Amy Walter:
Obviously, Texas had the hoops. They had to have a quorum, but now that that’s done, it’s much easier to get those maps done.
In California, they do want to put this onto the ballot. So this would be a special election to vote specifically on changing the current law, which says that an independent redistricting commission draws the lines. Here, they would say, because, and literally — we haven’t seen the language yet, but the language would look something like, we’re only doing this because of what Republicans did in Texas.
This will be short term, only last through 2030, which is the next redistricting year. But they have to get all of that language and the legislature to sign off on the maps by Friday. So that’s one hoop.
Democrats feel they’re confident they’re going to have the votes in the legislature. It is overwhelmingly Democratic, not surprisingly. Then the big hoop, and that’s getting voters in the state to agree to overturn something that they do like, which is an independent commission. And this is the challenge for Governor Newsom and his allies.
Not only is he trying to convince voters to give up something they like, even just for the short term, but he has some pretty powerful adversaries in this. The person who held that seat of governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for years, who was the person who was governor and had pushed this during his term as governor, an independent redistricting commission, that is, is coming out against this.
So this is going to be a huge, expensive battle. The most important thing for Newsom to be able to do to succeed, for Democrats to succeed is to convince voters that this really isn’t about redistricting, this isn’t about lines, this is about Donald Trump, and hoping that making it about Donald Trump, in fact, they’re not calling it the Trump bill, but they are calling it election rigging act, the anti-rigging act, essentially, to tell voters, don’t think about it so much as all of this gerrymandering thing. Think about it as preventing Donald Trump from getting what he wants.
