By Maya C. Miller, CalMatters
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Three months ago, conventional wisdom suggested that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan faced a brutal uphill battle amid an impromptu 10-week campaign sprint.
But within minutes after polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, The Associated Press and national news networks had already proclaimed that Proposition 50 would pass handily, with voters agreeing to temporarily suspend California’s independently drawn maps and adopt ones gerrymandered in favor of Democrats.
Prop. 50’s landslide victory proved that Newsom and his allies bet correctly on pitching the measure as a countermaneuver to gerrymanders by Republican states such as Texas and an act of resistance against President Donald Trump.
It also spells the beginning of the end for several of California’s Republican House members, who now must make the unpleasant calculation of whether to run in their current district, switch to a new seat or drop out entirely — questions they could previously dodge under the guise of “Prop. 50 won’t pass.”
But it’s not yet clear how widely Prop. 50’s influence will stretch outside of California. The five-seat gain for Democrats could offset at least some redistricting efforts in Republican states, although Republicans stand to gain more seats from an all-out redistricting arms race.
Then there’s the looming possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will outlaw the use of race in the redistricting process, which could give Republicans a major advantage in Southern states.
Opponents also haven’t given up, despite losing at the ballot box.
Just over 12 hours after polls closed, California Republicans announced a lawsuit challenging Prop. 50 in a Fresno-based federal court on the grounds that it violates the 14th and 15th Amendments by drawing districts that favor Latino voters at the expense of other ethnic and racial groups.
All the while, incumbents and challengers on both sides of the aisle are scrambling to mark their turf in whichever newly drawn district they think will give them the best chance of winning, which could lead to some tense and expensive intra-party matchups.
As all eyes turn to 2026, here are five key takeaways from Prop. 50’s success and what comes next:
Democrats leveraged Trump and national politics
Newsom repeatedly told Californians that a vote for Prop. 50 was a vote against Trump.
It worked.
Droves of Democratic voters who were hungry to “do something” meaningful to fight back against what they perceived as an out-of-control Trump administration weighed in on a single-issue ballot measure. With thousands of outstanding ballots still to count, the measure was leading by a 64% to 36% margin Wednesday. Secretary of State Shirley Weber said there was “huge turnout” in person Tuesday night, with long lines wrapping around buildings at many polling sites.
The nationalization of the campaign, which harnessed many Californians’ palpable fear of and disgust with the actions coming out of Washington, drowned out the good governance case that Prop. 50 opponents tried to push.
Absent the “Trump effect,” an argument against gerrymandering likely would have played well in California, a state that just 15 years ago voted to take map-drawing powers away from politicians and give them to citizens.
The opposition lacked money and a clear message
While the Yes campaign focused on antagonizing Trump, the opposition steered clear of the president and settled instead on a California-focused good governance message that avoided national politics altogether.
To Cathy Abernathy, a Bakersfield-based Republican political operative and longtime mentor of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, that was a big mistake.
“The word was, ‘Well, don’t make it about Trump,’” Abernathy said. “Why in the world aren’t we making it all about Trump?” she added. “Trump didn’t even campaign here for president and got 40% of the vote.”
Abernathy also criticized the state Republican Party for its sloppy get out the vote mailing blitz, which wasted precious money by failing to target only voters who hadn’t yet returned their ballots, sending mailers to thousands of people who had already voted. She placed the blame on consultants who cared more about making money than winning elections.
“I just don’t think there’s respect for the money donated to the party by the people that are spending the money,” she said.
Let the musical chairs begin
Now that voters have approved Prop. 50, a major shuffle is underway as some incumbents scramble to preserve their careers in newly redistricted seats while challengers jockey for the chance to unseat them.
Five congressional Republicans in California, Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Kevin Kiley, David Valadao, Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa, face much steeper challenges to retaining their seats. And on the defensive side, five incumbent Democrats — Reps. Adam Gray, Josh Harder, Dave Min, Derek Tran and George Whitesides — have seen their seats grow safer.
Among the incumbents switching districts is Calvert, who for more than 30 years has represented a Riverside County district that was redrawn eastward into Los Angeles County. He announced Wednesday that he would instead run for reelection in the neighboring 40th District, setting up an intraparty showdown with fellow incumbent Republican Rep. Young Kim. Kim upped the stakes Wednesday by announcing that her campaign has already placed a $3.25 million ad buy in advance of the June primary election.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Ami Bera announced he would challenge Kiley in the newly gerrymandered 3rd District, which encompasses Sacramento suburbs. That in turn prompted Dr. Richard Pan, a former state senator and a pediatrician who had already declared his candidacy, to relocate to the newly drawn 6th District to avoid a tough primary battle with a well-known incumbent.
Legal challenges could change the maps again
California Republicans on Wednesday sued to block the Prop. 50 map, as they previously did twice, unsuccessfully, when the proposal was still on its way to the ballot.
The suit, funded primarily by the National Republican Congressional Committee, claims the map causes “stigmatic and representational injury” by placing certain candidates, such as Republican Assemblymember David Tangipa of Fresno, who is Polynesian, into districts drawn with a specific racial or ethnic minority group in mind.
“The map is designed to favor one race of California voters over others,” said Mike Columbo, an attorney for the Dhillon Law Group, the firm founded by Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights in Trump’s Justice Department.
Dhillon’s firm, along with the California Republican Party and Tangipa, is suing Newsom and Weber, asking a three-judge panel for a temporary restraining order before Dec. 19, the date when candidates can start collecting signatures to get their names on the 2026 primary ballot.
Legal scholars say the case faces long odds. The plaintiffs would have to prove that the primary intent of the map drawers – and California voters who approved Prop. 50 — was to racially gerrymander without proper evidence of racially polarized voting.
“It would be a very hard case to win,” said Emily Rong Zhang, an assistant professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. “But if the Supreme Court changes the law, then the likelihood of success here might be higher.”
The justices are weighing Louisiana v. Callais, on whether to strike down the part of the Voting Rights Act that requires creating districts in which racial and ethnic minorities have a chance to elect their preferred candidate. That could render both the Prop. 50 maps and those drawn by the independent redistricting commission unconstitutional.
Supporters of Prop. 50 have repeatedly said their maps will hold up to legal scrutiny. Paul Mitchell, the data consultant whose firm drew the lines, said the group in many cases hewed closely to configurations proposed by the citizens redistricting commission. An analysis by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute found the new maps largely kept communities together.
Regardless of how SCOTUS rules, other states are still deciding whether to weigh in on the redistricting wars. Republicans in Kansas recently dropped an attempt to redraw their district lines, citing a lack of support. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, announced Wednesday that he was forming a committee to propose new congressional maps to eliminate the state’s one safe Republican seat, held by Rep. Andy Harris, who leads the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.