democrats if voters approve the proposition<\/a>, seems to be alone in trying to pass\u00a0legislation<\/a>\u00a0to impose a federal ban on mid-decade redistricting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of people on both sides of the aisle tell me that they support this approach. No one likes this. It\u2019s totally disruptive and destabilizing for people in every state,\u201d Kiley told reporters in response to a question from NOTUS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not the way this is supposed to work. It is really bad for representation, and I think this is a highly shared view among Democrat and Republican colleagues,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Kiley has repeatedly called on Speaker Mike Johnson to bring his bill to the floor, and he is convinced that most of his colleagues would support the bill if they got a chance to vote on it. But, at least publicly, other congressional Republicans from Kiley\u2019s state are much less enthusiastic. Issa, for example, was skeptical about the legislation\u2019s prospects, even though he left the door open to supporting it.<\/p>\n

And he is not the only one with doubts.<\/p>\n

\u201cNah, that\u2019s not gonna work,\u201d Rep. Doug LaMalfa told NOTUS about the legislation. \u201cWe simply need to take care of defeating the proposition, and hopefully that lesson will be learned about that we shouldn\u2019t be tweaking districts mid-decade. No state should be able to do this. No one should be doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaMalfa isn\u2019t alone in his skepticism of a federal intervention and thinking the focus should be on trying to defeat Prop. 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to beat the initiative,\u201d Rep. Ken Calvert, who has been in and out of Congress since 1982, told NOTUS when asked what he was doing to keep his current seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, we\u2019ve got to beat the initiative that\u2019s going to be on the ballots. First, we have to do that,\u201d Calvert said when asked whether he supported Kiley\u2019s bill. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re just focused on beating the initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. David Valadao, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, did not address Kiley\u2019s bill when NOTUS inquired about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither political party should have the authority to rig maps to protect their own political power, and California Congressional Republicans stand united against mid-decade redistricting,\u201d Valadao said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it\u2019s very unlikely that Kiley\u2019s bill will ever come to the floor, as\u00a0Republicans in red states are also working to redistrict in ways that would favor their party<\/a>\u00a0at the request of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Johnson said Thursday that he would not meddle with state-level redistricting efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be comfortable with whatever maps are produced all across the country because I\u2019ve got to win either way,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI keep having to remind all my colleagues: No one asked me about this. This is a battle between governors and states.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polling has found that voters in California\u00a0overwhelmingly support<\/a>\u00a0its independent redistricting commission, enacted in 2008. But internal polling commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been the face of Democrats\u2019 redistricting efforts<\/a>, found that\u00a0voters also support enacting new maps<\/a>\u00a0if pitched around opposing Republican\u2019s own redistricting efforts.<\/p>\n

California is the first blue state to try to push back against Texas\u2019 redistricting efforts<\/a>. Last month, the\u00a0state Legislature approved<\/a>\u00a0the constitutional-amendment ballot initiative and special election to ask voters whether they agree with temporarily sidestepping the state\u2019s independent commission and passing a new map.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate Kevin\u2019s commitment to protecting the voters and the integrity of the redistricting process,\u201d Rep. Vince Fong told NOTUS. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m still reviewing this bill, but the immediate issue right now is to make sure that Californians understand what\u2019s happening in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an immediate issue before us. We have an election in under 60 days, ballots are coming out in October and our focus right now is to unite not only our conference but to unite Californians to reject Prop. 50,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

This story was produced as part of a partnership between\u00a0NOTUS\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 a publication from the nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and\u00a0NEWSWELL<\/a>, home of\u00a0Times of San Diego<\/a>,\u00a0Santa Barbara News-Press<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stocktonia<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California Republicans are facing the possibility of a new congressional district map ahead of next year\u2019s midterms, one…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":210647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,327,7330,1854,22204,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-210646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-congress","12":"tag-darrell-issa","13":"tag-gavin-newsom","14":"tag-redistricting","15":"tag-san-diego","16":"tag-sandiego","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115169683293551095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}