Gavin Newsom Gives "Rally" Speech to Nearly Empty Room to Push for an Amendment Allowing Him to Gerrymander the State Even Harder

California is already heavily gerrymandered, as Scott Jennings in a clip below points out. 40% of voters are Republican, but Republicans only have 17% of the state's congressional seats.

Liberals like to pretend that they are far better people than they are, so state law mandates that congressional lines be drawn by an "independent commission," this commission being Democrat-dominated and producing the congressional split of 40 Democrats to 12 Republicans.

But this fake "independent commission" presents impediments to Newsom's presidential primary stunt of redrawing the maps now, and only on his own authority, so he staged a "rally" filled with Democrat office-holders and almost no one else to propagandize for a constitutional amendment that will give him all of the power.

Voters are skeptical of Newsom's power-grab.

A new poll shows strong opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom's plan to shift redistricting power from California's independent commission to the Democrat-led Legislature.

Key Details:

Newsom's proposal would transfer congressional map-drawing authority from the constitutionally mandated independent commission to the state Legislature, requiring voter approval in a November referendum.
A Politico--Citrin Center--Possibility Lab survey found Californians prefer the independent panel over legislative control by a wide margin, undercutting Democrats' justification for the overhaul.
Newsom has threatened to redraw California's maps to net Democrats new seats, claiming it would "offset" GOP gains in Texas. Proposed maps are expected to be unveiled Tuesday.

A "leaked" plan shows that Newsom would steal five more seats from Republicans, reducing the Republican delegation from 12 to 7.

I don't believe this, though. I think this leak is intended for one audience: Governor Abbott of Texas. I think Newsom's pretending he can cut this many seats to get Abbott to back off.

Because I don't believe you can gerrymander 40% of the population so hard they only have five districts where they form the majority.

And also: Abbott has already threatened to re-district and take eight seats from Democrats, so bring it on, Hair-Gel.

The New York Times asks "Is Texas really less gerrymandered than California, or is that just another Republican lie?"

Check out this typical "fact-check" treatment:

In a recent defense of Republican efforts to redraw Texas' congressional maps with a greater Republican advantage, Vice President JD Vance criticized the current maps in California as an extreme gerrymander. There, he suggested, Democrats had already given themselves an egregious number of safe blue seats in Congress.

While Mr. Vance ignored that California's maps are drawn by an independent commission, not Democrats, he cited a seemingly simple statistic as proof: the partisan breakdown of the state's congressional delegation as compared with the statewide partisan vote share.

The "independent" commission is dominated by Democrats. The Democrats like to pretend they're for "reform" and "good, clean government," so they set up "independent commissions," supposedly, to take the politics out of politics.

But then they pack those "independent commissions" full of partisan Democrats. Democrats want the appearance of non-partisan politics, but not the reality of it.

Democrats control about 80 percent of California's seats in the U.S. House but earned roughly 60 percent of the statewide vote in the 2024 presidential election, a more than 20 percent point disparity. Texas Republicans won 58 percent of the vote, yet hold 66 percent of the seats -- an 8-point gap.

This is why I say this is a "typical fact-check:" They concede that a "simple statistic" proves that the Republican is telling the truth, but they then say: But what are statistics anyway? Just lies told by the White Man with numbers.

But this statistic, taken by itself, ignores several critical factors, like how voters are geographically sorted in a state; how close the elections were in some of those congressional districts; the importance of protecting the rights of voters of color; and the ability of a popular congressional incumbent to run against statewide trends.

All of this is just commie gobbedlygook to distract from the main point: Yes, California much more heavily gerrymandered than Texas was.

And most of them were party hacks:

106 people turned out, most of them employees of Newsom.

Newsom chummed the waters with more assassin-bait. They'll keep trying until they get their dead president.

posted by Ace at 02:00 PM

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