How Nancy Pelosi Quietly Shaped California’s Redistricting Fight

One Friday in early August, Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom sat together in the historic governor’s mansion in Sacramento and began dialing some of the nation’s wealthiest Democrats for dollars.

Ms. Pelosi, the 85-year-old former House speaker, and Mr. Newsom, the 57-year-old governor of California, have known each other for decades. She has been his mentor, and their circles are so entwined as scions of San Francisco that their families were even blended by marriage at one point.

But this was something entirely new for them both as they raced to raise cash for a fall ballot campaign on redistricting that could shape the 2026 midterms.

Ms. Pelosi would begin with pleasantries, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private fund-raising calls made that day. Then she would hand the phone to Mr. Newsom to close the deal. The choreography was partly borne of a mindfulness of tangled federal rules about soliciting outsized checks, and partly out of deference to Mr. Newsom.

Well, at least most of the time.

“That’s certainly not enough,” Ms. Pelosi blurted out to one potential contributor who had floated a sizable, but apparently not sizable enough, donation. Everyone burst out laughing, according to two people with knowledge of the tandem fund-raising. “I think we can do better,” she ribbed at another point.

The moment at the mansion provided a glimpse of Ms. Pelosi’s behind-the-scenes role in a redistricting push with national consequences. At President Trump’s behest, Republican-led states, starting with Texas, are moving rapidly to rip up their congressional boundaries and boost G.O.P. chances of keeping control of the House next fall. California represents Democrats’ biggest and best hope for a meaningful counteroffensive.