Newsom to Redistricting Donors: Stop Giving Me Money

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed onto his regular Zoom call with his political brain trust last Friday as they ticked through the latest developments in the high-stakes redistricting measure headed for a vote next week.

They were far ahead in the polls. The opposition was mostly off the airwaves. And there was plenty of money in the bank.

Then, according to two participants in the call who shared details of the private discussion on condition of anonymity, his senior advisers presented the California governor with an intriguing idea: Stop fund-raising from small donors altogether in the final stretch.

“I love it,” Mr. Newsom declared.

So Mr. Newsom’s political operation did just that on Monday, telling millions of supporters in an email, “You can stop donating now.”

The highly unorthodox message eight days before the election projected supreme confidence from Team Newsom about the state of play for Proposition 50, the measure that would redraw the state’s congressional lines to squeeze out five Republicans from their seats. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, has called it an emergency measure to counteract a remapping in Texas that was pushed by President Trump and his allies to erase as many as five Democratic seats in that state.

The California contest was once expected to be highly competitive, with talk of a $100 million campaign against the measure. Charles T. Munger Jr., a physicist and Berkshire Hathaway heir, gave $30 million to stop the measure by the week of Labor Day. But the financial opposition has mostly fizzled after an early burst of spending, with opponents essentially ceding the state’s pricey airwaves this month as public polling has showed the Newsom-backed measure surging to a significant lead.

“We’re not declaring victory,” cautioned Sean Clegg, a senior adviser to Mr. Newsom. “We’ve met our fund-raising goals and we have a very strong program.”

The leading No on 50 campaigns did not respond to requests for comment. But the difference in the opponents’ posture was evident in an email the California Republican Party sent on Monday night, pleading for supporters to “rush in $8 or whatever you’re able to give.”

Mr. Newsom’s email on Monday said that he had raised $38 million in small donations over 10 weeks from 1.2 million supporters — a presidential-level online haul that he was suddenly and voluntarily cutting off.

“It’s a little bit of man bites dog,” Mr. Clegg acknowledged. “A politician sending an email not asking you for money, that’s actually asking you to stop sending money. I don’t know that this has ever happened before.”

In New York, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor, told supporters to stop donating to his campaign in a video that went viral in September. But that situation was very different as the city has a strict limit on how much candidates can raise and still take part in its public funding program. Mr. Mamdani asked for people to volunteer instead.

The Newsom message similarly asked supporters to sign up for the governor’s YouTube channel or to receive text messages. Mr. Newsom did write that he would be soliciting money for other states that have ongoing redistricting fights.

“I will be asking for you to help others,” the governor wrote.

Democrats are pushing for new maps in multiple other states led by Democrats, including Virginia, New York and Illinois, to which Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, traveled on Monday.

As of Oct. 18, Mr. Newsom’s ballot committee had $37 million in the bank after raising a total of $114 million this year.

The two main committees opposing Proposition 50 had less than $2.5 million combined, after raising $44 million this year.

Mr. Trump has pushed multiple states — Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio — to aggressively redraw their maps mid-decade to create more Republican congressional seats. But, notably, the president has not yet tapped his own sizable political treasury to fight the California measure.

The Republican National Committee entered October with nearly $86 million and Mr. Trump’s main allied super PAC, MAGA Inc., reported $196 million in cash on hand over the summer.

That stash of money was one reason supporters of Proposition 50 had remained nervous. But now that millions of Californians have already cast their ballots and final-week airtime has been booked, the window for a last-minute opposition flurry has all but closed.

Still, political strategists in both parties said it was exceedingly rare for a politician to cease fund-raising before Election Day.

“Never in my life in politics has someone said, ‘We’re good, we don’t need any more money,’” said Bill Burton, a California-based Democratic strategist who worked on former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign that was so swimming in cash it paid for 30-minute infomercials in the closing stretch. “We had so much money we were running out of things to spend it on.”

The decision by Mr. Newsom to redirect donors elsewhere, Mr. Burton said, would likely deepen trust with his supporters.

“It builds credibility for him,” Mr. Burton said. “He’s running for president in 2028. That’s a smart thing.”

Mr. Newsom, who has long been coy about his national ambitions, has more fully embraced the role of antagonist to Mr. Trump in recent months and on Sunday told CBS News that he would consider a run in 2028 after the midterm elections.

“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Mr. Newsom told CBS. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not — I can’t do that.”

Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who has worked on past presidential races, said the decision to cease small-dollar fund-raising was actually “braggadocious” in its own way.

“He’s worried less about the electoral outcome rather than calling his shot more than a week out,” Mr. Gorman said.

The Newsom campaign has sought to turn the redistricting fight into a national proxy campaign between Democrats and Republicans in a solidly blue state. They have run ads featuring some big-name national Democrats, including another potential 2028 candidate, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The most recent spot features Mr. Obama.

Mr. Newsom’s administration has accused the Trump administration of appearing to use intimidation tactics by announcing last week that it would deploy Justice Department officials to monitor the election in five California counties, including Los Angeles and Orange.

“They’re trying to suppress the vote,” Mr. Newsom said in a CNN interview on Monday.

As of Monday, Californians have turned in more than 4.2 million ballots, or about 18 percent of those that were sent out.

Democrats make up 51 percent of the ballots turned in so far — a share greater than the 45 percent who received ballots in the mail, according to Political Data Inc., a firm that tracks voter data. Republicans are also turning in their ballots in greater numbers than they comprise in the electorate, but the gap is narrower.

Paul Mitchell, the Democratic strategist who drew California’s new maps and who is the vice president of Political Data Inc., said he’s been surprised how much the campaign has played out like a race between a Democrat and a Republican, instead of a contest over whether California should gerrymander its congressional districts.

“The ability for it to not be about the maps is striking,” he said. “It’s being driven by partisanship.”