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Washington – A final effort by Californian Democrats to redraw the map of the State Congress for the 2026 elections, against a similar thrust of the Texas Republicans, is now against the clock.
Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday that the Democrats were advancing with a plan to put a rare decade again before voters on November 4. But state legislators will write a “trigger” for legislation, he said, which means that Californian voters would only vote if Texas progressed with its own plans for the limits of the Redraw Congress to add five other Republican seats.
“This is the cause and the effect, triggered on the basis of what happens or does not happen in Texas,” said Newsom. “I hope they do the right thing, and if they do it, there will be no reason why we have to move forward.”
The Democratic legislators of Texas left the state on Monday to deprive the republicans of the quorum necessary to pass the new cards. Republican legislators voted 85 to 6 to send state soldiers to arrest them and bring them back to the Capitol, a largely symbolic decision, because the legislators will not be confronted with criminal or civil accusations.
The result of the duel efforts between Texas and California could determine which party controls the House of Representatives after the mid-term elections in 2026, which the Democrats consider the last bulwark of President Trump’s actions during his second term. Trump prompted the Republicans to add more GOP seats in Texas, in the hope of avoiding a mid-term defeat.
Democrats hold 43 of the 52 seats in the California congress. The first discussions between politicians and Californian strategists suggest that redressing lines could consolidate certain democrats in place vulnerable by making their purple districts more blue, while forcing five or six of the nine republican members of the state in more difficult re -election fights.
But nothing civil servant can be done until state legislators returned from recreation in Sacramento on August 18.
The Democrats, who have supermajority in the Legislative Assembly, would have less than a month to draw a new card, hold hearings and negotiate the language of a bill calling for the special elections of November, leaving just enough time for voters guides to be sent by post and voting bulletins to print.
Democratic legislators and agents said on Monday that the calendar was doable, but they should act quickly.
The Democrat delegation of California expressed its consensus during a video meeting on Monday with the future with a voting measure which would allow the redistribution of mid-December that if another state advances with it, according to a person familiar with the virtual meeting, and that the change would be temporary. They expressed their support for the Independent Commission.
The president of the California assembly, Robert Rivas, said that the Democratic Caucus met on Sunday evening “to discuss the urgent threat of a continuous and obvious Trumpian takeover – a coordinated effort to undermine our democracy and silence the Californians.”
The Democrats of the Senate and the California Assembly have held separate meetings to discuss redistribution. David Binder, a sounder who works with Newsom, presented internal surveys that have shown lukewarm early support among the voters for the temporary development of states’ laws in order to allow the legislature to draw new cards for elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030.
“Our voters must be allowed to grow back,” said Rivas. “California has never fallen – and we will not start now.”
Texas Democrats resist
On Monday, Austin Democratic legislators denied the republicans on Monday, the quorum necessary to vote on a redesigned state map which could clearly republicans five seats in the congress.
Democratic legislators relieve threats from the Republican Governor Greg Abbott. The Texas House Democratic Caucus published a declaration riffing on a slogan made famous during the Revolution of Texas: “Come and take it”. A member of the Caucus noted that being absent was not a crime and that Texas mandates cannot be served in Illinois or New York, where many legislators have left.
“There is no crime in the Texas Criminal Code for what he says,” said Jolanda Jones, Democrat. “He tries to obtain sound dicks and he has no legal mechanism.”
The Republican President of the Texas Chamber, Dustin Burrows, said that the departure of the Democrats does not prevent this house from doing his job. He delays it. “”
But Abbott’s legal options to have his redistribution bill adopted, by expelling the Democrats or forcing their return, seems close, probably forcing the governor’s office to take up challenges in the hearing rooms based in democratic districts. Abbott has until the end of the year to get new cards to be used in the March 3 primaries of the State.
At a press conference last week in Sacramento, Newsom compared Trump’s pressure on Abbott to add five seats in the Republican Congress, as his efforts to “find” 12,000 votes to win Georgia after the 2020 elections.
“We are not here to eliminate the committee,” he said. “We are here to provide a route in 26, 28 and in 2030 for the Congress cards based on a system response by the President of the United States.
Climbing on a deadline
For decades, restarting California’s electoral cards was equivalent to a political war. In 1971, then-gov. Ronald Reagan vetoed a redistribution plan he called “a mockery of a good government”. The Supreme Court of California finally traced the lines and did it again in 1991, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson rejected the cards drawn by the Democrats.
California state legislators last time developed their own district lines in 2001, after members of the two parties signed a plan developed to protect the holders.
In 2008, California voters stripped the legislators in the power to draw their own districts by adopting proposal 11, which created an independent redistribution commission. Two years later, the voters gave the power to redesign the Congress district cards at the same panel by passing proposal 20. This group traced the lines before the 2012 elections, and again after the 2020 census.
California has set the date of its last special election on the state level – Newsom’s recall attempt in 2021 – 75 days in advance. Heads of the county elections would need at least as much time to find voting places and prepare voting ballots for voters abroad and military, which must be posted 45 days before the day of the ballot, said an election official.
“We need at least one calendar and calendar similar to what happened in 2021 for the Governor’s reminder,” said Dean Logan, the senior elections for the County of Los Angeles.
Likewise, he said, the counties “will need the funding provided in advance by the State to carry out this election, and the funding to make the redistribution associated with it, because the counties are not financially prepared”.
The 2021 recall elections cost California taxpayers around $ 200 million. The preliminary estimate of the County of Los Angeles to administer the redistribution elections is around 60 million dollars.
National fight on state lines
Republican strategist Jon Fleischman, former executive director of the California Republican Party, said the Republicans were to take the efforts of the State Democrats seriously to redesign the cards – withdrawing their checkbook.
“Our collection of republican funds at the level of the State has athought because it was more than a generation since we had a viable candidate on the level of the State in California,” he said. “The kind of money it would take to fight against this – it should be a national financing effort.”
Although Texas has encouraged Californian Democrats to act, said Fleischman, the question has enough momentum here so that it is not ultimately important what Texas does.
“If Gavin Newsom puts this on the ballot, it means that he has already done his survey and understood that it will pass because he cares about more candidates for the presidency in California,” said Fleischman. “And he knows that he cannot afford to make this game and lose.”
Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who defended the measure of the ballot who created the independent redistribution commission, did not weigh on the redistribution efforts in mid-December in Texas and California. But a spokesperson for the former governor clearly indicated that he vehemently opposes the two.
Since his office departure, Schwarzenegger has fought for the drawing of independent cards across the country. Rediscuping is one of the political reforms that are at the center of the Schwarzenegger Institute of the USC.
“His point of view on all of this is that everyone has learned in nursery school or kindergarten that two wrongs do not do good. He thinks that gerrymandering is bad,” said Daniel Ketchell, spokesperson for Schwarzenegger. “It takes the power of the people and gives it to politicians. He thinks it’s bad, no matter where they do. ”
Wilner reported Washington, Nelson and Mehta from Los Angeles and Luna de Sacramento.
