Democrats’ blue wave beat Texas’ GOP gerrymanders. Did California even need Prop. 50?

California Democrats went all in on redistricting last year in a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to gerrymander red states and preserve their U.S. House majority. 

Ultimately, though, it appears such a gamble wasn’t even necessary. 

The “blue tsunami” that engulfed the country was enough to sweep away Republicans in ruby-red districts that Trump won by double digits two years ago as Democrats improved on their 2024 margin by a stunning 15 percentage points. 

At least five of California’s nine-member Republican delegation were among the political casualties. 

It’s not clear yet whether California Democrats could have picked up those seats under the old district lines drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission, known as the gold standard for map drawing.

“There was no need to undermine the work of independent redistricting when there has been so much good work done to improve representation,” said Carah Ong Whaley, executive director of the group Better Choices for Democracy, which opposed Proposition 50, the voter-approved measure to temporarily suspend the commission and redraw the maps to oust five Republicans. 

She said it was party elites with large public platforms, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who drilled into voters’ psyches that California voters would suffer from Texas’ “rigging” of the midterm elections. 

“It wasn’t that a lot of voters all of a sudden organized and said, ‘We need to get back at Texas,’” Ong Whaley said. “It was party elites telling voters they shouldn’t take this.”

‘People were despondent about Trump’

Still, the party faithful are adamant that Prop. 50 was a crucial unifying force for California voters who felt helpless in the face of a mercurial second Trump administration.

“It gave Democrats and voters an opportunity to do something and to realize that they, in fact, did have power to act,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who leads the California Democratic delegation, in an interview with CalMatters Wednesday. “People were despondent about Trump.”

At first, Lofgren said, the delegation hoped that the mere threat of California redrawing its own districts would be enough to call Trump’s bluff. She said Newsom wrote a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — who lost his own reelection bid Tuesday night — and proposed a detente: If you stop your gerrymandering, we’ll stop ours. Texas forged ahead.

The energy from the Prop. 50 win, along with off-year victories in New York City’s mayoral race and gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia, helped propel Democrats out of the political wilderness, said Paul Mitchell, who drew the new maps. 

“That victory put wind in the sails for a lot of folks who went on to help create this blue tsunami,” Mitchell said. “It was the only way the Democrats were fighting back.”

In addition to ousting five Republicans, the maps were also drawn to shore up support for incumbent Democrats in Southern California swing districts. Mitchell estimated that protecting those members in one of the most expensive media markets in the country freed up more than $100 million that the cash-strapped party could spend in newly competitive districts elsewhere.

But critic Mike Madrid said it was unethical to try to save democracy and preserve good governance by actively dismantling the voter-created redistricting commission designed to keep map drawing out of the hands of partisan operatives and lawmakers. 

“It’s like a textbook warning of what the founders were concerned about when they warned about political parties,” said Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and an anti-Trump Republican who opposed Prop. 50. He called the move to prioritize party loyalty over democratic norms a “very, very dangerous” precedent.

“What they were literally saying is, ‘Let’s undo democracy to protect democracy,’” Madrid said. “There’s something very Orwellian about it.”

‘Can all meet in one car’

Tuesday’s blue tsunami dealt a seismic blow to California’s Republican delegation, which is expected to drop from nine to just four or even three members. 

The handful who survived were in solidly red districts that shielded them from voters’ fierce pushback elsewhere.

Prop. 50 packed conservative voters into just a few reliably Republican districts, including those of Central Valley Rep. Vince Fong and Sierra Nevada Rep. Tom McClintock, whose races were called shortly after polls closed Tuesday night. In Southern California, two incumbents were still duking it out for the state’s last safe Republican seat.

“I guess the good news is that they can all meet in one car,” quipped longtime Republican consultant Jon Fleischman of the waning California GOP delegation.

Fong defeated Democratic challenger Sandra Van Scotter with 63% of the vote as of Wednesday in a district with a 20-percentage-point Republican voter registration advantage.

Campaign spokesperson Ryan Gardiner declined to make Fong available for an interview or comment on Republicans tumultuous losses elsewhere. In a statement, Fong said he would “continue fighting to lower costs, protect our communities and deliver critical investments for our region.”

To the northeast, McClintock’s victory over Democrat Michael Masuda was a narrower but comfortable lead with 56% of the vote as of Wednesday.

Jon Huey, a campaign manager for McClintock, declined an interview request from CalMatters and did not respond to questions about the GOP’s losses but  McClintock signaled in a statement that perhaps his Republican colleagues had acquiesced to Trump too much.

“The American people spoke loudly and clearly that they are hurting and angry about the economic impact of the war in Iran and the tariffs on their quality of life,” McClintock said in a statement. “Congress has surrendered too much of these responsibilities to the executive branch and it is time for Republicans and Democrats alike to restore the constitutional balance.”

Rep. Ken Calvert, who moved to run in Orange County’s 40th Congressional District after his Inland Empire district was redrawn, was leading with about 54% of the vote against Republican colleague Rep. Young Kim Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Mojave Desert Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte was hanging on for his political life against Tessa Lynn Hodge, a Democrat, in a race that wasn’t even considered competitive before Election Day. On Wednesday, Obernolte was leading with 51% of the vote.

“Everyone else was caught in the blast zone,” GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said.

Coming out of a ‘massacre’

Tuesday’s results could spell more trouble for congressional Republicans in future elections. National party leaders will have even less of an incentive to invest in California candidates if there are simply fewer of them.

Trump’s botched redistricting maneuver in red states and his failure to respond to California’s gerrymander ultimately left the California delegation out to dry, Stutzman said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the fundraising arm responsible for electing House Republicans, will likely focus on competitive seats in North Carolina, Texas and Florida going forward, he said.

“It’s a complete disaster, and these California Republicans just got the worse end of the stick.”

NRCC spokesperson Christian Martinez did not immediately return a phone call, voicemail and text message requesting comment Wednesday.

The few remaining GOP members are unlikely to challenge the president despite his all-time unpopularity, Fleischman said.

“None of them are mavericks,” he said. “I don’t see our four most conservative Republicans from California bucking the president and bucking House leadership.”

Next steps for Democratic gerrymandering

As part of their promise to win over voters for the mid-decade redistricting last year, California Democrats promised to roll back the new House maps ahead of 2030 and pass legislation to ban gerrymandering. 

The ball is now in their court, said Ong Whaley. “They promised it was just this one time.” 

Lofgren, who has repeatedly introduced legislation aimed at banning mid-decade redistricting and establishing independent commissions in each state, said she was optimistic that a Democratic-controlled Congress would be open to ending partisan gerrymandering. 

“Congress has the right to legislate on this,” she said. “The idea that this will be bipartisan, I’m skeptical because of their prior actions. But we’ll see.”