California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s victory lap over passage of Proposition 50 reached Texas on Saturday, days after his state greenlit his plan to blunt Gov. Greg Abbott‘s redistricting effort to get extra Texas Republicans in Congress.
Earlier than Newsom might begin talking throughout his transient cease at a rally in Houston, the gang of round 800 Democrats took the possibility to yell out “thanks,” and he returned the sentiment.
“You woke us up,” Newsom mentioned, referring to Democrats’ resistance to redistricting. “You didn’t simply have your again right here, you had our again within the state of California.”
After Abbott signed a brand new congressional map in August that was redrawn to maximise the state’s Republican illustration in Washington D.C., amid stress from President Donald Trump, Newsom pitched an concept to voters to offset Texas’ GOP positive factors with extra Democratic seats in California.
California voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 50 on Tuesday, a plan Newsom crafted to instantly goal Texas’ new congressional map. The poll measure cleared the way in which for Newsom to permit the legislature to approve the Golden State’s redrawn congressional districts to carve out 5 extra Democratic seats. Abbott bypassed that step, placing it as much as the state’s lawmakers to resolve on a brand new map with out voter’s permission.
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The California poll measure handed with almost 64% of the vote, and its decisive approval is an enormous win for Newsom, who’s contemplating a presidential bid in 2028. If the brand new maps go as deliberate, almost all of California’s congressional representatives will likely be Democrats. California presently has 43 Democratic Home members and 9 Republicans — the brand new maps would safe 48 blue seats. And Newsom took to Texas, the very state Prop 50 targets, to have a good time.
Saturday’s crowd celebrated with him, together with 18-year-old Ben Webb of Cypress, a northwest suburb of Houston.
“He did it with voter approval, which Greg Abbott didn’t do,” mentioned Webb, who lately turned a registered voter. “So I might say that’s an excellent larger political win.”
Webb’s good friend, Thomas Mitschke, who can be 18, echoed that sentiment.
“He took it to the voters as a substitute of simply doing it like Greg Abbott and form of simply jamming it in with out voter approval,” Mitschke mentioned. “That’s how democracy is meant to work.”
Abbott’s workplace has not responded to a request for remark.
Texas’ new congressional district traces have the potential to spice up the GOP’s footing in Congress by squeezing extra Democratic voters in Houston and Dallas into districts the minority occasion already controls — a method generally known as “packing.” It additionally “cracks” left-leaning communities by splitting voters who supported Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 into Republican districts, in keeping with an evaluation by The Texas Tribune.
For instance, the ninth Congressional District in Southwest Houston, represented by Congressman Al Inexperienced, went from voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 proportion factors to at least one that Trump would have carried by a 20-point margin beneath the brand new traces. A lot of the ninth District was merged into the 18th, the place Inexperienced, who spoke on the rally, will now be searching for reelection. He would now face the winner of the upcoming particular election runoff for the seat within the March major.
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The maps, together with a listing of different causes, is why each Webb and Mitschke mentioned they are going to be casting a few of their first votes to exchange Abbott with a Democratic governor. In addition they mentioned if Newsroom ran for president, he would have their vote.
Texas’ maps have been caught in an online of authorized challenges since 2021 when the present districts had been accredited. Lawsuits declare that the mid-decade redistricting course of was flawed from the beginning, and that effort got here at the price of Latino and Black communities, which have largely supported Democratic candidates.
Newsom’s rally drew a variety of Democratic leaders throughout Harris County and the state, together with Harris County Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Rodney Ellis, Congresswomen Lizzie Fletcher and Jasmine Crockett, and gubernatorial candidate and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
Newsom’s plan to blunt Abbott’s effort was an extended shot. Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic advisor who leads the Heart for the Political Future on the College of Southern California, instructed the Guardian that Newsom took an enormous gamble on Prop 50 — and it paid off.
“However greater than that’s the truth that he fought again — that he dared to do that, that individuals mentioned it was harmful for him, and he cast forward with it anyway,” he mentioned.
Kathleen Davies, a reverend at a Presbyterian church in Southwest Houston who was born and raised in California, mentioned Newsom’s go to reminded her that regardless of being a Democrat in a deeply pink state, she nonetheless has a voice.
“We’re an enormous state, and he’s in an enormous state, and I believe it’s vital for us to know that we nonetheless are all related as People,” mentioned Davies, who moved to Texas about three a long time in the past. “Despite the fact that there’s a lot speak about, like, maintain California out of Texas or no matter, I imply, we’re all People who need to be represented and the gerrymandering has acquired to cease.”
Newsom is not stopping with California. He is encouraging different governors in blue states, similar to Illinois and New York, to observe his lead and push again in opposition to Trump’s effort to carry onto a Republican-controlled Congress.
“We can’t relaxation,” Newsom mentioned on Saturday earlier than heading to Brazil for a convention, “till we take again the Home of Representatives.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
