Liberals and conservatives are familiar foes of California gerrymandering | Opinion
Ryan Jacobsen is a fourth-generation farmer who grows wine grapes near Fresno. Cynthia Dai advises start-up companies in San Francisco. Their very different California lives have had no reason to ever intersect, until last week.
They are part of a diverse coalition emerging to oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to return gerrymandering to California congressional races via Proposition 50 on the Nov. 4 ballot.
“I’m amazed with all the background she’s provided me,” said Jacobsen, who doubles as a farmer and chief executive officer of the Fresno County Farm Bureau.
Dai, a veteran of California’s redistricting wars, is more accustomed than Jacobsen to the unorthodox bedfellows that historically converge when map drawing comes to the state’s political forefront.
“California has always been a national leader in promoting democracy,” Dai said. Until now. Newsom, to thwart partisan remapping efforts underway in Texas and other Republican states, wants to fight back with redrawn maps that could replace half of the state’s 10 Republican members of Congress with Democrats.
Dai is a long-time Democrat. She simply thinks there is a better, more democratic way to fight back against Trump: “The more obvious solution is to leverage all the fair and competitive districts that (independent redistricting) already created.”
Prop. 50 proposes to suspend congressional maps that were independently drawn by a citizens commission and replace them with gerrymandered ones favoring Democrats through the 2030 election cycle. Absent another voter-approved initiative, independently redrawn maps would return in 2032. Maps for state legislative seats are not affected.
There is nothing bipartisan about the effort to pass Prop 50. Its web page showcases all of the state’s familiar Democratic Party faces such as Newsom, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It was a similar story in Texas, where left-leaning organizations and Democrats were ignored by a GOP-dominated Texas legislature and a Republican governor who conspired to gerrymander districts to be more Republican at the behest of President Donald Trump. This was done in Texas without seeking voter approval as California is doing in November.
A history of bipartisan alliances
In the past, Republicans who bristled at Democrats for drawing partisan maps were joined by Democrats who chose a fair process over the partisan designs of party leaders.
The ranks of Democrats standing for the principle of fairly drawn congressional districts, as opposed to essentially cheating, appear to be thinner in 2025, largely due to Trump and the threat many Californians sense that he poses to the nation and world. The California League of Women Voters, frequent opponents of gerrymandering over the years, will be on the sidelines this election. So will California Common Cause, a decision that prompted mass resignations from its board.
Dai admits to getting an earful about her opposition to Prop. 50 from her fellow Democrats. “I have plenty of my Democrat friends who are struggling with this right now.”
She’s not in the least. “I don’t know why a Californian would give up her right to vote and be the sacrificial lamb and turn that power over to a party boss,” Dai said. “That is essentially what Prop. 50 asks us to do.”
Dai’s liberal surroundings are a far cry from those in Fresno, where Jacobsen has long found himself at the California political epicenter of close races for Congress. It’s a part of the Valley’s very fabric.
“I’m proud of these competitive districts,” said Jacobsen, who declined to state his party affiliation. “It means so much to me personally.” The other day, for example, he and others jointly met with Republican Rep. David Valadao of Hanford and Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of Fresno about immigration. “How many places in the country is that actually taking place?”
Charles Munger Jr., the namesake son of Warren Buffett’s long-time partner at Berkshire Hathaway, is a primary bankroller of the No on Prop. 50 campaign. Of course he is. Munger has been a constant in California’s redistricting universe ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger switched careers and became governor.
It was in a far more innocent era when Schwarzenegger began alliances with the left to challenge the years-long stranglehold of California Democrats in the state Legislature, redrawing maps every decade for their own benefit. It took three elections to place redistricting in the hands of a carefully balanced commission.
Proposition 20, the initiative to independently redraw the maps for Congress, was passed by voters in 2010. Dai was a member of that first commission.
Gerrymandering, she says, is cheating. Pure and simple. “And it’s cheaper. It’s the lazy, lazy politician’s way out.”
Through Prop. 50, Democrats are hoping to flip five congressional seats from Republican to Democrat. How many could they win the old fashioned way, with better candidates and a message?
“Democrats could pick up four seats,” said Fabian Valdez, a Prop. 50 opponent. He is a demographer/scientist who has worked on mapping with the redistricting commission, and a Republican. For Democrats to be successful under today’s fair maps, he said, would require an effective campaign by Democrats to sway Californians, a so-called “blue wave.”
Prop. 50 is arguably an easy choice for California voters who happen to be staunch Republicans. The toughest decision will be among those independents and Democrats who struggle with Trump and California’s correct response to him.
A healthy California democracy can only survive long-term if coalitions can freely form to advance their shared interest, regardless of party or where they live in this large state. The new alliance between Dai and Jacobsen is a reminder of how California politics once functioned on a routine basis. They represent the No on Prop. 50, well, while coming from vastly different corners of California to support the idea of defying politics to keep Californias elections fair.
Our politics are awful, with partisan spin machines that foment finger-pointing rather than soul searching. That we have a proposal to fight gerrymandering with more gerrymandering speaks to how low we all have managed to sink.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Liberals and conservatives are familiar foes of California gerrymandering | Opinion."