By Sacramento Daily Press Staff
Rep. Kevin Kiley is sounding the alarm over Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to dismantle California’s independent redistricting commission and replace it with a process run directly out of the governor’s office.
Speaking Tuesday night to the Placer County Republican Party, Kiley called the move an outright gerrymander aimed at locking in Democratic control of California’s congressional delegation for years to come. He warned that his district — which currently keeps Placer County whole — is one of many likely to be broken apart under Newsom’s proposal, with Republican-leaning communities absorbed into deep-blue districts.
Kiley pointed out that California Republicans consistently win about 40 percent of the statewide vote but hold just 9 of the state’s 52 congressional seats. In a proportional system, that vote share would amount to roughly 21 seats — meaning the GOP is already shorted by about 12 seats under the current map. It’s already heavily slanted, Kiley said, and Newsom’s proposal would make it even worse.
The congressman also warned the process is being designed to move at breakneck speed, with Newsom pushing to get the repeal of the commission on the November ballot and then using the new authority to redraw maps immediately for a special election the same month. Kiley compared the strategy to the 2021 recall election, when Democrats rewrote the rules mid-campaign to protect Newsom from being removed.
Kiley reminded attendees that the term “gerrymander” originated in early 19th-century Massachusetts, when politicians drew a district shaped like a salamander to protect an incumbent. While he acknowledged the state’s current redistricting commission has flaws, Kiley said it is “certainly better than a map drawn by Gavin Newsom” and warned the result could mirror Illinois’ congressional map — often cited as one of the most aggressively gerrymandered in the nation.
Newsom is pitching his plan as a counterattack against Texas Republicans’ recent mid-decade redistricting, which added multiple GOP-leaning seats. National Democrats see California as their best opportunity to offset those gains by creating more Democrat-friendly districts. But to do that, they must first convince voters to eliminate a non-partisan commission they themselves approved.
That won’t be easy. In 2010, California voters rejected a similar repeal effort by 18 points. Ballotpedia notes that voters in more than a dozen states have backed independent redistricting commissions about two-thirds of the time, with repeals usually succeeding only in Republican strongholds.
Kiley closed by warning that giving Newsom sole authority over California’s congressional map would remove the last check on one-party control in the state — and could reshape national politics in the process.
