{"id":3467,"date":"2025-10-14T08:26:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T08:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/3467\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T08:26:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T08:26:31","slug":"republicans-divided-over-role-for-newsom-in-redistricting-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/3467\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans divided over role for Newsom in redistricting fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alexei Koseff<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""Political\"
\n\t\t\t\tSigns at the California Republican Party fall 2025 convention in Garden Grove, in Orange County, on Sept. 6, 2025. Notably absent in this year’s lineup: Gov. Gavin Newsom. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Since he first floated the idea on a podcast this summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been the face of a plan to redraw<\/a> California\u2019s congressional lines to favor Democrats.<\/p>\n

Now, as the state hurtles toward a Nov. 4 special election<\/a> in which voters will decide whether to adopt a new gerrymandered map, opponents are grappling with how much to center Newsom in their campaign to defeat the proposal.<\/p>\n

At the California Republican Party convention in Garden Grove this past weekend \u2014 which aimed to mobilize conservatives against Newsom\u2019s measure, known as Proposition 50 \u2014 the governor was a curiously negligible presence.<\/p>\n

In strategy sessions and trainings, GOP leaders largely looked beyond Newsom, whose slick style, celebrity stature and unabashedly liberal politics have for years offered California Republicans a delicious foil. Even the merchandise tables were missing their usual fare depicting the governor as a dictator with a Hitler mustache.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think this is about Gavin Newsom. This is what he wants to do, but this is about Californians,\u201d Corrin Rankin, the party chair, told reporters. She said the party will run a get-out-the-vote operation educating Republicans about how the new map would effectively take away their right to choose who represents them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to make sure that fine print is in bold letters and people see what exactly they\u2019re voting for and that they\u2019re not fooled again by the Democratic Party,\u201d Rankin said.<\/p>\n

Make it about the map<\/p>\n

During a presentation Saturday afternoon about legal challenges to the redistricting gambit, Orange County Republican Party Chair Will O\u2019Neill told attendees their most effective talking point to defeat Proposition 50 is to simply show voters the new map.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s plan would toss out congressional districts drawn by an independent citizen commission in 2021 and adopt lines that flip the partisan lean of five Republican-held seats<\/a> while shoring up the Democratic registration advantage in five more swing districts. The GOP could be left with as few as four of California\u2019s 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

\"""\/\"\/Will O’Neill, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, speaks during the California Republican Party fall 2025 convention in Garden Grove, Orange County. He encouraged delegates to highlight the most “absurd” changes in the proposed congressional maps as part of the anti-Proposition 50 campaign. Sept. 6, 2025. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill told delegates to find the most \u201cabsurd\u201d changes in their communities and post them on social media. He highlighted a proposed district around Lake Tahoe that\u2019s been compared to an elephant head, because of a trunk-shaped swath that dips into the heavily Democratic suburbs of Sacramento, and a line drawn down the middle of a residential street in Mission Viejo, splitting houses on either side into different seats.<\/p>\n

To win, O\u2019Neill said in an interview, Republicans have to broaden the election to be about the detrimental impacts of Proposition 50 and reach the vast majority of Californians who are not living in hyperpartisan online environments. Only 25% of voters in the state are registered Republican, compared to 45% who are registered Democratic and 22% who have no party preference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether the person likes Donald Trump or Gavin Newsom isn\u2019t really the issue,\u201d O\u2019Neill said. \u201cIf this is a straight Republican vs. Democrat election, we lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

There’s no escaping Newsom<\/p>\n

For many voters, Proposition 50 will be a choice between Newsom and Trump. That\u2019s exactly how Newsom himself has framed it.<\/p>\n

The governor began talking about redistricting in July<\/a>, after Trump pressured Texas Republicans to call a special session to redraw the state\u2019s congressional map and bolster the GOP\u2019s narrow control of the House. The new lines in Texas will likely flip five Democratic seats<\/a> to Republicans.<\/p>\n

Newsom has argued that California\u2019s retaliation was necessary to save democracy \u2014 preserving Democrats\u2019 chances of winning back the House in the 2026 midterms and preventing Trump from dragging the United States into authoritarianism.<\/p>\n

The president, who remains deeply unpopular in California, is everywhere in Newsom\u2019s campaign for Proposition 50, which he has dubbed the \u201cElection Rigging Response Act.\u201d It echoes the governor\u2019s successful strategy for defeating a recall attempt<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n

But Newsom is everywhere as well. He stars prominently in one of the first ads for the campaign<\/a>, which features footage from a rally he held in Los Angeles last month, where he urges voters to \u201cstand up for our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And some opponents are putting Newsom at the forefront of their pitch to voters.<\/p>\n

\"""\/\"\/<\/p>\n

\"""\/\"\/
\nFirst: A vendor talks to attendees at the California Republican Party fall 2025 convention in Garden Grove. Last: The California Republican Party’s North Region vice chair and Placer County chair, Mark Wright, holds a “No on 50” sign at the convention. Photos by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

