AS PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP prepared to send a phalanx of federal immigration agents into the Bay Area, Gov. Gavin Newsom bemoaned the lack of outrage about Trump’s actions and ramped up his own warnings about election manipulation.
“He is going to try to rig this election,” he told reporters last week, referring to Trump’s pursuit of Republican gerrymandering in red states to ensure the party holds onto its slim majority in Congress next year.
He called the potential deployment of immigration agents — later called off by Trump — a dictator’s move to suppress the vote. Repeatedly, he’s told the story of Border Patrol agents showing up to his ballot measure kickoff event and said he expects federal agents and troops to monitor polling places next week.
As the campaign for Proposition 50, the anti-Trump Democratic gerrymandering effort California voters are deciding on, reaches a fever pitch, so too has the rhetoric of Newsom, its chief promoter.
“God help us if we lose in California,” he said in a Prop. 50 fundraising email this month. “We may have enjoyed our last free and fair election.”
Approaching his final year as governor, Newsom is staking the next phase of his career on the proposition that he first suggested as a bluff to discourage Texas’ redistricting and that he’s now casting as central to American democracy.
After a few months this year of attempting to make nice with Trump, exploring on his podcast why so many voters shifted right in 2024 and angering the left in the process, the governor spent the summer and fall delighting many Democrats again with a renewed sense of combativeness against the second-term president.
So far, he’s reaped the benefits.
From June to August, he doubled his approval in polls of potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders rising from 12% of surveyed voters picking him to 25%. Appearing before a friendly Late Show with Stephen Colbert audience in September, he touted his willingness to be a Democrat who fights Trump on his own terms by using social media trolling. He got former President Barack Obama to join him in promoting Prop. 50.
“They’re going to send a very powerful message to the rest of the country that there has to be a new approach to dealing with Trump and Trumpism,” Newsom said of California voters on Tuesday. “It’s about the United States of America, it’s about what our founding fathers lived and died for.”
The big bet is paying off
Whether the measure passes is not just a test of whether the self-styled resister-in-chief can capture national support in 2028, but also whether he has his finger on the pulse today.
“Failure is not an option,” Newsom said last week. “We’re going to win, because people understand how precious this moment is.”
It’s a bet that risks his credibility, said Democratic strategist Matt Rodriguez. Though he added he believes the measure will pass, Rodriguez said Prop. 50 poses political “downsides” that “are bigger than the upsides.”
“His entire messaging is, ‘This is the end of the world if it doesn’t pass,’” he said. “If it doesn’t pass, it’s going to be pretty discouraging.”
Newsom has remained defiant, arguing it’s a bigger risk for Democrats to sit quietly. Asked last week if he had a contingency plan should the ballot measure fail, Newsom instead set up sky-high stakes, vowing it will pass and that Democrats will take the House and spell the “de facto end” of Trump’s presidency.
It’s working, for now: His ballot measure, which allows California to use gerrymandered congressional maps favoring Democrats to offset gerrymandered Republican House gains in Texas, is polling ahead with 56% of likely voters this month saying they would vote yes. The campaign has received so many donations that last week Newsom took the extremely rare step of telling supporters to stop sending money, seemingly an early declaration of victory.
Even Democrats who have fought Trump-backed, GOP-led gerrymandering in their own states are on board.
After Newsom placed Prop. 50 on the ballot, Missouri Republicans at Trump’s behest passed their own gerrymandered congressional map, carving out the seat held by Kansas City’s Democratic congressman. The lines cut through the suburban district of state lawmaker Keri Ingle, who said she nevertheless supports Newsom’s effort because red-state Democrats “are depending on Newsom for representation in Congress right now.”
Missouri Republicans, Ingle said, argued that because they lead the party of the majority there, they should be allowed to redraw that state’s map to gain another seat in Congress.
“To that I say, ‘OK, have it your way,’” she said. “Go get ’em, Newsom.”
‘Long way to go’
Should the measure pass, using it to propel Democrats — and Newsom himself — further nationally is still a tall order.
There’s no guarantee that passing Prop. 50 will ensure Democrats win back the House. Few other blue states have even considered starting their own redistricting efforts, and none have nearly enough population to produce more than one or two new Democratic congressional seats. Last week, Virginia Democrats approved a temporary redistricting proposal similar to California’s, though it couldn’t go to voters there until next year. Meanwhile, three GOP-led states — Texas, Missouri and North Carolina — have already passed their own gerrymandered maps. Last week, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun called in a special legislative session to do the same.
And Rodriguez said there’s still little sign Democrats have a platform to win back the middle-ground voters most concerned about crime and their economic prospects.
A September Reuters poll of American adults showed Democrats only two percentage points ahead of Republicans on the issue of “respect for democracy,” and four percentage points behind on “political extremism.” A Reuters poll this month showed 40% of American voters will vote in the midterms based on the cost of living. Protecting democracy was second in importance, at 28%.
“There’s still a long way to go, as to whether this passing will leapfrog him further than he has already,” Rodriguez said of Newsom. “It’s just not a vote-driver for most Americans.”
In red, rural Modoc County, erstwhile Democrat Sarah Merrick said she’d like to see the party develop a clearer national platform “instead of just being anti-Trump,” that includes reining in health care costs, campaign finance reform and committing to winning back moderates. She and her husband left the party in recent years, feeling it was “so leftist” and unnecessarily alienating cultural conservatives.
“There’s still a long way to go, as to whether this passing will leapfrog (Newsom) further than he has already. It’s just not a vote-driver for most Americans.” Matt Rodriguez, Democratic political strategist
Prop. 50 and Newsom’s highlighting of democratic principles got her more energized about politics for the first time in years, said Merrick, who leads a local Indivisible activist group. But she’s not sure if she’d support Newsom for president, saying she wants to know more about the state’s decision to provide health care for poor undocumented immigrants and why it hasn’t lowered housing prices.
“I really like his backbone right now, I think it’s awesome,” she said. “I think stressing on Prop. 50 and anti-dictatorship and all that is OK for now, through Nov. 4. After Nov. 4, I think a big shift needs to happen in messaging.”
An economic plan will be important for both swing voters, and for the party’s faithful.
Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation, has led union workers across California in running an aggressive anti-Trump campaign to help pass Prop. 50. But she said the governor’s future political prospects will depend in part on how he handles American workers’ anxiety around artificial intelligence and job losses, which Gonzalez predicted will be a prominent election issue in 2026 and beyond.
“It’s catapulted him,” she said of Prop. 50 and Newsom. “I don’t think it lasts beyond this time.”
This story originally appeared in CalMatters.