California Republicans appear poised to lose four to six House seats in next years midterms as votes are counted this week in the states hastily planned Prop 50. The ballot measure would allow the states supermajority Democratic-controlled legislature to redraw congressional maps instead of the existing independent commission.
Tuesday is the last day to vote on Californias special election ballot initiative to consider a severely skewed new map, written by a Democratic operative and championed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The initiative began in response to other state lawmakers reworking their own maps to give Republicans more power in Congress. The first batch of results will be issued on election night after polls close, with daily updates each evening until Dec. 12, when the results will be certified.
Normally states redraw maps only once a decade after the census updates population and demographics, but Texas politicians argue their effort is a legitimate way to respond to mid-decade population increases. Democrats counter that its part of an obvious attempt to insulate Trump from GOP losses in next years midterms that could shift majority control to Democrats – who would undoubtedly move to impeach him.
Newsom and other Democrats have pledged to “fight fire with fire” and have focused on the California ballot measure as a way to “stop Trump” from destroying democracy – even as they acknowledge that two wrongs dont make a right.
The Texas move has positioned Republicans to gain five seats for the House GOP in 2026 and spurred a wave of redistricting moves in Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, and Louisiana, where state lawmakers have either floated the idea or have begun takingsteps to redistrict ahead of next years elections. Republican redistricting operatives have told RealClearPolitics that they expect to come out way ahead of Democrats in terms of the number of seats they could gain in the state-by-state redistricting race to the bottom.
For weeks, the polls have shown momentum strongly on Newsoms side in California. A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California showed the “Yes” vote leading “No” by a margin of 56% to 43%. A more recent CBS News poll showed an even bigger lead for the “Yes” vote – 62%.
Republicans are bracing for an embarrassing loss while Newsom has expressed confidence heading into the final voting day. A victory for Newsom will buoy his presidential election aspirations and give him and fellow Democrats an important win against Trump, as polls show the Democratic Party losing voters in the first year of the second Trump administration. A big victory in California will undoubtedly rally many Democrats around Newsoms expected candidacy three years before the nation determines who will succeed Trump as president.
“Trump is not screwing around. … Hes changing the rules. Hes rigging the game because he knows hell lose if all things are equal,” Newsom told Kristen Welker, NBCs Meet the Press host, on Sunday. “He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”
If Democrats win the House next year, Newsom predicted “therell be fire and fury [from the White House], but it will signify substantially less because well finally have a coequal branch of government.”
“So, the Trump presidency as we know it, from my perspective… will be over, if were successful in 2026,” he added.
The recriminations over California Republicans weak and disparate messaging to oppose Newsoms redistricting plan were in full swing days before the Nov. 4 ballot initiative election.
Carl DeMaio, GOP state representative and chairman of Reform California, a grassroots political organization, fumed to RCP that his organization was out-working the state Republican party and other opposition groups with get-out-the-vote efforts, both door-knocking and digital texting and email efforts with a fraction of the funds.
DeMaio argued it wasnt an issue of money, even though his side likely was outspent roughly two to one, with the opposition spending roughly $50 million and proponents more than doubling that level. In his and other critics view, the “No on Prop 50“ side was a disorganized mess without a recognizable and influential figurehead coordinating the statewide effort and appearing in ads.
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, 78-year-old former action star and the last Republican to win statewide office, who left office in 2011, appeared in at least one “No on 50“ ad. But his influence has clearly waned over the last decade, and he wasnt the leading man in the cavalcade of different GOP messages.
“I think we had six various, disparate groups who didnt unite behind a simple message, and we didnt have one person or one group distributing that message,” argued Mike Netter, a former marketing executive at Staples and co-founder of the 2021 effort to recall Newsom, which successfully made it onto the ballot but failed by a wide margin.
Netter also criticized the California GOP for failing to use text messages to target voters who hadnt voted yet and update it on a day-to-day basis.
In comparison, Netter said Newsom and the pro-Prop 50 effort had one message: “F— Trump.”
California Republican Party Chair Corrin Rankin, a black woman who served as a surrogate for Trump in 2016 and 2024, was just elected in March and is new to the more than 5.75 million registered Republicans throughout the state.
