PROP. 50 LIKELY TO STAY INTACT AFTER TEXAS GERRYMANDER TOSSED

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “PROP. 50 LIKELY TO STAY INTACT AFTER TEXAS GERRYMANDER TOSSED”

 

If anyone needed proof of how swiftly political change can arrive, this fall is probably Example A.

 

Just observe the last month. First, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was riding high after passage of Proposition 50 and its changes in California congressional district lines made him the most successful national Democrat in countering a key initiative by President Trump.

 

Barely a week later, Newsom’s former chief of staff was indicted on charges of political corruption and tax fraud and many began to write him off as a presidential candidate because of it.

 

Not even a week after that, Newsom was back in the catbird seat after a federal appeals court in Texas threw out that state’s gerrymandered congressional district plan – which earlier provided the motive for the Newsom-sponsored Prop. 50.

 

The Texas decision nixing the gerrymander there may be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, even though it was written by a Trump-appointed judge. Meanwhile the California proposition figures as more likely to survive its own court challenges, filed by the state Republican Party and the U.S. Justice Department.

 

That’s because Texas officials from Gov. Greg Abbott down were quite open about their effort to concentrate Houston-area blacks into one district while giving five others to white Republicans. By contrast, there was little or no mention of race by either side in the Prop. 50 campaign, which was very explicitly motivated by pure politics.

 

 Newsom created Prop. 50 specifically to counter the Texas gerrymander, which unlike California’s changes in district lines, was not adopted by a vote of the people. No race issue ever arose in that race until Republicans claimed after its resounding win that was what motivated it.

 

Nothing says the U.S. Supreme Court has to OK either the Texas court decision or Prop. 50, but if it tosses both gerrymanders, Newsom would still achieve his political goal of offsetting the Texas changes put in motion by a phone call from Trump to Abbott. If both efforts are thrown out, Newsom’s goal of regaining the prior balance after the Texas action would still have been reached.

 

Said one election law professor the day of the Texas decision, “Most of the law around redistricting is up to the state, not federal law, and we (in California) just changed state law. There are not many grounds for a legal challenge against Prop. 50 to succeed.”

 

There remains the distinct possibility that both Prop. 50 and the Texas court decision tossing that state’s gerrymander will stand up in the Supreme Court. If that happens, Newsom would have achieved far more than his goal of balancing the Texas gerrymander with an exchange of five new California Democratic seats for five new Texas GOP ones. In that case, Newsom would have given Democrats a net gain of five seats in the House of Representatives.

 

If something like that couldn’t put Newsom in an early lead in the 2028 Democratic presidential sweepstakes, it’s hard to see what could. For a net gain of five seats would likely give Democrats control of the House, where almost all new Trump initiatives might die.

 

No wonder Newsom was gloating after the Texas court decision came down. In a post on X, he said, “Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned, and democracy won.” Translation: “I won big. Na, na, na, na. na.”

 

But even if Newsom proves correct, and the high court says it’s OK to gerrymander at midterm for political reasons, but not racial ones, he will still be a long way from winning the next Democratic nomination.

 

For Newsom took a turn toward the center in his bill signings this fall, favoring business in many of his decisions.

 

His fall efforts were clearly designed to stamp him as a moderate, but also an environmentalist with a tight financial fist.

 

This could leave him open to a challenge from the left by someone like New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has built a career around leading her party’s far-left wing.

 

That possibility gained credence from the New York mayoral win of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani and the subsequent upset win by fellow Democratic Socialist Katie Wilson and a slate of similarly-oriented candidates in Seattle. 

 

The bottom line: Newsom appears to be riding high today, but in a season of very speedy change, no one can know how long that will last.

  

    -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net