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Tag: california voter

  • Commentary: Fix the potholes or fight the power? That’s the choice facing California’s next governor

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    You may have missed it, what with President Trump’s endless pyrotechnics, but California voters will decide in November who succeeds Gavin Newsom, the highest-profile governor since the Terminator returned to Hollywood.

    Unfortunately for those attempting to civically engage, the current crop of contenders is, shall we say, less than enthralling.

    In alphabetical order (because there is seriously no prohibitive front-runner), the major candidates are Xavier Becerra, Chad Bianco, Ian Calderon, Steve Hilton, Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, John Slavet, Tom Steyer, Eric Swalwell, Tony Thurmond, Antonio Villaraigosa and Betty Yee.

    Whew! (Pause to catch breath.)

    Armed with that knowledge, you can now go out and win yourself a few bar bets by asking someone to name, say, even two of those running.

    Meantime, fear not. Your friendly columnists Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria have surveyed the field, weighed the odds, pondered California’s long history and concluded … they have absolutely no clue what will happen in the June 2 primary, much less who’ll take the oath of office come next January.

    Here, they discuss the race that has Californians sitting on neither pins nor needles.

    Chabria: Mark, I do this for a living and I’m having trouble summoning up any interest in this race — yet, anyway.

    Part of my problem is that national events are so all-consuming and fast-moving that it’s hard to worry about potholes. I admit, I appreciate that our White House-contending governor is fighting the big fight. But remind me again, what’s a governor supposed to do?

    Barabak: End homelessness. Elevate our public schools to first-class rank. Make housing and college tuition affordable. Eliminate crime. End disease and poverty. Put a chicken in every pot. Make pigs fly and celestial angels sing. And then, in their second year …

    Seriously, there’s a pretty large gap between what voters would like to see happen and what a governor — any governor — can plausibly deliver. That said, if our next chief executive can help bring about meaningful improvement in just a few of those areas, pigs and angels excepted, I’d venture to say a goodly number of Californians would be pleased.

    Broadly speaking, my sense when talking to voters is they want our next governor to push back on Trump and his most egregious excesses. But not as a means of raising their national profile or positioning themselves for a run at the White House. And not to the exclusion of bettering their lives by paying attention to the nitty and the gritty, like making housing and higher education more readily available and, yes, fixing potholes.

    Chabria: All that is fair enough. As the mom of two teens, I’d especially like to see our university system be more affordable and accessible, so we all have our personal priorities. Let’s agree to this starting point: The new governor can’t just chew gum and walk. She or he must be able to eat a full lunch while running.

    But so far, candidates haven’t had their policy positions break through to a big audience, state-focused or not — and many of them share broadly similar positions. Let’s look at the bits of daylight that separate them because, Republicans aside, there aren’t canyon-size differences among the many candidates.

    San José Mayor Matt Mahan, the newest entry in the race, is attempting to position himself as a “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” centrist. How do you think that will go over with voters?

    Barabak: You’re having me tiptoe uncomfortably close to the Make A Prediction Zone, which I assiduously avoid. As I’ve said before, I’m smart enough to know what I don’t know. (Many readers will doubtless question the underlying premise of the former if not the latter part of that statement.)

    I think there is at least a potential for Mahan to tap into a desire among voters to lower the hostilities just a bit and ease up on our constant partisan war-footing.

    You might not know it if you marinate in social media, or watch the political shout-fest shows where, as in nature, the loudest voices carry. But there are a great many people working two or even three jobs, ferrying their kids to soccer practice, worrying about paying their utility and doctor bills, caring for elderly parents or struggling in other ways to keep their heads above water. And they’re less captivated by the latest snappy clap-back on TikTok than looking for help dealing with the many challenges they face.

    I was struck by something Katie Porter said when we recently sat down for a conversation in San Francisco. The former Orange County congresswoman can denigrate Trump with the best of ‘em. But she said, “I am very leery of anyone who does not acknowledge that we had problems and policy challenges long before Donald Trump ever raised his orange head on the political horizon.”

    California’s homelessness and affordability crises were years in the making, she noted, and need to be addressed as such.

    I heard Antonio Villaraigosa suggest something similar in last week‘s gubernatorial debate, when the former Los Angeles mayor noted the state has spent billions of dollars in recent years trying to drastically reduce homelessness with, at best, middling results. “We cannot be afraid to look in the mirror,” he said.

    That suggests to me Mahan is not the only candidate who appreciates that simply saying “Trump = Bad” over and over is not what voters want to hear.

    Chabria: Certainly potholes and high electricity bills existed before Trump. But if the midterms don’t favor Democrats, the next governor will probably face a generational challenge to protect the civil rights of residents of this diverse state. It’s not about liking or disliking Trump, but ensuring that our governor has a plan if attacks on immigrants, the LBGTQ+ community and citizens in general grow worse.

    I do think this will matter to voters — but I agree with you that candidates can’t simply rage against Trump. They have to offer some substance.

    Porter, Swalwell and Becerra, who have the most national experience and could be expected to articulate that sort of vision, haven’t done much other than to commit to the fight. Steyer and Thurmond want to abolish ICE, which a governor couldn’t do. Mahan has said focusing on state policy is the best offense.

    I don’t think this has to be a charisma-driven vision, which is what Newsom has so effectively offered. But it needs to bring resoluteness in a time of fear, which none of the candidates to my mind have been able to project so far.

    But this all depends on election results in November. If Democrats take Congress and are able to exert a check to this terrible imbalance, then bring on the asphalt and fix the roads. I think a lot of what voters want from a governor won’t fully be known until after November.

    Barabak: The criticism of this collective field is that it’s terminally boring, as if we’re looking to elect a stand-up comic, a chanteuse or a juggler. I mean, this is the home of Hollywood! Isn’t it the birthright of every California citizen to be endlessly entertained?

    At least that’s what the pundits and political know-it-alls, stifling yawns as they constantly refresh their feeds on Bluesky or X, would have you believe.

    Voters elected Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor — that’s two movie stars in the state’s 175-year history — and, from the way the state is often perceived, you’d think celebrity megawattage is one of the main prerequisites for a chief executive.

    But if you look back, California has seen a lot more George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis types, which is to say bland-persona governors whom no one would mistake for box-office gold.

    It seems to me no coincidence that Schwarzenegger, who arrived as a political novelty, was replaced by Jerry Brown, who was as politically tried-and-true as they come. That political pendulum never stops swinging.

    Which suggests voters will be looking for someone less like our gallivanting, movie matinee governor and someone more inclined to keep their head down in Sacramento and focus on the state and its needs.

    Who will that be? I wouldn’t wage a nickel trying to guess. Would you care to?

    Chabria: I certainly don’t care to predict, but I’ll say this: We may not need or get another Terminator. But one of these candidates needs to put some pepper flakes in the paste if they want to break out of the pack.

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    Mark Z. Barabak, Anita Chabria

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  • Court battle begins over Republican challenge to California’s Prop. 50

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    Republicans and Democrats squared off in court Monday in a high-stakes battle over the fate of California’s Proposition 50, which reconfigures the state’s congressional districts and could ultimately help determine which party controls the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms.

    Dozens of California politicians and Sacramento insiders — including GOP Assembly members and Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell — have given depositions in the case or could be called to testify in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles over the next few days.

    The GOP wants the three-judge panel to temporarily block California’s new district map, claiming it is unconstitutional and illegally favors Latino voters.

    An overwhelming majority of California voters approved Proposition 50 on Nov. 4 after Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched the redistricting plan as a way to counter partisan gerrymandering in Texas and other GOP-led states. Democrats acknowledged the new map would weaken Republicans’ voting power in California, but argued that it would just be a temporary measure to try to restore the national political balance.

    Attorneys for the GOP cannot challenge the new redistricting map on the grounds that it disenfranchises swaths of California Republicans. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that complaints of partisan gerrymandering have no path in federal court.

    But the GOP can bring claims of racial discrimination. They argue that California legislators drew the new congressional maps based on race, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment, which prohibits governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on race or color.

    Republicans face an uphill struggle in blocking the new map before the 2026 midterms. The hearing comes just a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas to temporarily keep its new congressional map — a move that Newsom’s office says bodes poorly for Republicans trying to block California’s map.

    “In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’s, were drawn for lawful reasons,” Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. “That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.”

    In Texas, GOP leaders drew up new congressional district lines after President Trump openly pressed them to give Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. A federal court blocked the map, finding racial considerations probably made the Texas map unconstitutional. But a few days later, the Supreme Court granted Texas’ request to pause that ruling, signaling that they view the Texas case — and this one in California — as part of a national politically motivated redistricting battle.

    “The impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California),” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued, “was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

    The fact that the Supreme Court order and Alito’s concurrence in the Texas case went out of their way to mention California is not a good sign for California Republicans, said Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

    “It’s hard to prove racial predominance in drawing a map — that race predominated over partisanship or other traditional districting principles,” Hasen said. “Trying to get a preliminary injunction, there’s a higher burden now, because it would be changing things closer to the election, and the Supreme Court signaled in that Texas ruling that courts should be wary of making changes.”

    On Nov. 4, California voters approved Proposition 50, a measure to scrap a congressional map drawn up by the state’s independent redistricting commission and replace it with a map drawn up by legislators to favor Democrats through 2030.

    On Monday, a key plaintiff, Assemblymember David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno) — who serves on the Assembly Elections Committee — testified that the legislative panel was given only four days to analyze the redistricted maps and was not allowed to vote on them.

    “In the language of the bill, it actually states that the Assembly and Senate election committee prepared these maps,” Tangipa said. “This was a lie.”

    Tangipa claimed his Democratic colleagues repeatedly brought up increased Black, Latino and Asian representation to further their argument for redistricting.

    “They were forcing, through emergency action, maps upon us to dismantle the independent redistricting commission,” Tangipa said. “They were using emotionally charged arguments, racial justifications and polarized arguments to pigeonhole us.”

