California Gov. Gavin Newsom is really feeling his oats these days.
Newsom is threatening the National Governors’ Association (NGA), saying that if the group does not condemn President Donald Trump’s National Guard deployments, he will drop out of the group.
At the same time, Newsom is begging for federal money after using $250 million of state funds to get voters to back his gerrymandering plan ahead of the 2026 election.
The hubris of Newsom is rather shocking, especially since Democrats do not have a national edge when it comes to governors.
Currently, 27 of the 50 states have Republicans as governors, and I am going to assume that for the NGA to release an official statement, it would need majority support, if not unanimous.
Now, the Democrat governors in the NGA can release a statement, but that would be partisan in nature, and I doubt that is what Newsom is hoping for here.
In stating that he would withdraw from the group if they did not condemn Trump’s recent actions, Newsom added, “It should not be difficult for state leaders, regardless of partisan affiliation, to agree that politicizing our states’ National Guard and deploying the Guard from one state into another, over the objections of the home-state Governor, harms the interests of states. That only states led by Governors from one party are currently bearing the brunt of this assault should not matter: history shows that norms, once broken, are difficult to repair, and the shoe can quickly be on the other foot.”
Newsom has been very busy of late, also whining about not having enough money for fire aid.
Yet, while begging Trump for $40 billion to repair the state from wildfire damage, blazes we just found out were actually the result of arson, Newsom spent $250 million on an ad campaign to get voters behind his gerrymandering referendum.
Newsom posted, “It's been over 9 months since the LA fires. We have asked for federal disaster aid for months now. Not a dollar from Trump. He is abandoning Americans while building ballrooms and decorating his office gold. It’s disgusting and disqualifying.”
The money for the ballroom was private funding, so that is irrelevant. As far as delays in his aid package goes, this is due to a stalemate in Congress, as Trump does not even have the request on his desk as of yet, as far as I know.
That $250 million was well spent by Newsom, as he managed to turn polling around, and voters now support the California gerrymandering legislation.
Latest polling now has 54% behind Proposition 50, which is the gerrymandering resolution, and only 36% oppose it. That is a significant change from the numbers I saw when the concept was first proposed, as a slim majority had opposed rigging the maps to counter a similar move in Texas.
Now, keep in mind, California’s maps were already gerrymandered, and now Republicans will have virtually no representation in the state, even though they account for about 40% of the voters in California.
Something has to be done on both sides to stop this nonsense, but the days of a non-partisan districting commission no longer exist in this environment. So, now I guess we will have to live with states just blatantly rigging their maps so that the party of the sitting governor controls every congressional seat. When you consider that Democrats control most of the larger states in this country, the move to have Texas change its maps will have severe repercussions on the GOP's ability to ever hold the House again. Trump may have won the initial battle, but he is going to get clobbered in this war.
