Newsom’s Power Play: Prop 50 and the New Battle for Congress

Prop50 maps, money, and a national megaphone. California gave Gavin Newsom a marquee win. According to the Times, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, temporarily placing the state's independent commission to redraw congressional lines, potentially adding up to five Democratic House seats, networks called it. As the polls close, Newsom framed it as a broader rebuttal to Trumpism, saying, what a night for the Democratic Party. On its toes, the campaign raised $114 million, including $38 million from small donors. National list building in plain view. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, and reform groups posed the move. Voters sided with Newsom. The test now isn't the map, it's converting maps into members. Allies say Newsom will barnstorm for House candidates and lean into climate to sharpen contrast. Trump critics counter that California baggage is real and that lines don't vote, people do. Either way, Prop 50 hands Democrats a practical tool and gives Newsom a louder national microphone. Okay, what's the real message here? When Prop 50 passed, Gavin Newsom emerged as the top Democratic leader in America. A lot of people like to talk about how awful Trump is, how bad it is. They're trying to change the rules in Texas and North Carolina to skew things, to steal the 2026 elections. Gavin Newsom did something. It was hard work, raising more than $100 million, persuading people that we're going to have to act in a radical way, otherwise our democracy nationwide is over. He deserves congratulation. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. Now, again, this is maybe confusing. It's confusing to me, but it's definitely confusing to people outside of the United States. So what happens is every state gets to decide how they carve up congressional dis. And it's in the nature of any politician to try to carve the rules and influence their friends and state legislatures to rewrite the rules to make it easier for them to get elected, to put more people in their party in zigzag districts to make it easier to win. Sometimes the drawings get so jagged an extreme. It's called gerrymandering, after Elbridge Gerry, who did this in Massachusetts, you know, many, many, many. Well, more than 100 years ago. So that's the origin of the name. Every party does it. But now we've seen it nuclearized, essentially, in the past year. Donald Trump essentially sent out orders to Republican governors saying, you've got to not wait until after the next census, which is when this is typically done. You got to change the rules right now. So I don't lose control of the House of representatives in 2026. So that's unprecedented. And look, there are ways of making things favorable to you. Again, everybody does that. But there are also ways using mathematical precise AI models where you can take a state that, you know, let's say it's a state that has 20 congressional seats and you have a state that is 55% one party, 45% another party. Given that, you would think, okay, if things are the votes are more or less put around evenly, then one of those parties would have about nine to eight, nine votes in the House of Representatives. The other one would have, you know, 11, 12 votes members of Congress, if you kind of did things fairly well. Now, the science is so good at drawing things, clustering. You can put all the people in one party in one district and give them that their one shot. And then you can also put just another extra 5% of people in your party. In all the others, you can have a situation where in that state, 19 out of 20 seats are going to be from that one party, even though they only have 55% of the vote. Now, no one really thinks that's fair. No one really thinks that's representative of democracy. So California has a tradition of saying, we don't want this to be partisan hackery. We want it to be fair. So they have this independent commission drawing congressional lines. And in fairness, it's a Democratic state. It's easier to do that when one party does have a very strong. But they have a lot of Republican Congress too, let's not kid ourselves. So what Gavin Newsom did is he said, look, in an ideal world, we think every single state should be like California and should have independent commissions so that it's not pure partisanship driving the seats. And in general, if more people vote for one party for Congress, that's who should control Congress. That's how it should be. But that's not how it is. Trump is an existential threat to American democracy. This is the position of Gavin Newsom, and he's trying to essentially steal the election in 2026 by putting his thumb on the scales of justice and rewriting congressional districts. So if we just do what we've always done, we are essentially aiding and abetting the own destruction of American democracy. We're aiding and abetting Trump. So these are a drastic extreme times. We therefore have to do something extreme and temporarily push aside our independent commission and rewrite the laws to give the maximum number of Democratic safe seats in California. So it should increase the by 5, the number of congressmen and congresswomen from the Democratic Party sent to Washington in 2026. That's a complex argument. That's not an easy thing to do. And Gavin Newsom has been tireless. I've seen him on every network TV show, every cable show, every HBO show, every big podcast, every medium podcast, every tiny podcast. In fact, my show may be the only one he hasn't been on and I haven't invited him on. He has been tireless trying to persuade his fellow citizens in California to vote for this. He's been tireless in out raising money and he was successful. And I think because of that, he now assumes the mantle of the number one opponent to Donald Trump. And a lot of Democrats are paying more attention to him. There is of course a lot of concern from Democrats that, okay, the California brand is, is toxic in national elections. As a Democrat, it's seen as a state where it's kind of kooky, it's too far to the left, whatever that means. And it's so expensive where if you vote for someone from California, the cost of housing in your community is going to go up 10,000%. That's the perception. Will enough Democratic voters say, look, these are different times? And that doesn't. We'll find out. Gavin Newsom does have a lot of strengths going for him. He is someone who is articulate, he's been very forceful, he's experimental. I mean, this is the guy who's been experimenting with trolling Donald Trump, all caps, provocative things, nasty things, silly cartoons and social media. Not everyone loves it. But at least he's trying something new. He's trying to break through clutter. And more and more voters are paying attention. He does have other conventional assets going for him. Now, I'm saying this to be descriptive, I'm not saying morally this is a good thing, but he is a white person. He's a man, he's tall, he's 6 foot 3, he has a perfect head of hair. He's a heterosexual, he's married. He's married to a woman. He's married to an attractive woman. These are all things that by traditional metrics have actually helped presidential candidates. Am I saying the Democrats should only consider tall, white, straight men with perfect heads of hair? No. Am I saying that it's fair or rational for voters to give preference to people with perfect heads of hair? Well, I don't have any incentive to promoting that bias. But a fair minded person has to say, look, if we're doing a cold hearted calculus as to strengths and weaknesses. This guy does have some assets. Plus he has increasingly high name ID and he should have no problem raising all the money he needs for a major campaign like this. So we're going to be paying attention more on this show to Gavin Newsom as he increasingly bolsters his national profile with things like this. But it was no doubt a huge, huge night for Gavin Newsom and overall a big night for Democrats. But I have to stress, none of this is going to matter necessarily in 2026 if we see federal troops sent in strategically certain cities at certain precincts where there are swing voting congressional districts going on.