Obama supports California redistricting, says GOP can’t ‘rig the game’

Former president Barack Obama on Tuesday said he supports California Democrats’ moves to redraw congressional districts to offset similar efforts from Texas Republicans.

Texas’s proposed map could create at least five additional Republican-safe districts, and California’s push – framed as something akin to a trigger law – would create a similar number of additional Democratic-leaning districts as a countermeasure as the parties battle for control of the narrowly divided House next year. Obama said that what Texas Republicans are doing requires an equally aggressive response from Democrats. But in the long term, the former president told those gathered for a National Democratic Redistricting Committee fundraiser, there should be no political gerrymandering in America.

“I wanted just a fair fight between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s got better ideas, and take it to the voters and see what happens,” Obama said. “But I want to be very clear: Given that Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House that is effectively saying, ‘Gerrymander for partisan purposes so we can maintain the House despite our unpopular policies, redistrict right in the middle of a decade between censuses’ – which is not how the system was designed – I have tremendous respect for how Governor [Gavin] Newsom has approached this.”

Unlike in Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-led legislature can change the state’s maps, California Democrats must pass bills ordering the California secretary of state to put a measure on the November ballot that would establish a new map. Placing the measure on the ballot requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature, and Democrats control both houses by margins larger than that. The measure would ask voters to amend the state constitution by approving the new Democrat-tilted map for three election cycles.

Newsom (D) is leading the effort. Newsom has repeatedly said California’s hand has been forced by Texas, and language in the California bill makes clear that the state’s new map will only take effect if Texas’s does.

Obama said at the fundraiser for the organization headed by his first attorney general, Eric Holder, that he would prefer if California did not redraw its lines but appreciated that Democrats are fighting back.

“That is not my preference, but we cannot unilaterally allow one of the two major parties to rig the game,” Obama said. “And California is one of the states that has the capacity to offset a large state like Texas.”

Newsom also said California’s new maps will be temporary, an approach Obama said was a “smart, measured approach, designed to address a very particular problem in a very particular moment in time.”

Republican California State Assembly member David Tangipa, who serves on the chamber’s Elections Committee, said California’s Independent Redistricting Commission is a “national model for fairness and transparency” and that its maps should be left untouched.

“It’s disappointing that the former president would put partisan politics ahead of what’s best for Californians,” Tangipa said in a statement to the Washington Post. “Here in California, the people choose their representatives – not the other way around – and that’s exactly how it should stay.”

Obama on Tuesday touted that California voters will have a say in the process at the ballot box, something he said the legislatively drawn maps in Texas do not.

“The fact that California voters will have a chance to weigh in on this makes this act consistent with our democratic ideals, rather than in opposition to our democratic ideals,” Obama said.

Obama’s comments mark the first time the former president publicly expressed support for California’s push. Last week, he called Texas Democratic state lawmakers who fled the state to delay a vote on the new map and commended them for their efforts. The Texas legislature is expected to pass the Republican maps in the coming days, while the California legislature is expected to vote on the motion to bring the maps to the ballot by the end of the week.