{"id":42320,"date":"2025-11-07T10:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/42320\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:05:07","slug":"my-disenfranchised-california-republican-neighbors-should-take-it-up-with-their-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/42320\/","title":{"rendered":"\u200bMy Disenfranchised California Republican Neighbors Should Take It Up\u00a0With\u00a0Their Party\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s 1st congressional district, a vast, rugged expanse in the state\u2019s northeast corner, is definitive Trump country. With nary a town over 100,000, the region abounds with soaring peaks, fire-prone conifer forests, \u201cDon\u2019t Tread on Me\u201d merch, and obscenely large four-door trucks. Its population bases are a network of former Gold Rush boomtowns, complete with excellent saloons. In these parts, timber and farming still reign supreme, locals help locals, and outsiders\u2014especially city folk\u2014face an uphill battle to become anything else. Since 2012, it\u2019s been represented by Republican Doug LaMalfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer and climate change skeptic<\/a> who voted against<\/a> certifying the 2020 election. In 2024, California 1st voters supported Donald Trump over Kamala Harris nearly two-to-one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I hail from the adjacent 2nd congressional district, which runs along the Pacific Coast from the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. Here, back-to-the-landers built geodesic domes as centerpieces to their communes and Earth First! activists chained themselves to old-growth redwoods. Since 2012, our congressman has been Democrat Jared Huffman, who has stood up (and sat in<\/a>) against gun violence and joined tribes in their decades-long fight<\/a> to remove the dams choking the Klamath River. In 2024, the 2nd district\u2019s voters supported Harris over Trump by more than two-to-one<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I venture inland, getting up off what upcountry folks colloquially called \u201cthe coast,\u201d it\u2019s usually to backpack. If you try to buy a bottle of whiskey in Callahan, an unincorporated community with around 50 residents in Siskiyou County, you\u2019ll get told, \u201cIf you want spirits, you\u2019ll have to go on down to Etna\u201d\u2014the area\u2019s bustling metropolis of about 670. Moving north, Yreka\u2014Siskiyou\u2019s largest town with 7,765 residents\u2014is considered the capital city of the \u201cState of Jefferson,\u201d a long-running dream of rural Southern Oregonian and Northern Californian secessionists to shed the shackles and purported neglect of Sacramento and Salem\u2019s bureaucracies. (Needless to say, they have not as of yet succeeded in seceding.)<\/p>\n

Once, when I was seeking medical supplies while bleeding in a Walmart in Shasta County, just south of Siskiyou, a woman asked if she could pray for me. I said yes, and she rested her hands on my shoulders while I tried to avoid dripping blood onto the floor.<\/p>\n

Frequenting\u00a0the California\u00a01st, I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0talk\u00a0politics with the locals.\u00a0But\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0pretty sure\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0plenty\u00a0we\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0agree\u00a0on, and\u00a0that\u00a0Representative\u00a0LaMalfa faithfully\u00a0represents\u00a0their views\u2014which\u00a0is\u00a0how the political system is supposed to work.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But thanks to Donald Trump, that\u2019s no longer the case for the good people of California\u2019s 1st congressional district, nor for many others around the country. This past summer, fearful that his party would lose its narrow House majority in the 2026 midterms, Trump ordered<\/a> Texas Republicans to engage in mid-decade redistricting<\/a>\u2014gerrymandering\u2014to carve out five more GOP-friendly seats. When Texas Governor Greg Abbott complied and began the process, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded in kind: throwing his considerable political power behind a ballot measure, Proposition 50, that asked Californians to gerrymander more Democratic-friendly districts. On Tuesday, the voters agreed by a wide margin<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Practically, that means that much of the 1st district of California\u2014including Shasta, Siskiyou, and Modoc counties\u2014will be absorbed by the 2nd district, and its Trump-supporting voters will be represented in Washington by Huffman, a progressive, who also represents and lives in the North Bay\u2019s Marin County\u2014one of the richest<\/a> counties in America, with a median annual income of over $142,000. Conversely, the conservative 1st district picks up enough Democratic voters from Sonoma County to make Republican LaMalfa\u2019s reelection highly unlikely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Texas\u2019s redraw is still tied up in court, with plaintiffs arguing the map intentionally dilutes<\/a> the power of minority votes, the Golden State\u2019s gerrymandering will ostensibly create five Democratic congressional seats to match Texas\u2019s new Republican five. \u201cThe point is to disenfranchise our Republican neighbors in response to the Texas Republicans\u2019 disenfranchisement of their Democratic neighbors, lest the Texas Republicans succeed in disenfranchising us all,\u201d wrote<\/a> veteran North Coast journalist Hank Sims. \u201cThat\u2019s the world we get to live in now!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contrary to Trump\u2019s pre-Proposition 50 claim<\/a> that \u201cCalifornia is gerrymandered,\u201d Tuesday\u2019s vote marked a departure from how the state normally redistricts. Since 2010, California\u2019s maps have been drawn by an independent commission<\/a> with equal representation of both parties. But because the president had to go and mess with Texas, Californians were forced into a bleak choice between doing their part for America\u2019s democracy by leveling the playing field or holding to long-held principles of fairness and independence within their own state. Now, a slew<\/a> of other states are also looking to get in on the \u201cgerrymandering arms race<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

