On Tuesday, Prop. 50 passed in California, which means that the state's already gerrymandered maps will be further adjusted to offset the gains Texas made with its recently changed congressional maps.
Trump was hoping that other red states would follow suit to try to get as many seats as possible in the upcoming midterms, but one state just bailed on that plan.
With Kansas now having a Democrat governor, the state legislature would need a two-thirds vote to call a special session to redraw the maps, and lawmakers fell woefully short.
Historically speaking, the first midterm elections after a presidential election are, for the incumbent party, not only a loss, but an electoral bloodbath, if you will.
Going back to 1938, there have only been two presidents who avoided taking such a loss, the most recent being President George Bush, who was in the midst of a war on terror, which was likely the only reason the GOP was able to hold the House in his first term.
I understand what Trump was hoping to do here, but realistically, the handful of seats he gained in Texas were not going to mean a whole lot. And by taking action, we now have all these blue states also redrawing their maps to surpass any seats picked up by the GOP.
I have never supported gerrymandering, but everyone does it, just not to this extreme (save a few states, such as Illinois, which has one of the worst congressional maps in the country before this latest wave of gerrymandering).
After Texas redrew its maps, cutting out several Democrat congressional seats, California Gov. Gavin Newsom played hero for the left and announced that he was going to gerrymander California’s maps to take those seats back.
He introduced Prop 50 as a ballot measure, a plan that would cut Republican seats in half, leaving conservatives in the state with only five or six likely seats out of 52. If the state’s maps were proportionally accurate, Republicans would hold about 21 seats, so, as you can see, the maps were already extremely gerrymandered.
When the ballot measure passed, Newsom took the expected victory lap, stating, "It was not just a victory tonight for the Democratic Party. It was a victory for the United States of America, for the people of this country, the principles that our Founding Fathers lived and died for. We're proud here in California to be a part of this narrative."
I find it rather ironic that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is made out to be a villain for his gerrymandering, but Newsom is somehow potrayed as a defender of democracy for his. This new rule, however, led to more red states being pressured to redo their maps.
One of the states that Trump was hoping would give him another seat was Kansas, but between having a Democrat governor and a state legislature that lacks the necessary GOP numbers, that plan has just gone up in smoke.
Republican state House Speaker Dan Hawkins just announced that there will be no special session because he does not have the supermajority of votes to call a special session to redraw the maps.
He stated, “Planning a Special Session is always going to be an uphill battle with multiple agendas, scheduling conflicts and many unseen factors at play.” He then added that state Republicans still want to do this, but it is going to be an uphill battle.
The other aspect of this that everyone seems to be missing is that in order for those maps to go into effect, the governor would have to sign off on them, and there is no way that Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, would do that. The legislature could override her with a veto, but it clearly does not have the supermajority votes to do so.
In the end, it is only one seat, which I doubt would make a difference, but this entire mess really spotlights the problems we have in this country in terms of our congressional maps. Virtually every blue and red state has gerrymandered its maps, and now the concept is effectively on steroids. I wish I had the answer on how to fix this problem, but in a toxic political environment, there is no reasonable solution that would be accepted by either side.
