Newsom Kicks Off California Redistricting Campaign and Calls for Special Election

Californians may have thought they were done voting on Gavin Newsom. He’s been elected twice as governor, defeated a recall seeking to oust him from office, and is barred by term limits from running again.

But the state’s voters will soon weigh in once more on Mr. Newsom’s fate. This time, it will be in the form of a ballot measure the governor is pitching as a way to go after President Trump.

Mr. Newsom on Thursday kicked off his campaign for a proposition asking California voters to approve a new congressional map, an extraordinary move meant to help Democrats win more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to counter Mr. Trump’s request that Texas gerrymander five more seats for Republicans.

The governor gathered Democratic lawmakers and union leaders waving “Defend Democracy” signs in a Los Angeles auditorium for a show of solidarity, marked by the hopeful buzz of a campaign rally. The event was held a day before California lawmakers aimed to make the map public.

“On Nov. 4 in California, you have the power to stand up to Trump,” Mr. Newsom told the crowd. “You have the power to declare that you support a system that is not rigged.”

The governor has dubbed his measure the Election Rigging Response Act. The phrase was emblazoned on red, white and blue signs throughout the auditorium.

The campaign allows Mr. Newsom, who is contemplating a 2028 run for president, to position himself as a national Democratic leader, helping his party confront Mr. Trump at a time when it is locked out of power in Washington. The governor has framed his effort as a move to help Democrats win control of the House and thwart Mr. Trump in the second half of his term.

Asked for a response to Mr. Newsom’s redistricting campaign, a White House official instead focused on unrelated criticisms of the governor.

“Gavin Newsom should spend less time playing politics and extorting Native American Tribes and more time stopping the California Coastal Commission from stealing fire victims’ homes,” the official said in a statement.

Mr. Newsom’s plan still needs formal approval from state lawmakers. Next week, state legislators are expected to approve the new proposed congressional map, an accompanying constitutional amendment and funding to pay for the administration of the special election.

That vote would then send the measure to the ballot; California voters would weigh in during a special election on Nov. 4. It is expected to contain a caveat saying that California’s new maps will only be used if Texas or other Republican-led states approve new congressional districts first. Missouri, Indiana and Ohio may try to redraw their districts to help Republicans, and Mr. Newsom encouraged Democratic-led states to follow California’s lead.

Unlike special elections in a city or district that often get little attention, statewide ballot measures in California often produce extremely expensive, divisive campaigns that attract enormous spending from wealthy individuals and special interests. There is no limit on the amount donors can contribute to ballot measure campaigns, and Mr. Newsom’s supporters will try to raise as much as $100 million to fuel an advertising blitz.

But while the campaign will present Mr. Newsom with plenty of political opportunity as a high-profile foil to Mr. Trump, it also comes with some risk.

Mr. Newsom’s measure will ask voters to toss out the maps drawn by the independent commission for congressional elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030, then return map-drawing power to the commission after the next census. The partisan focus on the rest of this decade is necessary, Mr. Newsom said, because Mr. Trump “doesn’t believe in the rules.”

“As a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done,” he said in his remarks on Thursday. “It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be.”

While the governor has described it as a way to “fight fire with fire” to counter expected gerrymanders in Republican-led states, Californians may see the measure as a hypocritical attempt to “undermine democracy in order to save democracy,” said Katie Merrill, a Democratic strategist who has led California ballot measure campaigns.

She said it also risks damaging the Democratic Party, which is already suffering from low approval ratings, because it amounts to another anti-Trump argument that doesn’t address the reasons voters moved away from the party last year. Democrats leaned heavily into the message that electing Trump would imperil democracy, and voters chose him anyway.

“So I think the path is fraught with peril, both for the governor and for the Democratic Party as a whole,” Ms. Merrill said.

Many supporters of the 2008 and 2010 measures that created the independent commission are expected to oppose Mr. Newsom’s ballot measure. Charles Munger, a Republican donor who is the son of a billionaire investor and who donated millions of dollars to those campaigns, opened a new fund-raising committee this week. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, who led the charge to establish the independent commission when he was governor of California, has indicated that he still wants to “terminate gerrymandering” in every state.

Amy Thoma Tan, a spokeswoman for the campaign Mr. Munger is funding to oppose the measure, said in a statement that “two wrongs do not make a right.”

“California shouldn’t stoop to the same tactics as Texas,” she said. “Instead, we should push other states to adopt our independent, nonpartisan commission model across the country. That’s how we can protect and defend democracy.”

But in a surprising development this week, Common Cause, a group that worked closely with Mr. Schwarzenegger in advancing California’s independent commission and advocating for similar reforms in other states, said it will not oppose gerrymanders like California’s if they adhere to what the group calls its fairness criteria.

Representative Kevin Kiley, a Republican whose district could become heavily Democratic under the proposed map, called Mr. Newsom’s plan “an attack on the voters of California, an attack on democracy in California, and across the country.”

Early public polling shows that many California voters are not in favor of changing the way the state draws congressional districts or are uncertain about it. Those surveys, however, did not ask the exact question that will appear on the ballot.

Mr. Newsom’s task will be to make his ballot measure a partisan push that appeals to the majority of California voters who oppose Mr. Trump. He has already begun that effort with a string of social media posts mocking Mr. Trump and mimicking his all-caps writing style online. In one such post, Mr. Newsom’s press office wrote:

“DONALD TRUMP (THE CRIMINAL PRESIDENT) GET READY FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PAYBACK YOU’VE EVER SEEN!!!”