    Defense attorneys, however, referenced multiple instances in depositions and online posts where Tangipa had claimed that there was some “partisan” or “political” purpose for the existence of Proposition 50. Tangipa denied this and maintained that he believed that the redistricting effort was race-conscious since his conversations on the Assembly floor.

    The hearing began with attorneys for the GOPhoming in on the new map’s Congressional District 13, which currently encompasses Merced, Stanislaus as well as parts of San Joaquin and Fresno counties, along with parts of Stockton. When Mitchell drew up the map, they argued, he overrepresented Latino voters as a “predominant consideration” over political leanings.

    They called to the stand RealClearPolitics elections analyst Sean Trende, who said he observed an “appendage” in the new District 13, which extended partially into the San Joaquin Valley and put a crack in the new rendition of District 9.

    “From my experience [appendages] are usually indicative of racial gerrymandering,” Trende said. “When the choice came between politics and race, it was race that won out.”

    Defense attorneys, however, pressed Trende on whether the shift in Latino voters toward Republican candidates in the last election could have informed the new district boundaries, rather than racial makeup.

    The defense referenced a sworn statement by Trende in the Texas redistricting case: the Proposition 50 map, he said then, was “drawn with partisan objectives in mind; in particular, it was drawn to improve Democratic prospects” to neutralize additional Republican seats.

    Many legal scholars say that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Texas case means California probably will keep its new map.

    “It was really hard before the Texas case to make a racial gerrymandering claim like the plaintiffs were stating, and it’s only gotten harder in the last two weeks,” said Justin Levitt, a professor of law at Loyola Marymount University.

    Hours after Californians voted in favor of Proposition 50, Tangipa and the California Republican Party filed a lawsuit alleging that the map enacted in Proposition 50 for California’s congressional districts is designed to favor Latino voters over others.

    The Department of Justice also filed a complaint in the case, contending that the new congressional map uses race as a proxy for politics and manipulated district lines “in the name of bolstering the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race.”

    Mitchell, the redistricting expert who drew up the maps, is likely to be a key figure in this week’s battle. In the days leading up to the hearing, attorneys sparred over whether Mitchell would testify and whether he should turn over his email correspondence with legislators. Mitchell’s attorneys argued that he had legislative privilege.

    Attorneys for the GOP have seized on public comments made by Mitchell that the “number one thing” he started thinking about was “drawing a replacement Latino majority/minority district in the middle of Los Angeles” and the “first thing” he and his team did was “reverse” the California Citizens Redistricting Commission’s earlier decision to eliminate a Latino district from L.A.

    Some legal experts, however, say that is not, in itself, a problem.

    “What [Mitchell] said was, essentially, ‘I paid attention to race,’” Levitt said. “But there’s nothing under existing law that’s wrong with that. The problem comes when you pay too much attention to race at the exclusion of all of the other redistricting factors.”

    Other legal experts say that what matters is not the intent of Mitchell or California legislators, but the California voters who passed Proposition 50.

    “Regardless of what Paul Mitchell or legislative leaders thought, they were just making a proposal to the voters,” said Hasen, who filed an amicus brief in support of the state. “So it’s really the voters’ intent that matters. And if you look at what was actually presented to the voters in the ballot pamphlet, there was virtually nothing about race there.”

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    Jenny Jarvie, Christopher Buchanan

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  • Californians sharply divided along partisan lines about immigration raids, poll finds

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    California voters are sharply divided along partisan lines over the Trump administration’s immigration raids this year in Los Angeles and across the nation, according to a new poll.

    Just over half of the state’s registered voters oppose federal efforts to reduce undocumented immigration, and 61% are against deporting everyone in the nation who doesn’t have legal status, according to a recent poll by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab released to The Times on Wednesday.

    But there is an acute difference in opinions based on political leanings.

    Nearly 80% of Democrats oppose reducing the number of people entering the United States illegally, and 90% are against deporting everyone in the country who is undocumented, according to the poll. Among Republicans, 5% are against reducing the entries and 10% don’t believe all undocumented immigrants should be forced to leave.

    “The big thing that we find, not surprisingly, is that Democrats and Republicans look really different,” said political scientist Amy Lerman, director of UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab, who studies race, public opinion and political behavior. “On these perspectives, they fall pretty clearly along party lines. While there’s some variation within the parties by things like age and race, really, the big divide is between Democrats and Republicans.”

    While there were some differences based on gender, age, income, geography and race, the results largely mirrored the partisan divide in the state, Lerman said.

    One remarkable finding was that nearly a quarter of survey respondents personally knew or were acquainted with someone in their family or friend groups directly affected by the deportation efforts, Lerman said.

    “That’s a really substantial proportion,” she said. “Similarly, the extent to which we see people reporting that people in their communities are concerned enough about deportation efforts that they’re not sending their kids to school, not shopping in local stores, not going to work,” not seeking medical care or attending church services.

    The poll surveyed a sample of the state’s registered voters and did not include the sentiments of the most affected communities — unregistered voters or those who are ineligible to cast ballots because they are not citizens.

    A little more than 23 million of California’s 39.5 million residents were registered to vote as of late October, according to the secretary of state’s office.

    “So if we think about the California population generally, this is a really significant underestimate of the effects, even though we’re seeing really substantial effects on communities,” she said.

    Earlier this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a series of raids in Los Angeles and surrounding communities that spiked in June, creating both fear and outrage in Latino communities. Despite opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other elected Democrats, the Trump administration also deployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation’s second-largest city to, federal officials said, protect federal immigration officials.

    The months since have been chaotic, with masked, armed agents randomly pulling people — most of whom are Latino — off the streets and out of their workplaces and sending many to detention facilities, where some have died. Some deportees were flown to an El Salvador prison. Multiple lawsuits have been filed by state officials and civil rights groups.

    In one notable local case, a federal district judge issued a ruling temporarily blocking federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area. The Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal and lifted that order, while the case moves forward.

    More than 7,100 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in the Los Angeles area by federal authorities since June 6, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

    On Monday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Bass and other elected officials hosted a congressional hearing on the impact of immigration raids that have taken place across the country. Garcia, the top Democrat on the House’s oversight committee, also announced the creation of a tracker to document misconduct and abuse during ICE raids.

    While Republican voters largely aligned with Trump’s actions on deportations, 16% said that they believed that the deportations will worsen the state’s economy.

    Lerman said the university planned to study whether these numbers changed as the impacts on the economy are felt more greatly.

    “If it continues to affect people, particularly, as we see really high rates of effects on the workforce, so construction, agriculture, all of the places where we’re as an economy really reliant [on immigrant labor], I can imagine some of these starting to shift even among Republicans,” she said.

    Among Latinos, whose support of Trump grew in the 2024 election, there are multiple indications of growing dissatisfaction with the president, according to separate national polls.

    Nearly eight in 10 Latinos said Trump’s policies have harmed their community, compared to 69% in 2019 during his first term, according to a national poll of adults in the United States released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center on Monday. About 71% said the administration’s deportation efforts had gone too far, an increase from 56% in March. And it was the first time in the two decades that Pew has conducted its survey of Latino voters that the number of Latinos who said their standing in the United States had worsened increased, with more than two-thirds expressing the sentiment.

    Another poll released earlier this month by Somos Votantes, a liberal group that urges Latino voters to support Democratic candidates, found that one-third of Latino voters who previously supported Trump rue their decision, according to a national poll.

    Small business owner Brian Gavidia is among the Latino voters who supported Trump in November because of financial struggles.

    “I was tired of struggling, I was tired of seeing my friends closing businesses,” the 30-year-old said. “When [President] Biden ran again I’m like, ‘I’m not going to vote for the same four years we just had’ … I was sad and I was heartbroken that our economy was failing and that’s the reason why I went that way.”

    The East L.A. native, the son of immigrants from Colombia and El Salvador, said he wasn’t concerned about Trump’s immigration policies because the president promised to deport the “worst of the worst.”

    He grew disgusted watching the raids that unfolded in Los Angeles earlier this year.

    “They’re taking fruit vendors, day laborers, that’s the worst of the worst to you?” he remembered thinking.

    Over a lunch of asada tortas and horchata in East L.A., Gavidia recounted being detained by Border Patrol agents in June while working at a Montebello tow yard. Agents shoved him against a metal gate, demanding to know what hospital he was born at after he said he was an American citizen, according to video of the incident.

    After reviewing his ID, the agents eventually let Gavidia go. The Department of Homeland Security later claimed that Gavidia was detained for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants. He is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and immigrant advocacy groups alleging racial profiling during immigration raids.

    “At that moment, I was the criminal, at that moment I was the worst of the worst, which is crazy because I went to go see who they were getting — the worst of the worst like they said they were going to get,” Gavidia said. “But turns out when I got there, I was the worst of the worst.”

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    Seema Mehta, Brittny Mejia

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  • Republicans, including ‘cowardly’ Schwarzenegger, take heat for lopsided loss on Prop. 50

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    Republican infighting crescendoed in the aftermath of California voters overwhelmingly approving a Democratic-friendly redistricting plan this week that may undercut the GOP’s control of Congress and derail President Trump’s polarizing agenda.

    The state GOP chairwoman was urged to resign and former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed the creation of the state’s independent redistricting commission, was called “cowardly” by one top GOP leader for not being more involved in the campaign.

    Leaders of the Republican-backed committees opposing the ballot measure, known as Proposition 50, were questioned about how they spent nearly $58 million in the special election after such a dismal outcome.

    Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the once-prodigious Republican fundraiser, reportedly had vowed that he could raise $100 million for the opposition but ended up delivering a small fraction of that amount.

    Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), a conservative firebrand, called on state GOP Chair Corrin Rankin to step down and faulted other Republican leaders and longtime party operatives for their failure to defeat the measure, calling them “derelict of duty and untrustworthy and incompetent.”

