Republicans appear to have all but abandoned their efforts to defeat a Democratic gerrymander of California’s House districts one week before it goes before voters.
As Democrats pummel the state with Yes on 50 advertising, the Republican side of the battle has gone quiet. Major GOP donors and party leaders have effectively vanished from the front lines.
The biggest funder of the campaign to defeat Proposition 50, Charles Munger Jr., has not contributed any significant cash to the cause in weeks, and his Protect Voters First committee cut its weekly spending from more than $4 million to less than $300. The other opposition committee, Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab, spent $155,000 on advertising last week, compared to $3.8 million from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Yes on 50 campaign.
“It’s as full-throated a campaign for Democrats in California as if we were in the middle of a presidential election,” said Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the California Republican Party. “But you can go to the house next door, occupied by Republicans, and it’s crickets — other than receiving their ballot in the mail.”
That imbalance represents a turnabout from August, when Newsom first moved his proposed map redraw towards the November ballot. At the time polls showed support for the measure, which became known as Prop 50, hovering precariously just over 50 percent. That appeared beatable by a campaign able to mobilize the Republican base while raising enough money to sway the relatively small slice of persuadable centrists. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to raise $100 million for the enterprise.
Instead Prop 50 opponents have been greatly outmatched in resources and are now bracing for an embarrassing loss. A CBS News poll released last week showed 62 percent of likely voters support the initiative.
“We still believe that there is a pathway here,” Jessica Millan Patterson, a former California Republican Party chair leading McCarthy’s committee, insisted at an American Association of Political Consultants panel in Long Beach last week. “Despite being outspent two to one.”
