California voters delivered a stinging rebuke to President Trump in the state’s special election Tuesday, overwhelmingly approving a ballot measure to counter the president’s pressure on Republican states to increase GOP congressional seats and preserve his power in Washington.
The Associated Press called the victory moments after the polls closed Tuesday night.
The statewide ballot measure will reconfigure California’s congressional districts to favor more Democratic candidates. The Democratic-led California Legislature placed the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s behest, after Trump urged Texas and other GOP-led states to modify their congressional maps to favor their party members, a move designed to keep the U.S. House of Representatives in Republican control during his final two years in office.
Newsom watched the election results from across the country come in from the historic Victorian-style governor’s mansion in Sacramento with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and his political team, his office said, before he spoke about the victory at the California Democratic Party headquarters.
“We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness, and tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result,” Newsom said. “None of us, however, are naive. This is a pattern. This is a practice. Donald Trump’s efforts to rig the midterm election continue to this day.”
While Newsom celebrated the victory, he was also somber and called on other Democratic-led states to follow California’s example and redraw their congressional districts to push back against Trump’s agenda.
“I hope it’s dawning on people, the sobriety of this moment, what’s at stake,” Newsom said.
He urged Democratic leaders in Virginia, Maryland, New York, Illinois and Colorado to follow California’s lead.
“Why else is [Trump] trying to rig the midterm elections before one single vote is even cast?” Newsom asked. “He understands his position at this moment in the United States of America. One thing he never counted on, though, was the state of California — instead of agonizing over the state of our nation, we organized in an unprecedented way.”
Charles Munger Jr., the chief donor to the anti-Proposition 50 efforts, pledged to continue his work promoting independent redistricting, while lamenting the ballot measure’s success.
“For what looms for the people of California, I am saddened by the passage of Proposition 50,” he said. “But I am content in this, at least: that our campaign educated the people of California so they could make an informed, if in my view unwise, decision about such a technical but critical issue as redistricting reform, a decision forced to be made over such a very short time.”
Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the “No on Prop 50 – Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” campaign, said that its effort was drowned by Newsom’s vast fundraising edge.
“In the end, the tens of millions poured in to promote these gerrymandered maps were too much to overcome, as Newsom put his national ambitions ahead of protecting California’s voter-approved independent redistricting commission and the millions of voices now silenced,” she said in a statement.
Proposition 50 was the sole item on the ballot for the statewide special election Tuesday. Supporters see the ballot measure as a referendum about Trump, who remains extremely unpopular in California, while opponents call Proposition 50 an underhanded power grab by Democrats.
Supporters of the proposal had the edge going into election day. They vastly outraised their rivals, and Proposition 50 led in recent polls.
Elections took place across the nation Tuesday, with Democrats claiming major victories including in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial contests, the New York City mayoral race and the Proposition 50 vote.
Supporters celebrate during the election night watch party for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
California voters had been inundated with television ads, mailers and social media posts for weeks about the high-stakes election, so much so that only 2% of the likely voters were undecided, according to a recent UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by The Times.
“Usually there was always a rule — look at undecideds in late-breaking polls and assume most would vote no,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “But this poll shows there are very few of them out there.”
Polls opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday and closed at 8 p.m., although any voter in line at that time was allowed to cast a ballot. The state allows same-day voter registration on election day, permitting Californians to cast a conditional ballot that will be counted if their eligibility is verified.
Minutes after polls opened, Trump posted on Truth Social that “The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED.”
The president, who has not actively campaigned against the proposition aside from a few social media posts, provided no evidence for his allegations. His Department of Justice has said it was sending monitors to polling locations across the state.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber pushed back at Trump’s claims along with similar ones made by the president’s press secretary.
Election workers organize sorted ballots by precinct at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana on Tuesday.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“If there are irregularities, what are they? Why won’t they identify them? Where exactly is this fraud?” Weber said in a statement. “Ramblings don’t equate with fact.”
Voters, some in shorts and flip-flops, waited in line for 30 minutes or more outside a voting center in Huntington Beach on Tuesday afternoon.
“Vote no, don’t ruin Huntington Beach!” one man shouted as he left the center.