    “Unless serious changes are made at the party, the midterms are going to be a complete disaster,” DeMaio said, also faulting the other groups opposing the effort. “We need accountability. There needs to be a reckoning because otherwise the lessons won’t be learned. The old guard needs to go. The old guard has failed us too many times. This is the latest failure.”

    Rankin pushed back against the criticism, saying the state party was the most active GOP force in the final stretch of the election. Raising $11 million during the final three weeks of the campaign, the party spent it on mailers, digital ads and text messages, as well as organizing phone banks and precinct walking, she said.

    Former Speaker of the House and California Republican Kevin McCarthy speaks to the press at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 19, 2023.

    (Samuel Corum / AFP via Getty Images)

    “We left it all on the field,” Rankin said Wednesday morning at a Sacramento news conference about a federal lawsuit California Republicans filed arguing that Proposition 50 is unconstitutional. “We were the last man standing … to reach out to Republicans and make sure they turned out.”

    Responding to criticism that their effort was disorganized, including opposition campaign mailers being sent to voters who had already cast ballots, Rankin said the party would conduct a review of its efforts. But she added that she was extremely proud of the work her team did in the “rushed special election.”

    Barring successful legal challenges, the new California congressional districts enacted under Proposition 50 will go into effect before the 2026 election. The new district maps favor Democratic candidates and were crafted to unseat five Republican incumbents, which could erase Republicans’ narrow edge in the the U.S. House of Representatives.

    If Democrats win control of the body, Trump’s policy agenda will probably be stymied and the president and members of his administration could face multiple congressional investigations.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats proposed Proposition 50 in response to Trump urging elected officials in Texas and other GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to increase the number of Republicans elected to the House next year.

    The new California congressional boundaries voters approved Tuesday could give Democrats the opportunity to pick up five seats in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation.

    Proposition 50 will change how California determines the boundaries of congressional districts. The measure asked voters to approve congressional district lines designed to favor Democrats for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections, overriding the map drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission.

    Some Republicans lamented that Schwarzenegger was not more involved in the election. The movie star championed the creation of the independent commission in 2010, his final year in office. He campaigned for the creation of similar bodies to fight partisan drawing of district lines across the nation after leaving office.

    Shawn Steel, one of California’s three representatives on the Republican National Committee, called Schwarzenegger “a cowardly politician.”

    “Arnold decided to sit it out,” Steel said. “Arnold just kind of raised the flag and immediately went under the desk.”

    Steel said that the former governor failed to follow through on the messages he repeatedly delivered about the importance of independent redistricting.

    “He could have had his name on the ballot as a ballot opponent,” Steel said. “He turned it down. So I’d say, with Arnold, just disappointing but not surprised. That’s his political legacy.”

    Schwarzenegger’s team pushed back at this criticism as misinformed.

    “We were clear from the beginning that he was not going to be a part of the campaign and was going to speak his mind,” said Daniel Ketchell, a spokesman for the former governor. “His message was very clear and nonpartisan. When one campaign couldn’t even criticize gerrymandering in Texas, it was probably hard for voters to believe they actually cared about fairness.”

    Schwarzenegger spoke out against Proposition 50 a handful of times, including at an appearance at USC that was turned into a television ad by one of the anti-Proposition 50 committees that appeared to go dark before election day.

    On election day, he emailed followers about gut health, electrolytes, protein bars, fitness and conversations to increase happiness. There was no apparent mention of the Tuesday election.

    The Democratic-led California Legislature in August voted to place Proposition 50 on the November ballot, costing nearly $300 million, and setting off a sprint to Tuesday’s special election.

    The opponents were vastly outspent by the ballot measure’s supporters, who contributed nearly $136 million to various efforts. That financial advantage, combined with Democrats’ overwhelming edge in voter registration in California, were main contributors to the ballot measure’s success. When introduced in August, Proposition 50 had tepid support and its prospects appeared uncertain.

    Nearly 64% of the nearly 8.3 million voters who cast ballots supported Proposition 50, while 36% opposed it as of Wednesday night, according to the California secretary of state’s office.

    In addition to the state Republican Party, two main campaign committees opposed Proposition 50, including the one backed by McCarthy. A separate group was funded by more than $32 million from major GOP donor Charles Munger Jr., the son of a billionaire who was Warren Buffet’s right-hand man; he bankrolled the creation of the independent congressional redistricting commission in 2010.

    Representatives of the two committees — who defended their work Tuesday night after the election was called moments after the polls closed, saying that they could not overcome the vast financial disadvantage and that the proposition’s supporters must be held to their promises to voters such as pushing for national redistricting reform — did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Wednesday.

    Newsom’s committee supporting Proposition 50 had prominent Democrats stumping for the effort, including former President Obama starring in ads.

    That’s in stark contrast to the opposition efforts. Trump was largely absent, possibly because he is deeply unpopular among Californians and the president does not like to be associated with losing causes.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • California officials push back on Trump claim that Prop. 50 vote is a ‘GIANT SCAM’

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    As California voters went to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballot on a measure that could block President Trump’s national agenda, state officials ridiculed his unsubstantiated claims that voting in the largely Democratic state is “rigged.”

    “The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump said on Truth Social just minutes after polling stations opened Tuesday across California.

    The president provided no evidence for his allegations.

    “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review,” the GOP president wrote. “STAY TUNED!”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the president’s claims on X as “the ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE.”

    His press office chimed in, too, calling Trump “a totally unserious person spreading false information in a desperate attempt to cope with his failures.”

    National tension is high as voters across California cast ballots on Proposition 50, a Democratic plan championed by Newsom to redraw the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 election to favor the Democratic Party. The measure is intended to offset GOP gerrymandering in red states after Trump pressed Texas to rejigger maps to shore up the GOP’s narrow House majority.

    California’s top elections official, Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, called Trump’s allegation “another baseless claim.”

    “The bottom line is California elections have been validated by the courts,” Weber said in a statement. “California voters will not be deceived by someone who consistently makes desperate, unsubstantiated attempts to dissuade Americans from participating in our democracy.”

    Weber noted that more than 7 million Californians have already voted and encouraged those who had yet to cast ballots to go to the polls.

    “California voters will not be sidelined from exercising their constitutional right to vote and should not let anyone deter them from exercising that right,” Weber said.

    Of the 7 million Californians who have voted, more than 4.6 million have done so by mail, according to the secretary of state’s office. Los Angeles residents alone have cast more than 788,000 mail-in ballots.

    Trump has long criticized mail-in voting. As more Democrats opted to vote by mail in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the president repeatedly made unproven claims linking mail in voting with voter fraud. When Trump ultimately lost that election, he blamed expanded mail-in voting.

    Over the last month, the stakes in the California special election have ratcheted up as polls indicate Proposition 50 could pass. More than half of likely California voters said they planned to support the measure, which could allow Democrats to gain up to five House seats.

    Last month, the Justice Department appeared to single out California for particular national scrutiny: It announced it would send federal monitors to polling locations in counties in California as well as New Jersey, another traditionally Democratic state that is conducting nationally significant off-year elections.

    The monitors are set to go to five California counties: Los Angeles, Kern, Riverside, Fresno and Orange.

    This story will be updated.

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    Jenny Jarvie

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  • California voters pass anti-Trump, pro-Democrat ballot measure

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    California Democrats’ effort to block President Trump’s agenda by increasing their party’s numbers in Congress was overwhelmingly approved by voters on Tuesday.

    The Associated Press called the victory moments after the polls closed Tuesday night.

    The statewide ballot measure will reconfigure California’s congressional districts to favor more Democratic candidates. The Democratic-led California Legislature placed the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s behest, after Trump urged Texas and other GOP-led states to modify their congressional maps to favor their party members, a move designed to keep the U.S. House of Representatives in Republican control during his final two years in office.

    Newsom watched the election results from across the country come in from the historic Victorian-style governor’s mansion in Sacramento with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and his political team, his office said.

    Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, the chair of the Democratic Governors Assn., said they were thrilled by the passage of Proposition 50.

    “This is a clear victory for Americans who believe we should have fair elections and a major rejection of Donald Trump’s dangerous attempt to rig the midterms,” Kelly said in a statement.

    Charles Munger Jr., the chief donor to the anti-Proposition 50 efforts, pledged to continue his work promoting independent redistricting, while lamenting the ballot measure’s success.

    “For what looms for the people of California, I am saddened by the passage of Proposition 50,” he said. “But I am content in this, at least: that our campaign educated the people of California so they could make an informed, if in my view unwise, decision about such a technical but critical issue as redistricting reform, a decision forced to be made over such a very short time.”

    Proposition 50 was the sole item on the statewide, special election ballot Tuesday. Supporters hope the ballot measure has become a referendum about Trump, who remains extremely unpopular in California, while opponents call Proposition 50 an underhanded power grab by Democrats.

    Supporters of the proposal had the edge going into election day. They vastly outraised their rivals, and Proposition 50 led in recent polls.

    Elections took place across the nation Tuesday, with Democrats claiming major victories including in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests, the New York City mayoral race and Proposition 50.

    Supporters celebrate during the election night watch party for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.

    (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

    California voters had been inundated with television ads, mailers and social media posts for weeks about the high-stakes election, so much so that only 2% of the likely voters were undecided, according to a recent UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by The Times.

    “Usually there was always a rule — look at undecideds in late-breaking polls and assume most would vote no,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “But this poll shows there are very few of them out there.”

    Polls opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday and closed at 8 p.m., although any voter in line at that time was allowed to cast a ballot. The state allows same-day voter registration on election day, permitting Californians to cast a conditional ballot that will be counted if their eligibility is verified.

    Minutes after polls opened, Trump posted on Truth Social that “The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED.”

