Fair redistricting, not power grabs. SLO voters must draw the line | Opinion

If gerrymandering is poison, California is bottling it as medicine. Gov. Gavin Newsom is demanding a “temporary” redraw of the state’s congressional map to counter Texas Republicans doing the same thing.

Winning in California was never the point. Newsom already owns California. It’s basically his theme park. Now he’s using the state’s democracy as cannon fodder in his food fight with Texas, while auditioning for the role of MAGA Slayer in a 2028 blockbuster nobody wants to sit through.

Texas started this round by pushing a mid-cycle map to pry loose five GOP House seats. California Democrats now want about five for themselves. This is an arms race with crayons.

It isn’t strategy. It’s fratricide. You don’t defend democracy by bayoneting your own infantry. You prove the madness of war. Newsom, preening at the front, seems oblivious to the ambush he’s marching into.

According to UVA’s Center for Politics, a gerrymander arms race may give Republicans double the seats Democrats pick up. In trying to out Trump Trump, he may trump himself.

It’s the hallmark of totalitarianism, the very thing Democrats accuse Trump of.

Voters want ‘civic sanity’

California voters created the Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2008. They then expanded its powers in 2010 because we were sick of politicians carving up districts like a toddler with safety scissors and a sugar high. It was a rare act of political maturity. A move toward transparency, fairness and civic sanity.

To undo that now under the guise of “We oppose gerrymandering, but we must gerrymander until the other side stops” is the political equivalent of “We’re against corruption, but we’ll take a few brown envelopes ourselves until the playing field levels.”

Newsom unveiled his scheme at LA’s grandly titled “Democracy Center” because the Ministry of Truth was already booked for a drag brunch. His cheerleader? Jodi Hicks, boss of Planned Parenthood and purely by coincidence, her husband, Paul Mitchell, is the bloke redrawing the maps. Just to complete the pantomime, outside you’ve got ICE agents goose-stepping to Trump’s drumbeat.

It wasn’t a press conference. It was a Punch and Judy show. Two acts, one stage, and a country still paying for a puppet show that stopped being funny years ago.

No more trust

It’s not surprising that today only 5% of Americans say they trust politicians. Five. If there were fewer, it would be a rounding error.

The president of The League of Women Voters says we should “protect the integrity of our democratic process and reject the dangerous idea of mid-cycle redistricting.” (Sacramento Bee, July 30, 2025.)

Even the Los Angeles Times, no stranger to partisan water-carrying, managed to grow a spine, when its political columnist Mark Barabak described Newsom’s partisan redistricting proposal as a short-sighted “power grab” aimed at dismantling Republican representation, rather than fostering constructive political discourse.

Meanwhile, The SLO Tribune, ever fearless when reporting on ICE “plucking” illegal immigrants off the street, somehow can’t muster a headline when democracy gets mugged in broad daylight. Their opinion editor wrote that Donald Trump “is attempting to steal an election by demanding that the state of Texas gerrymander congressional districts to give Republicans an edge in the midterms.”

So when Trump does it, it’s theft but when Gavin Newsom does it, it’s ‘California values’ dressed up with Botox and hair gel?

Even the Founding Fathers, hardly naïve idealists, saw this danger coming. George Washington warned us that “the spirit of party … agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms.” James Madison feared that factions, left unchecked, would inflame society “with mutual animosity.” Partisan gerrymandering isn’t a bug in the code. It’s proof that the disease of tribalism has metastasized.

This isn’t just bad politics. It’s bad faith. If you want to fight rigged maps, you don’t grab your own crayon. You lead by example. You prove your record can win on its merits. Maybe that’s the problem? Without creative cartography, Californians might judge Newsom on his results. Rising costs and crime. Widening wealth, health and income inequality. Crumbling infrastructure and homelessness.

What’s happening in Texas

Before Team Red gets smug, Texas isn’t defending democracy, they’re carving it up. The voters are getting butchered, the way the cowboys once treated Native Americans. Same playbook, different century.

Let’s stop pretending this is about protecting democracy. It’s about protecting incumbency. If California Democrats truly believed in representative democracy, they’d use their supermajority to reform the rules to help voters, not incumbents:

• Lower barriers for new parties, so Californians get more options than Coke or Pepsi. Because they both rot your teeth.
• Open primaries and ranked-choice voting, so moderates aren’t purged like heretics.
• Campaign-finance rules with daylight. Right now it’s like a strip club: no touching, lots of rules, but somehow the cash still finds its way into the g-string.

Remember, once people decide the rules are written by and for the ruling class, they stop believing in both. History’s greatest collapses began with shrugs and ended in violence. First citizens stayed home. Not long after, they laced up jackboots or dusted off hammer & sickle hats while the rest got trampled in between.

Democracy only works when the game is fair. Independently drawn districts are the guardrails of democracy. SLO County stood tall when voters demanded fair districts. Don’t let party operatives crash us into the ditch of partisanship.

That means voters choose politicians, not the other way around.

To our local supervisors and party leaders, this is your moment. Speak out. Loudly. Prove that your loyalty is to the people, not the party. Because if democracy becomes just another partisan tool, don’t act surprised when people stop believing in it altogether.

Clive Pinder. Host of CeaseFire on KVEC 920Am/96.5FM. Columnist for The SLO Tribune and The Daily Sceptic. A voice for those without a tribe while keeping the political elites on Xanax at clivepinder.substack.com.