Under Proposition 50, the conservative seaside city will fall into a new congressional district that includes Long Beach, but no longer keeps some Republican-rich communities to the south. The politically divided district is currently represented by Dave Min (D-Irvine), but is designed to become a safer seat for Democrats under the new districts created by Proposition 50.
Huntington Beach resident Luke Walker, 18, spent time researching the arguments for and against Proposition 50 and came down against it because he believes the redesigned districts will ignore residents’ voices.
“You look at the people who will be voting and I don’t think they’ll be properly represented in the new state lines,” said Walker, who predicted that if the ballot measure passes, it will lead to more division. “It’s going to cause more of a rift in society. People are going to start disliking each other even more.”
Sister Theres Tran, of Lovers of the Holy Cross-Los Angeles, votes in Santa Ana on Tuesday.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
DeAyn Van Eyk, 63, also voted against the proposition on Tuesday, believing that Newsom, who is considering running for president in 2028, is using it to further his own political interests.
“It sounds like it’s good for him,” she said. “I totally dislike Newsom. … I don’t like Trump as a person — I think he can be a good leader.”
Among those who voted for the proposition was Huntington Beach resident Miko Vaughn, 48, who said she wanted Democrats to “level the playing field.”
“It’s a temporary thing, but I think it’s important with the changes in Texas that it stays even,” Vaughn said.
Though some see Proposition 50 as a proxy war between Trump and Newsom, Vaughn views it differently and said it’s just “against Trump.”
“I feel like there’s not much we can do individually, so it does feel good to do something,” Vaughn said, adding that she was impressed to see so many people turn out during a non-presidential election.
Californians had been voting for weeks. Registered voters received mail ballots about a month ago, and early voting centers were opened across the state.
More than 7.2 million Californians — 31% of the state’s 23 million registered voters — had cast ballots as of Tuesday morning before the polls opened, according to a voting tracker run by Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the proposed districts on the ballot. Democrats were already outpacing Republicans, though GOP voters were believed to be more likely to vote in person Tuesday.
The gap in early voting alarmed GOP leaders and strategists.
Matthew Harper, former Huntington Beach mayor and former state Assembly member, votes at the Huntington Beach Central Library.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“In California, we already know they surrendered,” Steve Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist for several months during his first term in office, said on his podcast over the weekend. “Huntington Beach, California … it is full MAGA, one of the most important parts of Southern California, yet we’re going to get blown out, I don’t know, by 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 points on the massive redistricting Prop. 50.”
Congressional districts traditionally are drawn every decade after the U.S. census. In California, the boundaries are created by an independent commission created by voters in 2010.
But after Trump urged Texas Republicans to alter their House boundaries to boost the number of GOP members in Congress, Newsom and other California Democrats countered by proposing new districts that could add five Democrats to the state’s 52-member delegation.
The high-stakes election attracted tens of millions of dollars and a carousel of prominent politicians, notably former President Obama in support and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in opposition, who were featured in ads about the ballot measure, including some that aired during the World Series won by the Dodgers.
Democrats who previously championed independent redistricting to remove partisan politics from the process argue that they needed to suspend that political ideal to stop the president from furthering his agenda during his last two years in the White House.
Citing public opposition to immigration raids that began in Los Angeles in June, the military being deployed in American cities, and cuts to nutrition assistance programs for low-income families and healthcare programs for seniors and the disabled, Democrats argue that winning control of Congress in next year’s election is critical to stopping the president’s agenda.
“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama says in an ad that includes footage of ICE raids. “With Prop. 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks. Prop. 50 puts our elections back on a level playing field, preserves independent redistricting over the long term, and lets the people decide. Return your ballot today.”
In Culver City, a sign points to a polling station at City Hall on election day.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Republicans who oppose the effort countered that Proposition 50 is an affront to the electorate that voted to create an independent redistricting commission.
They want to “take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Proposition 50,” Schwarzenegger says in an ad that was filmed when he spoke to USC students. “The Constitution does not start with ‘We, the politicians.’ It starts with ‘We, the people.’ … Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”
More than $193 million was contributed in support of and opposition to Proposition 50, making it one of the costliest ballot measures in state history.
Even with passage of the ballot measure, it’s uncertain whether potential Democratic gains in California’s congressional delegation will be enough to offset the number of Republicans elected because of gerrymandering in GOP-led states.
Times staff writer Katie King contributed to this report from Sacramento.
