President Donald Trump will loom large in the background as Democrats ask voters to approve new California congressional districts that could help them retake the House, an adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.
Political strategist Jim DeBoo said voter “anger and frustration” with Trump is evident in internal polling on Prop 50, the voter initiative that will draw new political boundaries in response to the mid-decade redistricting in Texas at the president’s request.
That will guide how Newsom and Democrats campaign for the measure in the face of well-funded opposition, he said.
“It’s not a persuasion campaign, it’s a turnout campaign,” DeBoo said.
The November ballot measure “gives people the opportunity to be for something that could effectively stop what they hate the most,” he said.
His comments come amid an emerging redistricting battle across the country in response to Trump’s demand that Republicans in Texas create five new GOP-leaning districts to keep the House in the 2026 midterms.
California Democrats responded by placing the measure on the November ballot that would temporarily throw out congressional districts drawn by a voter-approved independent redistricting commission.
The campaign pits Newsom and Democratic leadership against a “No on 50″ coalition that includes government-reform advocates; billionaire philanthropist Charles Munger Jr.; former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Veteran Republican strategist Rob Stutzman, who shared the stage with Deboo at the summit, said, sarcastically, that any Trump involvement in the campaign would be “great” for the success of Prop 50.
Democrats have indicated that they will attempt to attack Munger over his contributions to conservative social causes over the years. But the central plank of their strategy is to make Prop 50 a referendum on Trump, rather than on the virtues of gerrymandering.
“In typical ballot measures you don’t want it to be partisan,” DeBoo said. “It already is.”
