A grab bag of strategies for mitigating the Democratic gerrymander includes a federal lawsuit and a return to the ballot.
After their campaign against Proposition 50 suffered an embarrassing defeat at the polls, California Republicans are insisting the fight is not over, promising a variety of strategies to mitigate the damage of the Democratic gerrymander and pursue both vengeance and accountability in its wake.
“This whole process was a sham,” said Assemblymember David Tangipa in a Wednesday morning press conference at the California Republican Party’s headquarters. “We’ll make sure we expose it, and hold those accountable.”
Banished ever further to the fringes of political power, the state party went after the maps themselves, filing a suit in federal court that challenges the constitutionality of using data on voters’ race to draw the newly gerrymandered districts.
James Lacy, a conservative attorney and author, meanwhile, is making an effort to return to the ballot box, hiring staff and filing an initiative that would ask voters to effectively repeal Prop 50 after one election cycle.
“Polls clearly show that Californians oppose gerrymandering and want districts to be drawn by the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, not by Sacramento politicians,” Lacy wrote in a Substack post announcing plans for the constitutional amendment.
Soon after the race was called on Tuesday night, Republican megadonor Charles Munger Jr. announced that he would pursue national districting reform while calling for resources and independent legal counsel for California’s independent commission after Prop 50 sunsets.
“Despite whatever partisan temptations to yet another gerrymander,” he said, “the Citizens Redistricting Commission, and not politicians, must draw the California districts for the U.S. House of Representatives for the elections of 2032.”
Munger was the largest donor to a campaign that this summer believed it could tank Prop 50 with a formidable coalition and favorable polling. But after fundraising failures, financial mismanagement, the defection of good-government groups, and strategic missteps, the outcome had begun to feel like a foregone conclusion.
The decentralized grab bag of tactics, while serving different purposes and pursued with different motivations, has the common goal of undermining a ballot measure supported by nearly two-thirds percent of California voters. Much as in the campaign itself, various efforts to combat the Democratic maps that Prop 50 imposes do not seem to be coordinating.
“We have had no such talks,” Lacy said in an interview. “But we don’t think we’re biting off more than we can chew.”
A separate ballot initiative filed earlier this summer looks back rather than forward: It would bar state legislators who voted in favor of any gerrymandered district maps from holding elected office for ten years.