    The president, who has not actively campaigned against the proposition aside from a few social media posts, provided no evidence for his allegations. His Department of Justice has said it was sending monitors to polling locations across the state.

    Secretary of State Shirley Weber pushed back at Trump’s claims along with similar ones made by the president’s press secretary.

    Election workers organize sorted ballots

    Election workers organize sorted ballots by precinct for the California Statewide Special Election at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana Tuesday.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    “If there are irregularities, what are they? Why won’t they identify them? Where exactly is this fraud?” Weber said in a statement. “Ramblings don’t equate with fact.”

    Voters, some in shorts and flip-flops, waited in line for 30 minutes or more outside a voting center in Huntington Beach on Tuesday afternoon.

    “Vote no, don’t ruin Huntington Beach!” one man shouted as he left the center.

    If the ballot measure is approved, the conservative seaside city would fall into a new congressional district that includes Long Beach, but no longer keeps some Republican-rich communities to the south. The politically divided district is currently represented by Dave Min (D-Irvine), but is designed to become a safer seat for Democrats under the new districts created by Proposition 50.

    Huntington Beach resident Luke Walker, 18, spent time researching the arguments for and against Proposition 50 and came down against it because he believes the redesigned districts will ignore residents’ voices.

    “You look at the people who will be voting and I don’t think they’ll be properly represented in the new state lines,” said Walker, who predicted that if the ballot measure passes, it will lead to more division. “It’s going to cause more of a rift in society. People are going to start disliking each other even more.”

    Sister Theres Tran, Lovers of the Holy Cross-Los Angeles, votes in the California Statewide Special Election

    Sister Theres Tran, Lovers of the Holy Cross-Los Angeles, votes in the California Statewide Special Election at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    DeAyn Van Eyk, 63, also voted against the proposition on Tuesday, believing that Newsom, who is considering running for president in 2028, is using it to further his own political interests.

    “It sounds like it’s good for him,” she said. “I totally dislike Newsom. … I don’t like Trump as a person — I think he can be a good leader.”

    Among those who voted for the proposition was Huntington Beach resident Miko Vaughn, 48, who said she wanted Democrats to “level the playing field.”

    “It’s a temporary thing, but I think it’s important with the changes in Texas that it stays even,” Vaughn said.

    Though some see Proposition 50 as a proxy war between Trump and Newsom, Vaughn views it differently and said it’s just “against Trump.”

    “I feel like there’s not much we can do individually, so it does feel good to do something,” Vaughn said, adding that she was impressed to see so many people turn out during a non-presidential election.

    Californians have been voting for weeks. Registered voters received mail ballots about a month ago, and early voting centers recently opened across the state.

    More than 7.2 million Californians — 31% of the state’s 23 million registered voters — had cast ballots as of Tuesday morning before the polls opened, according to a voting tracker run by Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the proposed districts on the ballot. Democrats were outpacing Republicans, though GOP voters were believed to be more likely to vote in person Tuesday.

    The gap in early voting alarmed GOP leaders and strategists.

    Matthew Harper votes in the California Statewide Special Election

    Matthew Harper, former Huntington Beach Mayor and former State Assemblyman, votes in the California Statewide Special Election at the Huntington Beach Central Library in Huntington Beach Tuesday.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    “In California, we already know they surrendered,” Steve Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist for several months during his first term in office, said on his podcast over the weekend. “Huntington Beach, California … it is full MAGA, one of the most important parts of Southern California, yet we’re going to get blown out, I don’t know, by 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 points on the massive redistricting Prop. 50.”

    Congressional districts traditionally are drawn every decade after the U.S. census. In California, the boundaries are created by an independent commission created by voters in 2010.

    But after Trump urged Texas Republicans to alter their House boundaries to boost the number of GOP members in Congress, Newsom and other California Democrats countered by proposing new districts that could add five Democrats to the state’s 52-member delegation.

    The high-stakes election attracted tens of millions of dollars and a carousel of prominent politicians, notably former President Obama in support and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in opposition, who were featured in ads about the ballot measure, including some that aired during the World Series won by the Dodgers.

    Democrats who previously championed independent redistricting to remove partisan politics from the process argue that they needed to suspend that political ideal to stop the president from furthering his agenda during his last two years in the White House.

    Citing public opposition to immigration raids that began in Los Angeles in June, the military being deployed in American cities, and cuts to nutrition assistance programs for low-income families and healthcare programs for seniors and the disabled, Democrats argue that winning control of Congress in next year’s election is critical to stopping the president’s agenda.

    “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama says in an ad that includes footage of ICE raids. “With Prop. 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks. Prop. 50 puts our elections back on a level playing field, preserves independent redistricting over the long term, and lets the people decide. Return your ballot today.”

    A sign points to a polling station at Culver City City Hall on Tuesday.

    A sign points to a polling station at Culver City City Hall on Tuesday.

    (Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

    Republicans who oppose the effort countered that Proposition 50 is an affront to the electorate that voted to create an independent redistricting commission.

    They want to “take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Proposition 50,” Schwarzenegger says in an ad that was filmed when he spoke to USC students. “The Constitution does not start with ‘We, the politicians.’ It starts with ‘We, the people.’ … Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”

    More than $193 million was contributed in support of and opposition to Proposition 50, making it one of the costliest ballot measures in state history.

    Even with passage of the ballot measure, it’s uncertain whether potential Democratic gains in California’s congressional delegation will be enough to offset the number of Republicans elected because of gerrymandering in GOP-led states.

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    Seema Mehta, Dakota Smith

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  • Trump, contradicting the California GOP, opposes early and mail-in voting in Prop. 50 election

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    President Trump urged California voters on Sunday not to cast mail-in ballots or vote early in the California election about redistricting — the direct opposite of the message from state GOP leaders.

    Repeating his false claim that former President Biden beat him in 2020 because the election was rigged, Trump argued that the November special election about redistricting in California would be rigged, as would the 2026 midterm election to determine control of Congress.

    “No mail-in or ‘Early’ Voting, Yes to Voter ID! Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots being ‘shipped,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “GET SMART REPUBLICANS, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!”

    Proposition 50, a ballot measure proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional districts to boost their party’s ranks in the U.S. House of Representatives, is on the Nov. 4 ballot.

    The rare mid-decade redistricting effort was in response to Trump urging GOP-led states, initially Texas, to increase the number of Republicans in the House in the 2026 midterm election to allow him to continue implementing his agenda in his final two years in the White House.

    Newsom responded to Trump on X: “Ramblings of an old man that knows he’s going to LOSE.”

    Trump has not weighed in on the merits of Proposition 50, while prominent Democrats who support it have, including former President Obama.

    More than 4 million mail-in ballots — 18% of the ballots sent to California’s 23 million voters — had been returned as of Friday, according to a vote tracker run by Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the proposed maps on the ballot. Democrats continue to outpace Republicans in returning ballots, 51% to 28%. Voters registered without a party preference or with other political parties have returned 21% of the ballots.

    Early-voting centers also opened in 29 counties on Saturday.

    Turnout figures were alarming Republicans leaders before Trump’s message.

    “It’s simple. Republicans need to stop complaining and vote. We ask and ask and ask and yet turnout still lags,” the San Diego GOP posted on X. “To win this one GOP turnout needs to be materially better than average. It’s very doable but won’t just happen. Work it.”

    Republicans historically voted early while Democrats were more likely to cast ballots on election day. Trump upended this dynamic, creating dissonance with GOP leaders across the nation who recognized the value of banking early votes. And it completely contradicts the messaging by the opponents of Proposition 50.

    Jessica Millan Patterson, a former chair of the state GOP and leader of the “No on Prop. 50 — Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” committee, has been a longtime proponent of urging Republican voters to cast ballots as early and conveniently as possible.

    “Sacramento politicians rushed this costly election for partisan gain, and mistakes have been made,” she said Sunday evening. “If Californians want change from our state’s failed one-party rule, it starts by turning out to vote no on Proposition 50.”

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    Seema Mehta

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  • More than 1 million ballots turned in for California special election on Prop 50, data firm says

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    More than 1 million ballots turned in for California special election on Prop 50, data firm says

