California’s high-stakes gamble on congressional redistricting appears to have paid off politically — even if it wasn’t strictly necessary to secure the outcome Democrats wanted.
Nationwide, Democrats needed 218 House seats to reclaim the majority. By Wednesday night, they had topped 240, a gain of more than two dozen seats that also flipped control of the Senate. That decisive win stands in sharp contrast to the uncertainty Democrats felt a year earlier, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, pushed by the Trump administration, pursued a redistricting plan designed to carve out five additional Republican-leaning congressional seats in his state.
That move prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to respond in kind. He championed Proposition 50, a ballot measure that redrew California’s congressional map to create five additional Democratic-friendly districts — a direct counter to the Texas plan.
As it turned out, California’s blue wave would likely have been strong enough to flip the House even without the new maps. According to reporting from CalMatters journalists Maya C. Miller and Nadia Lathan, at least five of California’s nine Republican House members lost their seats this cycle. Whether Democrats would have captured those same districts under the old boundaries remains uncertain, but the party’s broader gains nationally meant the House majority was within reach regardless.
Texas, meanwhile, got a far different result from its own gerrymandering effort. GOP lawmakers there drew five new Republican-leaning districts, hoping to shore up their numbers — but Democrats flipped all but one of them.
Supporters of Proposition 50 argue the measure succeeded in rallying California Democrats and voters eager to push back against President Donald Trump’s policies. But critics say the win came at a cost. To pass the measure, the state temporarily suspended its independent citizens’ redistricting commission, a body widely regarded as a national model for fair, nonpartisan map-drawing.
Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project and a Republican critic of the president who opposed Proposition 50, warned that bypassing the commission sets a troubling example — one that elevates party interests above established democratic norms.
“What they were literally saying is, ‘Let’s undo democracy to protect democracy.’ There’s something very Orwellian about it,” Madrid said.
In other election news, California voters appear to have rejected Proposition 40, which would have imposed a new tax on billionaires. At the same time, voters approved Proposition 42, which creates additional hurdles for any future attempt to enact a wealth tax in the state.
Looking ahead to the incoming administration, Governor-elect Xavier Becerra has offered only limited detail about his policy priorities since declaring victory Tuesday night in West Sacramento, when he told supporters, “You have now entered the Becerra era.” Still, several clues point to where he may take the state.
While Becerra opposed the billionaire tax measure, he has signaled openness to other revenue ideas, including taxing corporations whose low wages leave workers reliant on public assistance, or eliminating tax breaks for those same companies.
He has also indicated a desire to restore Medi-Cal access for immigrants in the country illegally — coverage that was scaled back last year under Newsom amid a state budget shortfall and rising health care costs. In a recent interview with KQED, Becerra said that “anyone who works hard in California should have access to the health care they need for themselves and for their family … and that includes undocumented (immigrants).”
In the Bay Area, regulators have pushed back a plan to phase out gas-powered water heaters. The Bay Area Air District voted this week to delay until January 2028 a rule that would have required most property owners to switch to zero-emission alternatives, such as electric heat pumps. The agency also carved out new exemptions for low-income homeowners and those whose mortgage and property tax burdens exceed 28% of their income. Officials acknowledged the public health benefits of reducing emissions but cited the financial strain of compliance as the reason for the delay.
And in Shasta County, outgoing Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis — who lost his June reelection bid after years as a prominent election skeptic — presided over a rocky Election Night marked by overflowing ballot boxes, staffing shortages and technical glitches. The county’s results came in more than two hours behind the rest of the state before Curtis departs office in January.
Original source: CalMatters