My inland neighbors and Republicans across the county should take Prop 50 as a wake-up call. If voters want their ballots to count under fairly drawn maps, there\u2019s a decades-old fight they can join. Unfortunately, their party has been the villain of that story so far. I would say it\u2019s never too late to do the right thing, but\u2014given the year our democracy has had\u2014I\u2019ll stick with it\u2019s not too late yet. We can still call a ceasefire, name fairness a bipartisan virtue, and let voters pick their politicians. We can still get out of this mess.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To catch any would-be fighters up: Mid-decade redistricting was widespread<\/a> in the early days of the Republic, largely dormant throughout the 20th century, and aggressively revived by Republicans beginning around the early 2000s. Following Democratic victories in 2008, the GOP also focused on flipping statehouses in time for regularly scheduled post-2010 census redistricting, ultimately winning 700 state seats<\/a> and enacting a \u201csophisticated<\/a>\u201d redraw campaign nationwide. A decade later, as the 2022 midterms approached, the proportion of competitive districts in America hit a new low<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Throughout, Democratic lawmakers have decried the redistricting race to the bottom. In both 2019 and 2021, House Democrats introduced a bill, titled the \u201cFor the People Act<\/a>,\u201d that would have required states to establish independent redistricting commissions. Both times, the bill was passed by House Democrats and died at the hands of Senate Republicans. On its first go-around, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a vote, grinningly telling reporters, \u201cI get to decide what we vote on.\u201d On its second, after Democrats unanimously voted for the bill in a 50-50 party-line split, Republicans deployed<\/a> the almighty filibuster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Democrats have made clear that partisan redistricting isn\u2019t their chosen way. But today, blue states are setting their democratic values aside in service of national democracy. If Republican redistricting locks in the right\u2019s control of Congress for the rest of Trump\u2019s term, and Capitol Hill continues to abdicate its constitutional responsibility to check an \u201cauthoritarian curious<\/a>\u201d White House, there\u2019s no telling what America will look like on the other side. \u201cIt\u2019s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, and talk about the way things should be,\u201d Newsom told reporters<\/a>. \u201cWe have got to meet fire with fire.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fire with fire\u2014done. Prop 50 is a go. But we can still be talking about the way things should be and laying the groundwork to get there. For one, mid-decade redistricting could be banned. Representative Kevin Kiley, a California Republican who may lose his seat post-Prop 50, proposed a bill to do just that, which he said House Republican leadership is so far unwilling to bring to the floor.\u00a0\u201cI think if it did come to the floor, it would have a lot of support,\u201d Representative Kiley told<\/a> The New York Times.<\/p>\n

Legislators could also revisit the For the People Act to establish independent state commissions. Or, they could take the examples of other democracies to remove congressional redistricting from the hands of states altogether. Canada transferred that authority to a national commission in 1964, and has since seen redistricting evolve<\/a> into an exercise \u201cwidely seen as legitimate\u201d and devoid of \u201cpublic cynicism and disenchantment.\u201d Among contemporary democracies, America\u2019s approach is \u201cuniquely awful,\u201d New America wrote<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, with California\u2019s fight in the rearview, it is a fine time to come clean about what Prop 50 doesn\u2019t do: give power back to the people, as campaign ads claimed<\/a>. Voiding votes of California Republicans\u2014who were already feeling pretty powerless<\/a> in a deep blue state\u2014won\u2019t restore fair representation to voters of color in Texas, because the function of congressional representation is not simply to add another \u201cD\u201d or \u201cR\u201d ballot to a party-line vote in Washington. Our members are intended to bring the interests, concerns, and voices of far-away constituencies to the House of Representatives, the federal government\u2019s most locally accountable, place-based arm.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, institutional design and electoral practice have diverged over the last half-century. American elections today are more about national party politics than they have been or were crafted to be. A \u201cD\u201d or an \u201cR\u201d next to a candidate\u2019s name alone can tank<\/a> a campaign. This nationalization upends a central premise<\/a> in our political system: that local interests, inherently diverse across a massive country, matter and warrant responsive representation. If we consider five California Democrats gained to be an equal trade for five Texans lost, we accept a complete shift to party affiliation over individual candidates or the local concerns they speak to.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t where Americans want to be. According to a recent New York Times\/Siena poll<\/a>, voters increasingly name \u201cpolarization\u201d the most important problem facing the country. And some politicians are reading the room: As the Monthly\u2019s Nate Weisberg pointed out<\/a>, successful Democratic candidates in swing districts today appeal to localism lost. They employ a \u201cmoral vocabulary\u201d around place and talk about \u201cthe closing factory and the bridge that finally got fixed\u201d rather than jumping into partisan fights.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the redistricting battles rage on, and more Republican communities are silenced, Democrats may be able to recruit soldiers from across the aisle in the broader war for fair maps. For now, Prop 50 means as many as five new Democrats voting to protect programs that aid low-income Americans in every state, which House Republicans have slashed in service of the president\u2019s agenda. \u201cWhen someone does the bidding of Donald Trump, you\u2019re essentially represented by Donald Trump in Congress,\u201d Doug Greco, Democratic Party chair for Texas\u2019s Travis County, told me. And after the 2030 census, California\u2019s congressional maps will once again be in the hands of its independent commission.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Huffman says he\u2019s already been reaching out to his new constituents. \u201cWhen there are community problems \u2026 I could care less about what anyone\u2019s party label is,\u201d he said<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gerrymandering and political polarization have risen hand-in-hand over the last three decades\u2013each feeding the other, and both undermining voters\u2019 trust in their democracy. Perhaps now, the all-out maps war taking place between red and blue states will push the injustices of partisan redistricting to the breaking point. And if so, perhaps they\u2019ll actually break.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

One can dream. In fact, one should.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

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