    NEXT MONTH’S SPECIAL ELECTION. IF APPROVED, PROP 50 WILL GIVE CALIFORNIA LAWMAKERS THE POWER TO REDRAW CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS, CREATING FIVE HOUSE SEATS FOR DEMOCRATS. KCRA 3’S CECIL HANNIBAL JOINS US LIVE IN DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO. SO, CECIL, WHAT ARE VOTERS SAYING ABOUT THE PROCESS SO FAR? WE SPOKE TO SEVERAL VOTERS TODAY WHO SAY THAT IT’S BEEN A SMOOTH AND EASY PROCESS SO FAR. ONE, BECAUSE THEY CAN SIMPLY WALK UP OR DRIVE UP TO A BALLOT BOX AND PUT THEIR VOTE RIGHT IN THERE. OR ALSO BECAUSE THEY SAY WHAT’S ON THE BALLOT IS SIMPLE. IT’S 70 WORDS. ONE QUESTION WITH TWO OPTIONS YES OR NO FOR PROP 50. NOW, ELECTION OFFICIALS TODAY SAY THEY WANT THIS TO BE A SIMPLE AND SMOOTH PROCESS FOR VOTERS. PROBABLY WONDERING WHY WE’RE HERE IN DOCO. WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THIS IS ONE LOCATION WHERE VOTERS IN SACRAMENTO COUNTY CAN COME DROP OFF THEIR BALLOT INSIDE OF THE KINGS TEAM STORE. ACTUALLY, AN EMPLOYEE JUST TOLD ME THEY’VE HAD THREE PEOPLE SHOW UP TODAY, TWO YESTERDAY. SO PEOPLE ARE GETTING OUT AND CASTING THEIR VOTES NOW. SACRAMENTO, EL DORADO AND SAN JOAQUIN COUNTIES ALL SAY THAT BALLOTS HAVE BEEN MAILED OUT, AND IF YOU HAVEN’T RECEIVED IT ALREADY, YOU SHOULD VERY SOON. WELL, YOU KNOW, VOTING LASTS UNTIL NOVEMBER 4TH. ANOTHER REMINDER FOR YOU WHEN YOU’RE DROPPING OFF YOUR BALLOT, MAKE SURE YOU SIGN THE PINK ENVELOPE. THAT’S VERY, VERY IMPORTANT. SO ELECTION OFFICIALS CAN VERIFY THAT IT IS YOU AND NOT VOTER FRAUD. YOU CAN ALSO MAIL IT IN FOR FREE THROUGH USPS. NOW WE TALKED ABOUT PROP 50, BUT IT’S NOW TIME FOR VOTERS TO DECIDE WITHOUT DISCUSSING PARTY AFFILIATION. WE TALKED TO VOTERS IN SACRAMENTO COUNTY TODAY ABOUT THE MEASURE. WELL, IT’S REALLY ONE SINGLE QUESTION. AND THAT QUESTION IS CLEAR TO ME. I THINK THAT IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME. I THINK IT’S REALLY UNFORTUNATE THAT WE HAVE TO DO THIS, BUT I FEEL LIKE WE’VE BEEN FORCED BY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. ONLY ONE VOTE. YOU KNOW, GOT TO DO WHAT I THINK IS RIGHT. YEAH. BACK OUT HERE LIVE AGAIN. THIS IS ONE LOCATION WHERE VOTERS CAN DROP OFF THEIR BALLOTS. IF YOU’RE HEADING TO A KINGS PRESEASON GAME THIS WEEK, RIGHT ON YOUR WAY TO THE ARENA OR SOMEWHERE TO WATCH THE GAME, YOU CAN JUST COME DROP OFF YOUR BALLOT. NOW WE’RE TALKING ABOUT DROP OFF YOUR BALLOT. IF YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS ABOUT SECURITY. TODAY, WE TALKED TO ELECTION OFFICIALS FROM SACRAMENTO, EL DORADO AND SAN JOAQUIN COUNTIES ABOUT JUST THAT SECURITY AND STAFFING FOR THIS SPECIAL ELECTION. WE’LL HAVE MORE ON THOSE DISCUSSIONS COMING UP TONIGHT AT SIX. LIVE IN DOCO. CECIL HANNIBAL KCRA THREE NEWS, OKC. SO THANK YOU. AND THE SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE OFFERS A WAY FOR VOTERS TO TRACK THEIR BALLOTS. IT’S CALLED WHERE’S MY BALLOT? VOTERS COULD SIGN UP WITH THEIR NAME, THEIR BIRTH DATE, AND ZIP CODE. ONCE LOGGED IN, YOU CAN TRACK WHERE THE BALLOT IS FROM WHEN IT’S MAILED TO YOU, SENT BACK TO COUNTY ELECTIONS OFFICE, AND RECEIVED AND THEN COUNTED. JUST A REMINDER, THE LAST DAY TO REGISTER IS OCTOBER 20TH AND TODAY IS THE SEVENTH. SO AS OF LAST MONTH, NEARLY HALF OF ALL VOTERS ARE REGISTERED. DEMOCRATS, 25% A

    More than 1 million ballots turned in for California special election on Prop 50, data firm says

    Updated: 4:30 PM PDT Oct 17, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    More than 1 million ballots have been returned so far in California’s special election to decide Proposition 50, according to a data firm used by political campaigns.Political Data Inc. said on X Wednesday that 4.49% of ballots sent out to California voters have already been returned. The firm cited a rate that was “close to recall election numbers,” in a reference to the 2021 vote over whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. According to the early mail-in vote, 5% of Democrats and 5% of Republicans have turned in their ballots. That equates to more than 530,000 votes from Democrats and more than 293,000 from Republicans. About 76% of ballots returned were from people ages 50 or older. White voters have been overrepresented with 72% of the vote so far. California voters on Nov. 4 will decide if the state should temporarily toss its current congressional district map drawn by the state’s independent commission and replace it with a new one that was quickly drawn by Democrats. It’s part of a larger national fight in which Republicans and Democrats are trying to gerrymander their congressional districts to determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives halfway through President Donald Trump’s term.The proposed maps target five California Republicans in an attempt to offset the five Republicans Texas is aiming to add.If approved, the maps would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. State leaders have said the power to draw maps would return to the independent redistricting commission in 2031.One of the people who works at Political Data Inc., Paul Mitchell, is the owner of a consulting firm that helped to create the congressional redistricting maps for Democrats. He said he is not campaigning for the measure. The last day to register to vote is Oct. 20, though people can also vote on Nov. 3 with Conditional Voter Registration. | RELATED | Everything you need to know about California’s Proposition 50See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channelPHNjcmlwdCB0eXBlPSJ0ZXh0L2phdmFzY3JpcHQiPiFmdW5jdGlvbigpeyJ1c2Ugc3RyaWN0Ijt3aW5kb3cuYWRkRXZlbnRMaXN0ZW5lcigibWVzc2FnZSIsKGZ1bmN0aW9uKGUpe2lmKHZvaWQgMCE9PWUuZGF0YVsiZGF0YXdyYXBwZXItaGVpZ2h0Il0pe3ZhciB0PWRvY3VtZW50LnF1ZXJ5U2VsZWN0b3JBbGwoImlmcmFtZSIpO2Zvcih2YXIgYSBpbiBlLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdKWZvcih2YXIgcj0wO3I8dC5sZW5ndGg7cisrKXtpZih0W3JdLmNvbnRlbnRXaW5kb3c9PT1lLnNvdXJjZSl0W3JdLnN0eWxlLmhlaWdodD1lLmRhdGFbImRhdGF3cmFwcGVyLWhlaWdodCJdW2FdKyJweCJ9fX0pKX0oKTs8L3NjcmlwdD4=

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    More than 1 million ballots have been returned so far in California’s special election to decide Proposition 50, according to a data firm used by political campaigns.

    Political Data Inc. said on X Wednesday that 4.49% of ballots sent out to California voters have already been returned.

    The firm cited a rate that was “close to recall election numbers,” in a reference to the 2021 vote over whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    This content is imported from Twitter.
    You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

    According to the early mail-in vote, 5% of Democrats and 5% of Republicans have turned in their ballots. That equates to more than 530,000 votes from Democrats and more than 293,000 from Republicans.

    About 76% of ballots returned were from people ages 50 or older. White voters have been overrepresented with 72% of the vote so far.

    California voters on Nov. 4 will decide if the state should temporarily toss its current congressional district map drawn by the state’s independent commission and replace it with a new one that was quickly drawn by Democrats. It’s part of a larger national fight in which Republicans and Democrats are trying to gerrymander their congressional districts to determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives halfway through President Donald Trump’s term.

    The proposed maps target five California Republicans in an attempt to offset the five Republicans Texas is aiming to add.

    If approved, the maps would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. State leaders have said the power to draw maps would return to the independent redistricting commission in 2031.

    One of the people who works at Political Data Inc., Paul Mitchell, is the owner of a consulting firm that helped to create the congressional redistricting maps for Democrats. He said he is not campaigning for the measure.

    The last day to register to vote is Oct. 20, though people can also vote on Nov. 3 with Conditional Voter Registration.

    | RELATED | Everything you need to know about California’s Proposition 50

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • California voters undecided in 2026 governor’s race, but prefer Newsom over Harris for president in 2028

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    Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to forgo a run for California governor has created a wide-open race in next year’s election to run the nation’s most populous state, according to a poll released Tuesday by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times.

    Nearly 4 in 10 registered voters surveyed said they are uncertain about whom they will support in the 2026 contest to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    “It’s very unsettled. Most of the voters, the plurality in this poll, are undecided,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll, which was conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. “They don’t really know much about the candidates.”

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    Among those who had a preference, former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine had a small edge as the top choice, with the backing of 17%. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, was the only other candidate who received double-digit support, winning the backing of 10% of respondents.

    DiCamillo said Porter’s unsuccessful 2024 U.S. Senate campaign boosted her recognition among California voters, but cautioned that she had a small, early lead more than nine months before the June 2 primary. Bianco’s support was driven by voters focused on crime and public safety, taxes and the budget deficit, perennial concerns among GOP voters, according to the survey.

    Other top candidates for governor — former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state legislative leader Toni Atkins, current California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former state Controller Betty Yee, wealthy businessman Stephen Cloobeck and conservative commentator Steve Hilton — received single-digit support as voters’ first choice in the poll. A few potential candidates also had single-digit support, including billionaire Los Angeles businessman Rick Caruso, former Trump administration official Ric Grenell and former GOP state Sen. Brian Dahle.

    The survey is among the first independent public polls since Harris announced in late July that she would not run for governor in 2026, dramatically reshuffling the calculus in a crowded race that the former vice president was widely expected to dominate if she mounted a campaign. The poll also took place after Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis dropped out of the contest this month to run for state treasurer instead.

    “It’s pretty wide-open,” DiCamillo said. “And when you look at the second-choice preference, first and second together, it’s bunched together.”

    When voters were asked to rank their top two choices, Porter received 22% as the first or second choice, Becerra got 18%, Bianco notched 15% and Hilton won 12%, according to the poll.

    None of the politicians running are well known by Californians compared with the state’s last three governors: Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco and lieutenant governor, who during his two terms as governor has positioned himself as a foil to President Trump ; former two-term Gov. Jerry Brown, who along with his father left an indelible imprimatur on California’s history; and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a global celebrity who returned to the Hollywood limelight after he left office, along with launching efforts to fight climate change and support independent redistricting nationwide.

