Trump thinks he has the upper hand on Newsom on other issues, allies told POLITICO.
The Trump administration’s announcement that it was sending election monitors to California marked the White House’s first salvo in months in the state’s high-profile redistricting campaign.
The monitoring — like in New Jersey, another heavily Democratic state — came amid requests from state Republican Party officials, and Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, called it an act of voter intimidation and suppression.
But aside from the monitoring, the White House has been backing away from campaigning against Democrats’ efforts to redraw California’s House map, appearing largely resigned to the idea it will pass given Democrats’ strong polling advantage. President Donald Trump still thinks he has the upper hand on Gavin Newsom on more salient issues, allies told POLITICO.
Trump, who rarely shies away from a fight with one of his chief foils in Newsom, vowed in August to file lawsuits against California over the redistricting measure. He hasn’t followed through with that promise.
And since then, he has been mum on the issue, convinced crime and illegal immigration in California are more durable political cudgels for him in the long run as state Democrats’ redistricting campaign increasingly appears to be a losing battle for Republicans in November.
“The president’s never going to shy away from a fight with California, we all know that. Do I think there are other fights like immigration, like tamping down on the crime? On the totem pole of the fight with Gavin Newsom, I don’t think the gerrymander fight is top three,” said a person familiar with strategy inside the White House, who was granted anonymity to relay the latest thinking.
Against the backdrop of the redistricting battle, which began in California after national and state Republicans started the gerrymandering arms race in Texas — Trump flirted with the idea of sending the National Guard into San Francisco. He stood down after speaking with Daniel Lurie, the city’s Democratic mayor, and after personal friends and tech sector leaders advised him not to go through with the surge. Trump suggested he will give Lurie “a chance to see if he can turn it around” without federal government intervention, putting an anti-Trump blue city to the test.
While Trump’s wider offensive on the twin issues of crime and immigration continues apace elsewhere, he’s largely been silent on California’s gerrymander, and Newsom’s elevated role in leading the charge against the White House.
Meanwhile, other Republicans with ties to the Golden State have been speaking out, while the party writ large — led by former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, lags far behind Newsom in fundraising.
“I think what the Republicans are trying to do is make this a local issue,” said former Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.). “What the Democrats are trying to do is make this a national issue.”
She said, “Unfortunately for Republicans, there’s not as many Republicans as there are Democrats in our state and the Democrats have the money behind them on Prop 50.”
The calculus appears to be working for Democrats. Among California voters supporting the measure, 75 percent said they are voting “yes” to oppose Trump, according to a recent CBS News poll, while only 41 percent said they will vote for it to support Newsom. The measure is leading in that poll and others.
And while some Republicans in California would welcome his involvement, there would be little political upside for Trump in associating himself ahead of the midterms with a losing campaign.
“I assume Kevin McCarthy and President Trump are aligned, but the White House’s lack of engagement at this point is an indication that the ‘No’ campaign is struggling,” said a person close to the thinking of the California GOP. “Two weeks ago, if President Trump had been more active, and excited the 20 percent of solid MAGA voters in California, it may have made a difference in this low turnout election.”
When asked about Trump not actively pushing against Prop 50, Hannah Milgrom, Yes on 50 spokesperson, replied: “Donald Trump is weak and knows that we are going to expose him for what he truly is— a loser.”
Attorney general Pam Bondi announced on Friday the DOJ will monitor polling sites on November 4 as a way to uphold “the highest standards of election integrity.”
“We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve,” she said.
Trump, meanwhile, has not commented on the election monitoring while he is traveling in Asia. Newsom, though, said the Trump administration has “no business screwing around with next month’s election.”
Rather than fight against the Democrats’ map in California, which Trump lost in 2024 to Kamala Harris by more than 20 percentage points, Trump advisers are relying on redistricting in redder states to tilt the map.
“I think the best backboard that we have, even if this does pass, we’re going to get Florida, we’re going to get Texas, North Carolina,” the person familiar with strategy inside the White House.
Another person close to Trump’s orbit argued that the president knows he “still does not play well in blue, blue states like California,” adding that there’s also confidence in Republicans’ chances of winning the larger gerrymander fight.
Republicans in Texas and North Carolina are moving ahead to gerrymander and pick up GOP seats. Under pressure from Trump, Republicans in Indiana tried to pass mid-cycle redistricting but appear to not have enough votes to pass it. The California measure was Democrats’ response to the Texas redistricting plan that Gov. Greg Abbott signed in August.
“Certainly it’s a very national, politicized special election. And I think one of the key elements is, this is really sort of an early referendum on the Trump administration,” said Blake Zante, executive director of the California nonpartisan public policy group The Maddy Institute.“They are gerrymandering seats in California in response to Texas’s mid-decade redistricting. So, I think people are very aware of the motives behind it. And I think there’s also really no secret that Governor Newsom has national ambitions as well, and so that’s certainly always kind of lying in the background.”