JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Now to California, where control of Congress after next year's midterms could be shaped by a ballot proposal being considered today. Voters will determine whether the state should redraw its congressional districts to give Democrats an edge in next year's House races. Democrats put the idea on the ballot after President Trump got Republicans to redistrict in Texas, giving an edge to Republicans. The campaigning in California has been intense and expensive. Guy Marzorati of member station KQED has been covering this. He joins us from San Francisco. Hi.
GUY MARZORATI, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. OK. Let's just start with the basics. Tell us about the question that's before voters.
MARZORATI: Yeah. The question before voters is whether the state should set aside its current congressional district map, which was drawn by this independent citizens' commission, and replace it with a map that's favoring Democrats. That could help the party flip three to five Republican-held House seats next year. As you noted, this is part of this national redistricting fight, but I would say, unlike Texas, unlike Missouri, unlike North Carolina, California voters would need to approve this new map because it was California voters who kind of gave this line-drawing power to our independent commission in the first place.
SUMMERS: Got it. Help us understand why people are pushing for this.
MARZORATI: Yeah. I mean, it goes back to President Trump, when he went to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and pushed the legislature there to redraw Texas' congressional maps to help Republicans pick up around five seats. While that was happening, while Texas was moving ahead, California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies and the legislature here, they pushed for this counter because as Newsom said at a rally yesterday, the party kind of wanted to fight fire with fire.
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GAVIN NEWSOM: They did not expect California..
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: No.
NEWSOM: They did not expect all of you. They thought we were going to write an op-ed, have a candlelight vigil, maybe do a rally. They poked the bear, and the bear is poking back. And we're going to...
MARZORATI: And I'll add, Juana, Newsom has really tried to make this a partisan campaign, and so far, polls have shown he's been successful in that. We've seen widespread support from Democrats, widespread opposition from Republicans. That's good news for Democrats in a heavily Democratic state like California.
SUMMERS: And, Guy, opponents of this, what argument do they make?
MARZORATI: They point to the popularity of the citizens' commission and its success in drawing lines that don't favor either political party, and they argue that these Prop 50 maps are going to put communities with really nothing in common in the same district all for the purpose of helping Democrats.
My KQED colleague Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman spoke with the San Francisco resident Sarah Mohr. She voted against the measure when she cast her ballot today.
SARAH MOHR: And I ultimately decided that I didn't think that it was right that states would be able to redistrict before they're supposed to be.
MARZORATI: A couple of things to note here. One, California citizens' commission is going to stick around. It's still going to draw our state legislative line, state Senate, state Assembly, and they would resume drawing congressional districts as well after the 2030 census.
SUMMERS: Last thing. Let's just talk big picture here. What are the stakes? How could this impact control of Congress?
MARZORATI: Well, look, control of Congress is really tight. Democrats only need to flip a few seats next year to win back the House and then basically be able to block Trump's legislative agenda, potentially pursue investigations against the administration. So Trump has pushed for this advantage in mid-decade redistricting, which is fairly unique. Usually - right? - this happens at the beginning of a decade after a census. So we've seen Texas do it, Missouri, North Carolina. Some rumblings in Democratic states. But I think it's worth noting overall, redistricting sets the playing field, right? It figures out how many Republican voters are in a district, how many Democratic voters are in a district. We will still need to have the campaigns and the candidates and all that play out in 2026.
SUMMERS: That is Guy Marzorati reporting from San Francisco. Thank you.
MARZORATI: Thanks so much for having me.
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