    A pressing question is whether anyone else enters the race, notably Caruso, who has the ability to self-fund a campaign. The deadline to file to run for the seat is March 6.

    Whoever is elected as California’s next governor will face the difficult task of contending with a hostile Trump administration and an electorate looking to the state’s next leader to address its most pressing concerns.

    Economic issues are top of mind among all registered voters, with 36% saying the cost of living is their greatest concern and 25% focusing on the affordability of housing, according to the poll. But there were sharp partisan disparities about other issues. Democrats were more concerned about the state of democracy, climate change and healthcare, while Republicans prioritized crime, taxes and immigration.

    Two of California’s most prominent Democrats, Newsom and Harris, are longtime friends grounded in their Bay Area roots and both viewed as potential 2028 presidential candidates.

    As a potential White House hopeful, Newsom has an edge over Harris among Californians overall as well as the state’s Democrats, according to the poll.

    Roughly 45% of the state’s registered voters said they were very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running, compared with 36% who expressed a similar sentiment about Harris. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of registered voters and 51% of Democrats said Harris should not run for president again after two unsuccessful White House bids — in the primary in 2020 and in the general election in 2024.

    “She lost, which is always a negative when you’re trying to run again,” DiCamillo said. “It’s interesting that even after Harris bowed out of the governor’s race, most Californians don’t really think she should run for president.”

    While he described Newsom’s support as a “mixed bag” among the state’s registered voters, DiCamillo pointed to his strength among Democrats. Nearly 7 of 10 registered Democratic voters in the state said they are very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running for president, compared with 54% who expressed similar feelings about Harris.

    The poll took place during a tumultuous period as Trump’s far-right policies begin to hit their stride.

    Drastic cuts to healthcare, nutrition, reproductive rights and other federal safety-net programs are expected to disproportionately affect Californians. The Trump administration‘s aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles and across the state and country have caused the nation’s partisan divide to widen, driven by the president’s decision to deploy the military and target all undocumented immigrants, including law-abiding workers. Higher-education institutions across the nation have been targeted by the Trump administration, including UCLA, which is being threatened with a $1-billion fine.

    Californians were surveyed shortly before Democratic state lawmakers, trying to fight the Trump administration’s agenda, voted Thursday to call a special election in November to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The action was taken to counter gerrymandering efforts in Texas and other GOP-led states as both parties fight for control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

    The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 4,950 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11 to 17. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Newsom calls for special November election to block Trump from ‘rigging’ 2026 midterms

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democratic lawmakers and their allies on Thursday launched a special election campaign urging California voters to approve new congressional districts to shrink the state’s Republican delegation, a move that could determine control of Congress next year and stymie President Trump’s agenda.

    The special election effort is a response to Republican-led states, notably Texas, pushing at Trump’s behest to redraw their congressional maps to favor Republicans and reduce the number of Democrats in the narrowly divided U.S. House of Representatives.

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    Speaking to a fired-up partisan crowd at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, Newsom described the effort by Republicans as a desperate effort by a failed president to hold on to power by keeping Congress under his control.

    “He doesn’t play by a different set of rules — he doesn’t believe in the rules,” Newsom said. “And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire.”

    The governor was joined by California’s U.S. senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff; Southern California’s Democrats in Congress, and union leaders who would provide the funding and volunteers for the campaign.

    The ballot measure, the “Election Rigging Response Act,” would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission.

    “We are ready to do whatever it takes to stop this power grab and fight back against any and all attacks on our democracy, on our students and on public education,” said Erika Jones, secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Assn., which represents 310,000 public school teachers.

    The gerrymandering plan in California could increase the Democratic Party’s dominance in the state by making five House districts more favorable to Democrats, according to a draft map reviewed by The Times. Those changes could reduce by more than half the number of Republicans representing California in Congress.

    Outside the rally, which took place on a historic site where Japanese American families boarded buses to incarceration camps during World War II, Border Patrol agents gathered and arrested at least one person. Newsom told the crowd inside that he doubted it was a coincidence.

    Republicans criticized Newsom’s effort as antidemocratic and a thinly veiled attempt to boost a future presidential campaign.

    The ballot measure, said Christian Martinez, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, is about “consolidating radical Democrat power, silencing California voters and propping up his pathetic 2028 presidential pipe dream.”

    For Newsom’s plan to work, the Democratic-led state Legislature must vote to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot. The final decision would be up to California voters.

    California should not “stoop to the same tactics as Texas,” said Amy Thoma, spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, which includes Charles Munger Jr., the son of a billionaire who bankrolled the ballot measure that created the independent commission.

    “Two wrongs do not make a right, and California shouldn’t stoop to the same tactics as Texas. Instead, We should push other states to adopt our independent, nonpartisan commission model across the country,” Thoma said. She said Munger will vigorously oppose any proposal to circumvent the independent commission.

    Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who championed independent redistricting in California and around the country, “believes that the politicians in Texas are ripping off the people with their gerrymander and that California’s best way to respond is by standing with the people, not by stooping to their level and rigging our system against the voters,” said his spokesperson, Daniel Ketchell.

    Since voters approved independent congressional redistricting in 2010, California’s districts have been drawn once per decade, after the U.S. census, by a panel split between registered Democrats, registered Republicans and voters without a party preference.

    The commission is not allowed to consider the partisan makeup of the districts, nor protecting incumbents, but instead looks at “communities of interest,” logical geographical boundaries and the Voting Rights Act.

    The current map was drawn in 2021 and went into effect for the 2022 election.

    Newsom is pushing to suspend those district lines and put a new map tailored to favor Democrats in front of voters on Nov. 4. That plan, he has said, would have a “trigger,” meaning a redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas or another GOP-led state moved forward with its own.

    Sara Sadhwani, who served on the redistricting commission that approved the current congressional boundaries, said that while she is deeply proud of the work she and her colleagues completed, she approved of Newsom’s effort because of unprecedented threats to democracy.

    “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” Sadhwani said, citing the immigration raids, the encouragement of political violence and the use of National Guard troops in American cities. “And if that wasn’t enough, we are watching executive overreach that no doubt is making our Founding Fathers turn in their graves. … These are the hallmarks of a democracy in peril.”

    If voters approved the ballot measure, the new maps would be in effect for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections, until the independent commission redraws the congressional boundaries in 2031.

    To meet Newsom’s ambitious deadline, the Legislature would need to pass the ballot language by a two-thirds majority and send it to Newsom’s desk by Aug. 22. The governor’s office and legislative leaders are confident in their ability to meet this threshold in the state Assembly and Senate, where Democrats have a supermajority.

    Newsom first mentioned the idea in mid-July, meaning the whole process could be done in about five weeks. Generally, redrawing the state’s electoral lines and certifying a measure to appear before voters on the ballot are processes that take months, if not more than a year.

    In California, the gerrymandering plan taking shape behind closed doors would increase the Democratic Party’s dominance in the state by making five House districts more favorable to Democrats, according to a draft map reviewed by The Times.

    Those changes could reduce by more than half the number of Republicans representing California in Congress. California has the nation’s largest congressional delegation, with 52 members. Nine are Republicans.

    In the plans under discussion, a Northern California district represented by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) could shift to the south, shedding rural, conservative voters near the Oregon border and picking up left-leaning cities in Sonoma County. Sacramento-area Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) would see his district shift toward the bluer center of the city.

    The plan would also add more Democrats to the Central Valley district represented by Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), who has been a perennial target for Democrats.

    Southern California would see some of the biggest changes: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) would see his safely Republican district in San Diego County become more purple through the addition of liberal Palm Springs. And Reps. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) and Ken Calvert (R-Corona) would be drawn into the same district, which could force the lawmakers to run against each other.

    The plan would also shore up Democrats who represent swing districts, such as Reps. Dave Min (D-Irvine) and Derek Tran (D-Orange).

    It could also add another district in southeast Los Angeles County, in the area that elected the first Latino member of Congress from California in modern history. A similar seat was eliminated during the 2021 redistricting.

    Trump’s prodding of Texas Republicans to redraw their maps has kicked off redistricting battles across the nation. That includes Florida, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri, where Republicans control the statehouse, and New York, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington, where Democrats are in power.

    Democratic lawmakers in Texas fled the state to block the Republican-led Legislature from approving a new map, preventing it from reaching the quorum necessary to approve the measure.

    A second special session is expected to begin Friday. The absent lawmakers are facing threats of fines, civil arrest warrants and calls for being removed from office.

    Times staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.

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    Seema Mehta, Laura J. Nelson

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  • Newsom welcomes Texas Democrats who fled to foil Trump’s redistricting plan

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    SACRAMENTO — California became center stage for the national political fight over House seats Friday when Gov. Gavin Newsom welcomed Democratic lawmakers from Texas who fled their home state to foil President Trump’s plans to redraw congressional districts.

    California lawmakers plan to respond with their own plan to gerrymander districts to favor Democrats and neutralize any Republican seats gained in Texas in 2026, with a proposed map expected to become public next week, Newsom said at a news conference after meeting with the lawmakers.

    “Make no mistake, California is moving forward,” the governor said. “We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what’s happening in Texas, and we will nullify what happens in Texas.”

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    He noted that while Democrats still support the state’s independent redistricting commission, they must counter Trump’s plan in GOP-led states to give their party a better chance in next year’s midterm election.

    “They drew first blood,” he later added of Republicans.

    Asked about the gathering, a Trump administration spokesperson said Newsom was seeking the limelight to further his political ambitions.

    “Gavin Newsom is a loser of the highest order and he will never be president, no matter how hard he prostitutes himself to the press,” said the spokesperson, Steven Cheung.

    Friday marked the second time in two weeks that Texas Democrats have stood next to Newsom at the California governor’s mansion and warned that Republican efforts to draw a new map in their state would dilute the power of Black and brown voters.