The CA GOP created several ads featuring Rankin that ran on Facebook and were amplified by Netter and influencers on X and other social media sites. But the GOPs fractured good-government argument could not compete with the blizzard of negative anti-Trump television ads featuring Newsom, former President Barack Obama, and liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among other national figures.
Rankin also requested federal election observers to ensure that all California voters could have confidence in the outcome amid years of criticism of Californias all mail-in ballot election and instances of documented fraud.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and fellow Californian and Justice Department civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon readily agreed to send monitors for five California counties, and separately, one in a New Jersey county for the hotly contested governors race there. Bondi said they were being deployed to uphold “the highest standards of election integrity.”
“We asked for them to come out because we do believe that fair representation is a civil rights issue,” Rankin told a local California CBS News affiliate on Monday.
Californians twice approved the independent redistricting commission, in 2008 and 2010, and determined that “we dont want legislators drawing maps behind closed doors,” Rankin said.
“We want to do it in the open, in public, and let the community be involved,” she said. “Were urging voters to once again vote in favor, for the third time, to keep our independent redistricting commission. Its now a constitutional right of ours. As California, were actually the gold standard across the country that allows citizens and community members to decide how our communities are shaped.”
As poll after poll showed that message losing ground, conservative grousing over the lack of a coordinated Republican messaging operation began and never stopped in the days before Election Day.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised to raise $100 million and delivered only a small fraction of that for his Stop Sacramentos Power Grab. Meanwhile, Charles Munger Jr., mega-donor physicist and the original architect of the voter-approved independent commission approach, along with Schwarzenegger, funneled more than $30 million into the opposition effort, but the advertising campaign did not grab voters attention and appeared outmoded, critics said.
The yes side raised roughly twice what opponents amassed, with $10 million coming from billionaire George Soros, another $13 million from billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, and millions more coming from California unions. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a key fundraising arm of House GOP leaders, spent $13 million to fight the proposition, a significant amount for an off-year election.
CLF contributed $5 million on Sept. 5, and the PAC made two additional donations to the California Republican Party: $5 million on Oct. 3 and another $3 million on Oct. 14.
Proposition 50 supporters had such a big war chest that it not only filled the national television time slots during the World Series, but alsotargeted the swing audience on popular podcasts, such as the timeslot before the Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM, to the shock and dismay of many Republicans across the state.
DeMaio also says another dynamic undermined the “No” on Prop 50 arguments. Some groups and individuals, he charged, were more concerned about profiting from the windfall than winning the ballot initiative and saving Republican congressional seats.
The individuals and groups, including the California Republican Party, he asserted, saw Prop 50 as “a boondoggle they could fleece and grift off of.”
The California GOP, he argued, is unable to raise money on a regular, month-to-month basis “so they wait for these big fights, and instead of actually fighting, they skim off the top.”
They did not have a plan when ballots hit voters mailboxes the first week of October, DeMaio said. (All registered California voters receive a ballot in the mail that they can either fill out and mail back or drop off at a polling location on Election Day.)
The party sent out a variety of direct mail pieces “late in the game” that were not targeted only to voters who had yet to vote but sent to all voters, regardless of age and whether they had cast their ballot, he asserted.
The county parties did an exceptional job, DeMaio argued, trying to marshal their resources, hold rallies, and have volunteers knock on doors, but some county GOP officials complained of a dearth of resources, and were turned away when they asked the state party to step up with door hangers.
DeMaios group, by comparison, printed 750,000 palm cards and door hangers, and “we were glad to give them away” to the county parties, he said.
“But, you know, the state party should have been doing that,” he continued. “The state party did no real grassroots deployments, because its not like they have a volunteer program.”
DeMaio late last week said there was still a small chance for the No on 50 side to win, but it would require a miraculous Hail Mary effort in the final voting stretch.
Rankin did not respond to DeMaio and Netters barbs and instead stuck to a positive good-government message in the days leading up to the final message.
“Its a power grab because it takes power away from the people – plain and simple,” she said.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.
