San Joaquin Valley may be battleground in redrawing congressional districts | Opinion
The San Joaquin Valley could be a key front in a new battle for voters if Gov. Gavin Newsom succeeds in his effort to redraw congressional districts.
Newsom wants to get more Democrats into California’s congressional delegation to blunt President Donald Trump’s agenda in the final years of his administration. To do that, Newsom wants congressional districts to be redrawn so Democrats can win more seats in next year’s midterm elections. More Democrats means the party can control the House of Representatives and oppose Trump.
California’s congressional delegation is already heavily Democratic. Of the state’s 52 members in the House, 43 are Democrats. Only nine are Republicans. Three of those nine Republicans represent areas of the San Joaquin Valley.
How the congressional districts in the Valley would be impacted is not yet known. But Paul Mitchell, a redistricting expert working for Democrats, says it would not be hard to gain more seats for the party at the expense of the GOP.
“Democrats haven’t had partisan line-drawing since the ‘90s,” Mitchell told the Los Angeles Times. “So there’s all this partisan gain left on the table for decades. If you ever do crack open the map, there’s just many available to bolster” Democrats.
San Joaquin Valley as battleground
Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at Fresno State, expects any redrawing will involve moving Republican voters out of GOP-majority districts into ones that are majority Democrat.
Consider Rep. Vince Fong’s 20th District. Fong, a Republican from Bakersfield, has a district that extends to Clovis. Forty-seven percent of the voters in the 20th are registered as Republicans; just 26% are Democrats.
Bordering Fong’s district is the 21st, which Democrat Jim Costa represents. It covers most of Fresno County and extends into parts of Tulare County. In Costa’s district, nearly 41% of the voters are registered Democrats.
Lines could be redrawn so that GOP swaths of Fong’s district — such as Clovis — would come under Costa while Democratic areas on Costa’s south end could move to Fong, making the 20th more competitive. The idea would be to dilute Fong’s Republican base while keeping Democrats as the registered majority in Costa’s.
“If (Newsom) wants to replace Republicans with Democrats, then I guess the southern SJ Valley, and perhaps parts of OC (Orange County) and Riverside would be the targets,” said Holyoke.
“They would need to find a way to cut up the Republican communities and distribute them into the other districts,” he added.
The Fong-Costa scenario just outlined is strictly my speculation. Fong just got elected to his first term, replacing former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who resigned before his term was up. While Fong might be vulnerable given his short tenure, the power base of the 20th has long resided in Bakersfield. Redrawing it may not prove feasible.
Another district with strong Democratic registration is the 22nd, which Republican David Valadao currently holds. The Hanford-based seat has 40% Democratic registration to 28.3% Republican. Despite that, Valadao has proven a strong campaigner, and he lost just once in recent years to a Democratic opponent. That occurred, however, in the midterm election of Trump’s first term.
Newsom could pick up a Democrat seat the easy way if the party could just figure out how to defeat Valadao again.
Newsom’s unfolding drama
The state Legislature, now on recess until Aug. 18, will play a key role if an attempt is made to redesign congressional districts for next year’s midterm elections.
As reported by The Sacramento Bee, lawmakers have several options: they could pass a law that temporarily puts redistricting authority back to the Legislature, then approve a new congressional map. They could also place a measure on the ballot — and Newsom could call a special election later this year — that asks voters to sign off on either a new map or shifting line-drawing power back to the Legislature.
Of course, the minority Republican legislators in the statehouse could sue to hold up any such efforts on the grounds it violates the constitutional amendment that in 2010 formed the citizen commission now in charge of drawing the lines.
Texas lawmakers on Wednesday finished a new redistricting map that could add five more GOP seats to its congressional delegation. It is this attempt that Newsom wants to defeat with a similar number of new Democrats from California.
Will Newsom succeed? Sit back and watch the political drama unfold.