    The Texas Democrats hoped that their departure would leave the state Legislature with too few members present to change the map in a special session. They face $500 fines for each day of absence, as well as threats of arrest and removal from office by Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas GOP officials. Some of the Democratic lawmakers were evacuated from a Chicago hotel where they were staying after a bomb threat Wednesday.

    “We are now facing threats — the threat that we’re going to lose our jobs, the threat of financial ruin, the threat that we will be hunted down as our colleagues sit on their hands and remain silent, as we all get personal threats to our lives,” said Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson, one of six Texas Democrats at the news conference, who was among those evacuated from the Chicago hotel. “We as Democrats are standing up to ensure that the voices of every voter is lifted up in this next election, and that the next election is not stolen from them.”

    Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco); Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José), chair of the California Democratic congressional delegation; California Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg); state Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and other elected officials joined the meeting in a show of unity as California Democrats attempt to convince their own state’s voters to fight back.

    Pelosi noted that the state’s congressional delegation is united in backing the redistricting proposal to counter Trump.

    “The president has paved over the Rose Garden. He’s paved over freedom of speech. He’s paved over freedom of education, [an] independent judiciary, the rule of law,” Pelosi said. “He’s gone too far. We will not let him pave over free and fair elections in our country, starting with what he’s trying to do in Texas.”

    She countered an argument some have made — that two wrongs don’t make a right.

    “This is self-defense for our democracy,” she said.

    The California plan calls for the state Legislature to approve a constitutional amendment establishing new congressional voting districts crafted to make GOP members vulnerable.

    Passage of the bill would result in a special election on Nov. 4, with California voters deciding whether the state should temporarily pause the congressional boundaries created by an independent redistricting commission in 2021 and adopt new maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.

    If approved by voters, the measure would include a “trigger” specifying that it would take effect only if Texas or other Republican-led states follow through with redrawing their maps to boost GOP seats before the midterm election. California would revert to its existing redistricting law after the next census and before the 2032 election.

    At least so far, California voters appear uncertain about whether they want to swap Newsom’s plan for the independent redistricting system they previously adopted at the ballot box.

    An Emerson College poll found support for redrawing California’s congressional map at 33% and opposition at 25%. The survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted Aug. 4 and 5, found that 42% were undecided.

    Newsom has expressed confidence that California voters will back his plan, which he is casting as a rebuttal to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the midterm elections.

    “I’m confident we’ll get it when people know what it is and what it’s not, and I think, at the end of the day, they understand what’s at stake,” Newsom said Thursday.

    Newsom argues that California’s process is more transparent than Trump’s because voters here will see the map and decide whether the state should go forward with it.

    To fulfill Trump’s request for five additional seats, Abbott is attempting to redraw House districts in Texas through a state legislative process that does not require voter approval. It’s unclear what will happen in Austin, with Democrats determined to block the effort and the governor and other Texas Republicans insisting they will keep pressing it.

    The current special session ends Aug. 19. But in an interview with NBC News on Thursday evening, Abbott vowed “to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”

    In addition to arrest on civil warrants, the Democrats are facing threats of being removed from office. Direct-deposit payments to the legislators have been curtailed, forcing them to pick up their checks in person at the state capitol in Austin or go without the money.

    The redistricting fight has strengthened Newsom’s national platform as a potential 2028 presidential contender and bolstered his reputation as a Democrat willing to take the fight to Trump and his allies.

    Since Trump took office in January, Newsom had been walking a fine line between calling out the president and working with him in hopes of being able to join together to rebuild from the California wildfires.

    But Newsom took a hard line after Trump deployed the National Guard during federal immigration raids in Los Angeles in June, prompting the governor and his administration to much more aggressively resist the president’s agenda.

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    Seema Mehta, Taryn Luna

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  • Poll: California could be Trump's ace in nomination fight; he's way ahead

    Poll: California could be Trump's ace in nomination fight; he's way ahead

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    No matter the results of the Iowa caucus on Monday night, new polling suggests that Republicans vying for the presidential nomination face the equivalent of a brick wall on Super Tuesday, in the form of former President Trump.

    In California, one of 15 states holding Republican primaries on March 5, two-thirds of voters considered likely to take part in the Republican primary said they would cast their ballot for Trump, according to the latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. That’s up from an already dominant 57% in October.

    The poll, taken Jan. 4-8, suggests that California conservatives could provide a significant boost to Trump’s efforts to clinch his party’s nomination early in the primary season, despite his relatively light presence in early primary states.

    This year’s primary is the first under new “winner-take-all” rules set last summer by the California Republican Party, which allocate all 169 delegates — the most of any state — to a candidate who wins more than 50% of the vote.

    California’s delegation accounts for nearly 14% of the delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination.

    “It’s now a different ballgame, and it certainly benefits Trump if he can follow through on these numbers,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS poll. “If Trump carries California, he’s a long way toward securing the nomination.”

    Previously, Republican presidential candidates received three delegates for each congressional district they won in California, meaning several candidates could make gains in the Golden State.

    Trump holds similarly large leads in several other Super Tuesday states, according to recent polls. All told, just over one-third of the delegates to the GOP convention will be settled that day. Trump’s strategists hope to win enough of them to put the nomination out of contention at that point, which would be before any of the four criminal trials he faces are scheduled to begin.

    Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is now Trump’s closest competitor in California, but she is running a distant second place, with support from 11% of likely voters, the new poll found.

    Haley backers hope that a strong showing in Iowa coupled with a possible win in New Hampshire later this month could give her enough momentum to truly challenge Trump for the nomination.

    The poll suggests why that will be so difficult. She performs best among the relatively small segments of California Republicans who described themselves as politically moderate or liberal and those with a postgraduate education. Among self-described “strongly conservative” voters, who play an outsize role in Republican primaries, 5% back her.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who in February of last year was leading Trump in California, is “falling like a stone,” DiCamillo said. DeSantis is now the choice of 8% of the state’s likely Republican voters.

    The general election is a different story. The outcome of the race has been clouded by Trump’s legal battles, President Biden’s sinking popularity among younger voters and Latinos, and the presence of third-party and independent candidates, including progressive activist Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    The poll suggests that support for Biden in California continues to be tepid, despite the state’s deep-blue politics.

    Half of California voters have a favorable view of Biden, while 48% say their view is unfavorable. His job approval among all registered voters — 44% approve and 52% disapprove — hasn’t moved significantly from October, when, for the first time, a majority of Californians disapproved of Biden’s job performance.

    “He’s underwater, which is not a great place to be in a blue state,” DiCamillo said.

    Biden’s support has eroded more among some voter groups, including Latinos.

    Democrats have a 2-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans among Latinos in California, DiCamillo said. But the poll found that just 38% of likely Latino voters in California have a favorable view of Biden. That number falls to 34% among Latinos for whom Spanish is their dominant language, a group that in past elections has tended to be more Democratic than other Latinos.

    Biden is also struggling to retain the support of young voters. Just 4 in 10 likely voters younger than 30 have a positive view of Biden, compared with 6 in 10 likely voters older than 75.

    “Those are big changes, and they’re typically a very key Democratic constituency,” DiCamillo said.

    Asked about a hypothetical five-candidate field that includes West, Kennedy and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the poll found that Biden would hold a 16-point lead over Trump in California, 47%-31%, significantly less than his 30-point victory margin in 2020. The poll found 6% support for Kennedy, 2% for West, and 1% for Stein, while 12% of likely voters remained undecided.

    In a head-to-head contest with no third-party candidates, Biden’s lead over Trump would increase to 19 points, 56%-37%, with 7% undecided, the poll found. If Vice President Kamala Harris were the Democratic nominee, she would beat Trump in the state by an almost identical margin, 55%-37%.

    Biden would also beat Haley in California, 51%-34%, but with 16% of voters undecided, the poll found.

    Younger voters’ and Latinos’ souring on Biden is not unique to California. In some swing states, where the contest is much closer, polls have found Biden trailing Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups.

    But the mixed reception for Biden’s job performance is better than how voters in California see Trump: 34% positively, 63% negatively, including 58% whose view of the former president is “strongly unfavorable.”

    Kennedy, who is running as an independent, has clocked double-digit support in some polls of swing states. That isn’t the case in California, where he is polling at 6% among likely voters.

    Kennedy worked as an environmental lawyer in New York for years, but now lives part-time in Los Angeles with his wife, actor Cheryl Hines. He has played up his California ties since he launched his campaign, recording videos at the Venice Boardwalk and in the Santa Monica Mountains and hosting fundraisers with Westside yoga teachers.

    That appeal hasn’t seemed to have worked in California, where his approval rating is 31%, the poll found.

    Nearly two-thirds of California Democrats report disliking Kennedy, who spent decades as a Democrat and ran as a Democrat in the presidential primary until he launched his independent bid in October.

    “Republicans are much more positive in their views of Kennedy” than Democrats or voters with no party preference, DiCamillo said. “It’s really interesting.”

    The poll found that 50% of California Republicans have a strongly favorable or somewhat favorable view of Kennedy, who founded the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense.

    Among conservative voters, Kennedy is the second most popular political figure, following Trump, suggesting that he could be an option for disaffected Republicans.

    West, who launched an independent bid for the presidency in October, is far less known among California voters than Kennedy. The poll found 15% of likely California voters with a favorable opinion of the progressive activist, while 27% say they see him unfavorably, and 58% don’t have an opinion.

    The Berkeley IGS poll was conducted Jan. 4-8 online among a random sample of 8,199 registered voters, including a weighted sub-sample of 4,470 likely primary voters and 1,351 likely Republican primary voters.

    The results were weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks, so estimates of the margin of error may be imprecise; however, the results have an estimated margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction for the full likely voter sample and 3.5 percentage points for the Republican primary sample.

