Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Two of California’s safest House Democrats say they’re preparing to take one for the team — accepting slightly more competitive districts as part of the state’s quest to find five new blue seats.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to counter President Donald Trump’s effort to increase the number of GOP seats in Texas with a midcycle gerrymandering of his own. State lawmakers could vote soon after they return from recess on Aug. 18 to hold a November special election asking Californians for the power to redraw congressional districts ahead of the midterms.
But decreasing the number of Republican seats means some deep-blue California districts will take on a slightly more purple tinge.
San Diego Reps. Scott Peters and Sara Jacobs — both of whom represent overwhelmingly Democratic areas — are among the members who would likely see an increase in Republican voters if lines are redrawn. Both told Playbook they would prefer to avoid the sudden redistricting, but that Trump’s Texas push warrants it.
“This is bigger than me and my seat,” Jacobs said. “This is about the survival of democracy and our country. I don't think any of us want to go forward with this, but it's the only way to respond to what they're doing in Texas.”
Peters said he actually agrees with Northern California Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley’s crusade to outlaw redistricting outside the typical 10-year time span. But, he added, “We’re not the ones who picked this fight.”
Which gets to the cold reality for GOP lawmakers in California and New York: The very Republicans who helped deliver their party’s congressional majority by winning in the two mega-states in 2020 and 2022 could be collateral damage to Trump’s gambit.
That includes House veterans such as Reps. Darrell Issa and Ken Calvert, both of California, but also younger, promising Republican lawmakers such as [Kevin] Kiley, 40, and Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.), 38.
“This creates a situation where you’re going to lose blue state members, which over the long haul are critical to keeping the majority,” Lawler told me.
It’s all, Lawler said, “mutually assured destruction once people go full throttle.”
The redistricting threat is especially cruel to Lawler, who was already eager to avoid yet another tough race in his Hudson Valley district by running for governor next year. But Trump made clear he preferred Rep. Elise Stefanik, a born-again MAGA disciple, as the standard-bearer even though running a Trump acolyte statewide may only ensure Stefanik ends next year where she started this year: hoping for a Trump cabinet appointment.
For Kiley, the Newsom reprisal to Trump may extinguish a congressional career that just began in 2023.
