California’s gerrymander worked better than Texas’. Here’s why
To win control of the U.S. House, Democrats needed to secure at least 218 seats. By Wednesday night, the party won at least 240 — picking up more than two dozen additional seats, and flipping the Senate too.
A year ago Democrats were far less confident they could pull off the blue wave. Back then, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — at the urging of the Trump administration — carried a gerrymander to create five more Republican districts in his state. It threatened to stack the deck against Democratic gains.
Gov. Gavin Newsom counter-punched with his own bid to draw five more seats for California Democrats, Proposition 50.
In the end, however, it wasn’t necessary — and some Prop. 50 critics say it did a disservice for democracy in general.
As CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller and Nadia Lathan explain, at least five of California’s nine-member Republican delegation suffered losses. It’s not clear yet whether California Democrats could have gained those seats anyway without the gerrymandering, but the party would have had enough to flip the House regardless.
Meanwhile, the partisan redistricting didn’t work out so well for Texas: GOP lawmakers drew five Republican-leaning seats and lost all but one of them.
Prop. 50 proponents say the measure was a unifying force for California Democrats and voters who wanted to mobilize against President Donald Trump. But in passing the measure, some critics say, California paid a steep price. It temporarily dismantled its independent redistricting commission, which is considered the “gold standard” for drawing voting maps.
The move set a “very, very dangerous” precedent that prioritized party loyalty over legal norms, said Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and an anti-Trump Republican who opposed Prop. 50.
- Madrid: “What they were literally saying is, ‘Let’s undo democracy to protect democracy.’ There’s something very Orwellian about it.”
Read more.
More election fallout: The likely failure of Prop. 40 means Californians won’t impose a new tax on billionaires. The passage of Prop. 42, meanwhile, puts up a new obstacle to any future wealth tax. Read more.