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    Laura J. Nelson

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  • New poll finds that California voters disapprove of Newsom’s performance as governor

    New poll finds that California voters disapprove of Newsom’s performance as governor

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    SACRAMENTO — 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s standing among California voters has hit an all-time low, with 49% disapproving of his performance as governor, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

    The survey showed Newsom’s popularity has tumbled this year as he continues to amplify his national profile and campaign outside of the Golden State to support President Biden and attack Republican governors and their conservative political agendas.

    Newsom’s approval rating was 44% in the late October poll, an 11-point slide from February when 55% of voters approved of his performance. His disapproval among California voters increased 10 percentage points from earlier this year.

    “He’s kind of taking on a new persona,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley poll and a longtime California pollster. “He’s no longer just the governor of California. He’s a spokesperson for the national party and basically voters are being asked to react to that.”

    Despite the negative perception of his leadership, the Berkeley poll offered a key upside for the Democratic governor: Voters overwhelmingly support Proposition 1, his $6.4-billion mental health bond on the March 2024 ballot.

    Only 15% of voters said they had heard about the proposal, which is estimated to generate enough funding for 10,000 new treatment beds across the state. After reading a description of the measure, 60% of likely voters backed the idea, 17% were opposed and 23% remained undecided. The survey questions did not mention that Newsom backs Proposition 1.

    DiCamillo noted that the initial support for the ballot measure was broad-based, though Republicans and conservatives were more divided.

    Newsom’s decline in popularity spans nearly every major voter category and includes significant drops among his Democratic base and voters who aren’t affiliated with either party, DiCamillo noted.

    Though Newsom still enjoys 66% approval from voters in his own party, his support from Democrats fell 16 points from February. Now a quarter of Democrats disapprove of his performance compared with 12% earlier this year. The poll found similar dips among moderate and liberal voters.

    The governor’s support from voters without a party preference declined from 49% to 37% approval over the same period.

    Nathan Click, a spokesperson for the governor, pointed to a separate poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California in late August and early September that found Newsom’s support to be much higher at 56% among likely voters overall. That PPIC poll was based on the opinions of likely voters. The Berkeley poll’s findings were among registered voters, a broader pool of Californians. Newsom’s approval among likely voters surveyed in the Berkeley poll was 48%, slightly higher than among registered voters.

    Though Newsom insists he is not interested in running for president, the governor has been raising money for Biden and Democratic candidates in other states and elevating his role in the culture wars with conservatives. Newsom also inserted himself into the presidential contest by setting up a debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican contender for president, in Georgia at the end of the month.

    DiCamillo said it’s not uncommon for governors to experience a decline in popularity if they campaign outside of the state.

    Former Gov. Jerry Brown received low marks as governor in April of 1980, the same month he ended his second presidential campaign. At the time, 38% of Californians approved of his performance and 61% disapproved.

    Voters offered mixed reviews of Newsom taking on an increasingly prominent role in national Democratic politics, with 45% approving and 43% disapproving. Half of the respondents approved of his recent trip to China to while 39% disapproved.

    When asked about his appointment of U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler to fill the late Dianne Feinstein’s seat in Congress, 37% approved, 30% disapproved, while 1 in 3 voters offered no opinion.

    “Fox News is going to feast on these numbers,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant, about Newsom’s ratings.

    Stutzman chalked up some of Newsom’s fall to coming down from a natural “sugar high” of largely positive public perception since his reelection last year.

    Newsom’s popularity as governor peaked in September 2020, shortly after his initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, putting him in such good graces with California voters that his approval rating was among the highest of any governor in the last 50 years at the same point in their first term.

    Voters’ opinion of Newsom plummeted months later, however, after a massive outbreak of a new variant and growing voter dissatisfaction with state restrictions. Newsom also had come under intense criticism in November 2020 for violating the spirit of his own public health guidelines by dining out with a group of friends at the posh French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley.

    Both Stutzman and DiCamillo said economic concerns in California and across the nation could account for some of the recent drop. Californians are also frustrated with the state of California, particularly about the issues of crime and homelessness, Stutzman said.

    The recent PPIC poll found that 55% of California adults think the state is going in the wrong direction. Jobs, the economy and inflation, and homelessness were cited as the top concerns among residents.

    “I think the real wake-up call is how dramatically Democrat voters seem to be shifting underneath him,” Stutzman said. “I’m not surprised his numbers are down. I’m surprised his numbers are down that far. He’s clearly upside down.”

    The new polling comes after the governor split with the progressive wing of his party on his solutions to California’s homelessness and mental health crisis. He roiled the far left when a provision was added to Proposition 1 that allows the funding to support mental health beds in locked facilities, which has become controversial in health care. His CARE Court plan approved in 2022 could force Californians struggling with mental illness and drug addiction into treatment as an alternative to jail, which similarly ran afoul of civil liberties organizations.

    He also ran afoul of environmentalists and some Democrats in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region earlier this year over his failed plan to streamline the construction of a controversial $16-billion tunnel to transport water south.

    Newsom terms out of office in 2026 and doesn’t have a reelection to worry about in California.

    But he has about a year left until he enters the lame-duck phase of his governorship, when a politician’s power decreases as his term nears an end. As his governorship begins to wind down, losing the backing of the public will affect his ability to get things done with the Legislature.

    “It affects his political capital, he’s not interested in expediting his lame duck status and he probably has a very difficult budget year ahead of him, which is not going to buoy his approval ratings,” Stutzman said.

    After closing a nearly $32-billion deficit in the state spending plan approved in June, the Newsom administration anticipates that California will still face an additional shortfall of at least $14.3 billion next year.

    The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 6,342 California registered voters, including a weighted sub-sample of 4,506 considered likely to take part in the March primary. The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish, Oct. 24-30. The results were weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks, so estimates of the margin of error may be imprecise; however, the results for the full sample have an estimated margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction. The estimated margin of error for the likely voter sub-sample is 2.5 points.

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    Taryn Luna

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  • Column: Laphonza Butler aces her first political test, passing on uphill Senate run

    Column: Laphonza Butler aces her first political test, passing on uphill Senate run

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    Laphonza Butler has been living a whirlwind these past few weeks.

    Overnight she went from being a campaign strategist and behind-the-scenes operative — unknown to most, save political insiders — to a U.S. senator representing nearly 40 million residents of the most important state in the union.

    Even Butler was surprised Gov. Gavin Newsom tapped her to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. It was like plucking a set designer from the wings and placing her, with barely any notice, directly at center stage.

    Since then — as Butler learned which Capitol Hill stairways lead where, flew cross-country to meet with assorted constituencies and developed a case of COVID-19 — one overriding question trailed her: Would she run for a full term in 2024?

    On Thursday, she gave her answer: No.

    It was the right decision, and a politically astute one.

    By foregoing a campaign that would have been difficult to win, Butler leaves herself well-positioned for a future run if she chooses to seek office. It also allows the state’s very fresh freshman senator to devote herself full-time to her congressional duties.

    Which is exactly what Butler should do.

    The decision, announced abruptly, was hastened by a number of impending deadlines, among them cutoffs to vie for the state Democratic Party’s endorsement and to be included as a candidate in the information guide mailed to every California voter.

    But the most important date facing Butler was March 5, when the state holds its top-two “jungle” primary. (The two candidates receiving the most votes will advance to a November runoff, regardless of party.)

    That contest is a little over four months from now, an incredibly short time to ramp up a statewide campaign, raise the many millions of dollars needed to advertise and develop even a cursory relationship with voters sprawling over California’s vast expanse.

    Feinstein, for years the state’s best known politician, took a long time to develop her near-universal Eureka-to-Yucaipa name recognition. And that was after she had already waged two statewide campaigns.

    Butler faced other challenges.

    She lived in Maryland and worked in Washington, D.C., leading the women’s campaign organization Emily’s List before her Senate appointment. Her lack of longstanding California residency would have surely become an issue.

    A former labor leader, Butler also faced agita from the political left for the handsome sum she made working for Uber as the ride-hailing service worked to undermine its drivers’ push for better pay and working conditions. That, too, would have been an issue.

    Neither, however, posed insurmountable hurdles.

    The greater impediments for Butler were time and money, two vital ingredients to political success.

    She would have started flat-footed against a formidable field of contenders, including Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee who, collectively, have already amassed tens of millions of dollars.

    Butler, for her part, has not demonstrated particular fundraising prowess. Some familiar with her work at Emily’s List were underwhelmed with its financial ledger under her watch.

    Also, political handicappers tended to overstate the advantage of Butler’s labor connections. Although she enjoys a number of personal connections, several unions had already committed to others in the race, or assumed a wait-and-see approach. It’s not hard to imagine much of organized labor staying neutral, or endorsing multiple candidates, had Butler belatedly entered the Senate contest.

    In bowing out, Butler issued the kind of statement — brave, a little cocky — one often hears under such circumstances.

    “Knowing you can win a campaign doesn’t always mean you should run a campaign,” she said.

    The rest of her written remarks seemed more cognizant and truer to the heart.

    “I know this will be a surprise to many because traditionally we don’t see those who have power let it go,” Butler stated. “It may not be the decision people expected but it’s the right one for me.”

    At 44, Butler could have a good, long political career if she wishes to stay in elected office.

    Once she departs the Senate, it’s not likely she’ll return anytime soon, given the relatively young age of California’s other senator, 50-year-old Alex Padilla, and the likelihood whomever voters choose in November 2024 will serve a good long time.

    But the California governor’s seat comes open in 2026 and Butler could be an attractive candidate in a wide-open field.

    She’ll now have a little over year to rack up some achievements in Washington, travel the state to introduce herself to voters and, if Butler chooses, lay the necessary political and financial groundwork for a future political run.

    Far better than working half-time in the Senate and half-time on a quite possibly futile attempt to stay there.

    To run or not to run was the first major political test facing California’s newly minted senator.

    She made the smart move.

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    Mark Z. Barabak

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