{"id":38624,"date":"2025-11-05T04:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T04:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/38624\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T04:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T04:43:07","slug":"california-voters-approve-prop-50-redrawing-congressional-maps-to-favor-democrats-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/38624\/","title":{"rendered":"California voters approve Prop. 50, redrawing congressional maps to favor Democrats \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters<\/a>.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

California voters on Tuesday passed a ballot measure to redraw the state\u2019s congressional map to favor Democrats, a major victory for the party in a high-stakes national redistricting fight that could determine who controls the House of Representatives next year.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press called the race shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m. Early returns showed the measure leading with nearly 58% of votes counted.<\/p>\n

The maps voters approved with Proposition 50 make it likely that five of California\u2019s GOP-held congressional seats could be won by Democrats in next year\u2019s midterm elections. They also bolster the re-election chances of three Democrats currently holding office in now-competitive districts.<\/p>\n

The passage is\u00a0a triumph for Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a>, an early proponent of the gerrymandering plan whose backing set off a whirlwind summer map-drawing effort and quick passage through the Democratic-dominated state Legislature.<\/p>\n

Charles Munger Jr., the lead funder of the \u2018No\u2019 on Prop. 50 campaign, said he was saddened by the outcome but would keep working toward independent redistricting nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI oppose partisan gerrymandering in any state, regardless of the party initiating it,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the gains would effectively cancel out the five seats the GOP sought to gain in Texas by passing a new congressional map earlier this year at President Donald Trump\u2019s urging, and weakens Trump\u2019s efforts to solidify the GOP\u2019s slim majority in the House. If Democrats win those seats, they would have more power to challenge Trump\u2019s administration and policies. However, it has also set off an escalating tit-for-tat around the country as more states move to gerrymander in response to, or against, the president.<\/p>\n

But no other states have the population or congressional seats of Texas or California, making Prop. 50\u2019s passage especially significant for control of the House.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s campaign drew upon an army of community groups and volunteers that had last mobilized in an off-year election to support him in the failed Republican effort to recall him from office<\/a> four years ago; polling close to Election Day showed nearly the same share of voters supporting the measure as supporting Newsom during the 2021 recall. Along the way, the governor has made a name for himself nationally as one of the few Democrats willing to try unconventional approaches to oppose Trump after suffering bruising losses last fall.<\/p>\n

The measure was bemoaned by some good government advocates who supported then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger\u2019s ballot initiative to get California voters to approve an independent, nonpartisan redistricting system that has since become a standard for good governance nationwide. Prop. 50 sets aside the independent commission that drew the current congressional map for the next six years; California will return to using the commission after the 2030 Census.<\/p>\n

But despite the commission\u2019s popularity, most Democrats, who outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one in voter registration, agreed with Newsom\u2019s argument that they needed to \u201cfight fire with fire\u201d in response to Trump\u2019s unprecedented push for mid-decade gerrymandering in Texas and other red states.<\/p>\n

More than 6.6 million ballots \u2014 about 29% of those who received mail-in ballots \u2014 were already returned before Election Day, according to Political Data Inc., which tracks ballots in each county. Final\u00a0polling showed strong support for Prop. 50<\/a>, with 56% of likely voters telling the Public Policy Institute of California they\u2019re in favor, and 60% of likely voters supporting in a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey.<\/p>\n

The new maps will dramatically alter next year\u2019s midterm elections, which were predicted to feature several highly competitive races in California.<\/p>\n

Some disparate parts of the state will get lumped together, such as a\u00a0wacky-shaped district in the North State<\/a>\u00a0that combines rural and conservative Modoc County with the ultra-liberal Bay Area in Marin County. The city of Huntington Beach, a conservative stronghold in Orange County that banned the LGBTQ pride flag on city property,\u00a0would be represented by Long Beach Rep. Robert Garcia, a progressive<\/a>, gay Peruvian immigrant who is the top Democrat on the U.S. House\u2019s primary investigative committee.<\/p>\n

And a\u00a0game of musical chairs in San Diego and Riverside counties<\/a>\u00a0could pit longtime Republican members of Congress against one another as the number of winnable GOP seats shrinks. Several salivating Democrats have\u00a0already declared they will run in the newly formed<\/a>, Democratic-friendly 48th Congressional District, which Republican Rep. Darrell Issa currently represents.<\/p>\n

In the weeks leading up to Election Day,\u00a0voters in the typically low-turnout Central Valley<\/a>\u00a0proved that even though many Californians hadn\u2019t heard of Prop. 50 by name, the redistricting issue was familiar enough that they could quickly form an opinion after learning about the measure.<\/p>\n

The Yes side blanketed the airwaves with $55.4 million in ads featuring high-profile Democrats and had a\u00a0significant fundraising advantage<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 more than double their opponents. The No campaign spent just $8.9 million in broadcast and video advertising,\u00a0according to the ad tracking AdImpact<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up\u00a0for their newsletters. California voters on Tuesday passed a ballot measure to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-38624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38624","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=38624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}