Former California GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson is leading one of the campaigns against the measure, which has taken the name No On 50 \u2013 Stop Newsom\u2019s Power Grab<\/a>. She said in an interview that Newsom \u201cturns out Republicans,\u201d who are frustrated by their belief that he has treated his governorship like merely a stepping stone to the White House.<\/p>\n

It makes Newsom a potent symbol for what Patterson called \u201cthe corruption and those backroom deals when Sacramento politicians have that type of power\u201d to draw their own districts, which in this case would leave vast swaths of conservative Californians without representation in Washington, D.C. She slammed the governor for wearing gerrymandering \u201clike a badge of honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sense of justice. I think people get really fired up about it,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to make sure the rest of the country sees that even Californians aren\u2019t falling for his lame vanity project here.\u201d<\/p>\n

A split campaign strategy<\/p>\n

Around the convention, Assemblymember David Tangipa<\/a> was the rare voice making Proposition 50 about Newsom. He urged attendees to ask everyone they know one question: Does Gavin Newsom deserve more power?<\/p>\n

Tangipa, a Fresno Republican, said he expected that question to carry weight even in heavily Democratic California, because enough people have woken up to the problems created by the state\u2019s liberal policies. Voters, he noted, overwhelmingly approved a tough-on-crime measure<\/a> last year that Newsom fiercely opposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not running a redistricting campaign. He\u2019s running an anti-Trump campaign,\u201d Tangipa said. \u201cThey love that we want to get into facts and data and everything else and they\u2019re getting into emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone is so convinced. Olivia Valentine, president of the Hawthorne Lawndale Gardena Republican Assembly, was in search of door signs and other materials she could use to canvass against Proposition 50. She said she would refrain from bashing Newsom because she didn\u2019t want voters to think she was a \u201cpartisan hack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want that response. I want them to understand why it\u2019s going to be bad for everybody,\u201d Valentine said. \u201cEveryone should be concerned that their vote is being taken away. That\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"""\/\"\/Shawn Steel, RNC National Committeeman for California, speaks during a panel at the California Republican Party fall 2025 convention in Garden Grove, on Sept. 6, 2025. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

The conundrum over how much to involve Newsom \u2014 who Republicans seem uniformly convinced is using the redistricting fight to boost his prospects in an expected 2028 presidential run<\/a> \u2014 is visible everywhere in the campaign.<\/p>\n

Charles Munger, Jr., a longtime California GOP megadonor who poured millions into the ballot measure that created the independent redistricting commission, is running his own operation aimed at liberal-leaning voters. The ads have a good government message about the inherent corruption of politicians drawing their own districts, eschewing mention of Newsom and Trump altogether.<\/p>\n

Republicans also hope that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the party\u2019s last statewide officeholder and another champion of the commission, will rally independents against Proposition 50. Schwarzenegger has spoken out against the measure<\/a>, posting himself online in a \u201cterminate gerrymandering\u201d T-shirt, but he has not announced a formal role\u00a0 in the campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The motivating factor: fairness<\/p>\n

On Saturday morning, California GOP delegates from the north state, a deeply conservative area that would be chopped up and redistributed into Democratic-leaning districts under the new congressional map, packed into a small hotel ballroom.<\/p>\n

Most are currently represented by Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Chico Republican, whose chief of staff, Mark Spannagel, visited the session to discuss the bifurcated strategy for defeating Proposition 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat motivates our center-right is not the mealy-mouthed stuff that\u2019s going to motivate our friends on the left,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you need to speak to them differently and you need to motivate them in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Johanna Lassaga, chair of the Yuba County Republican Central Committee, stepped to the front to show off a campaign sign she had made: black and yellow, featuring simple language (\u201cNo on 50: Defend Fair Elections\u201d) with no mention of Newsom.<\/p>\n

\"""\/\"\/California Republican Party Yuba County Chair Johanna Lassaga at the California Republican Party fall 2025 convention in Garden Grove, on Sept. 6, 2025. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

She had thousands available for delegates to buy and distribute around their communities. She asked if anyone had property along the highway where they would be willing to hang banners that could be seen by drivers \u2014 even liberals who might be drawn to the intentionally nonpartisan message.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Lassaga said she is deeply worried about losing a member of Congress who understands her rural community. Her family farms rice and raises cattle, and she doesn\u2019t think a Democratic representative from a more urban area would fight for them to get water.<\/p>\n

But Lassaga said she is trying to lift people up by focusing on what they can do to win. She is trusting in the \u201cpower of seven\u201d \u2014 encouraging everyone to tell seven people they know to vote against Proposition 50 and then have them pass on the word to seven more people. She recently talked to the salespeople at the dealership where her husband bought a new car.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t sit and wallow in our self-pity,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole thing is a multilevel marketing scheme with no product.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Alexei Koseff, CalMatters Signs at the California Republican Party fall 2025 convention in Garden Grove, in Orange…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4302,7,9,8,4303,457,1361],"class_list":{"0":"post-3467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-arnold-schwarzenegger","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-california-republican-party","13":"tag-gavin-newsom","14":"tag-proposition-50"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}