California Republicans thought they could beat Newsom's gerrymander. They crashed and burned.

arlier this summer, the 68-year-old physicist, good-government donor and Republican mega-donor Charles Munger Jr. made a social-media account for the to begin with time.

Just a few days prior, Gov. Gavin Newsom had drifted the concept of a mid-cycle divided gerrymander of his state’s U.S. House maps to counter a comparative, Republican-led exertion underway in Texas. Munger, the greatest giver to 2008 and 2010 campaigns that evacuated line-drawing specialist from lawmakers in California, saw a chance to preempt it. Munger might not have known everything that was to come: gathering pledges disappointments, the excruciating disintegration of a good-government amalgamation, his title dragged through the mud, and the extreme drop of the free redistricting laws which he made a difference architect.

But possibly he had a few hunch. And so, on the evening of July 16, Munger terminated off a message into the void.

“Any endeavor to weaken the nonpartisan California Redistricting Commission will be emphatically contradicted in the courts and at the poll box,” he composed on a recently made X account. At the time, Newsom’s arrange to tear up California’s prevalent autonomous redistricting commission, gerrymander the state’s congressional seats, and at that point inquire voters to sign off on it appeared to be a hubristic arrange bordering on silly. Surveys at the time recommended the degree would be hugely troublesome to pass. Indeed numerous Democrats accepted the arrange was unreasonable. Maybe most dauntingly, Newsom had braced for a impressive, bipartisan resistance campaign sponsored by national Republican cash. But as Tuesday’s result appears, the Republican exertion to vanquish Suggestion 50, on life back for the past month, was never up to the fight.

What started as an collusion of comfort would inevitably break up into inner quarreling, vital perplexity and an exasperated Republican National Committee part drawing closer beat party authorities with a “tin cup.” Why the union unraveled, and how, is the story of Recommendation 50’s passage.

“No way Newsom was going to get absent with this”

In mid-August, as Newsom attempted to surge a unused outline onto the Nov. 4 poll, an resistance campaign was gathering steam.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told his home-state congressional appointment that he would point to raise up to $100 million to combat Newsom’s gerrymander. Munger was contracting a group for the campaign committee called Secure Voters To begin with as he commissioned surveys and center bunches to get it voter attitudes.

Advisers for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the confront of redistricting changes amid his time in office, were demonstrating that he was willing to campaign against the degree, portion of what he called “race to the bottom.” The previous senator, by at slightest one degree the country’s most well known Republican, posted a picture to Instagram of himself pumping press whereas wearing a shirt that perused “terminate gerrymandering.”

Influential good-government bunches, strikingly California Common Cause and the state’s Alliance of Ladies Voters chapter, both of which had collaborated with Munger and Schwarzenegger 15 a long time prior to pass redistricting changes, signaled they would connect the battle. In an early Eminent mail to Munger, California Common Cause’s official chief laid out plans to combat gerrymandering in Texas and California, telling Munger he was “excited” to accomplice and swearing a “full-scale campaign to overcome a gerrymandering poll initiative.”

Taken together, there was the making of a consolidation that seem challenge Newsom’s political machine. Munger and his group of good-government reformers would target politically unaffiliated voters and Democrats hesitant to tear up the autonomous redistricting commission. A isolated committee, called Halt Sacramento’s Control Snatch, driven by McCarthy and previous California Republican Party chair Jessica Millan Patterson, would center on mobilizing Republicans.

“You’re going to see distinctive couriers, but it’s all going to be the same message,” Millan Patterson said in Eminent. “That message is: California voters chosen in 2010 that they didn’t need Sacramento lawmakers choosing who were their constituents. They needed the individuals to have the control to choose who the agents are, and that’s why we have the Citizens Redistricting Commission.”

The combined accounts of the two parallel committees, party authorities accepted, would be able to coordinate Newsom’s gathering pledges device and at slightest battle the advertisement wars to a draw. Schwarzenegger would bring star control to coordinate Newsom’s bully lectern. “McCarthy comes out and it’s looking truly great … he was going to have a imposing warchest,” said Shawn Steel, a part of the RNC official committee who has made a difference lead the state party’s endeavors all through the Prop 50 campaign. “There was no way that Newsom was going to get absent with this.”

But there were inactive pressures between the different No groups and their vital choices. Munger and Schwarzenegger, both pre-MAGA Republicans who had developed repelled from their party, were similarly basic of Texas’ redistricting ploy. The good-government bunches were regularly at chances with Trump, but McCarthy, a near White House partner, was improbable to do anything that broke with him.

In a state where Trump’s endorsement rating drifted around 30 percent, a campaign that got to be a submission on the president appeared nearly certain to be a losing suggestion. Early on, concurring to Steel, all of the parties included came to the choice that they ought to work to keep Trump from playing any open part in the race.

While Newsom attempted to outline the address along divided lines, Munger would take the lead advancing the merits of California’s prevalent, voter-approved, autonomous redistricting commission. Hours after Newsom marked the enactment alluding Suggestion 50 to the poll, Munger seeded Secure Voters To begin with with its introductory $10 million. He trusted the early cash implantation would purchase time whereas the developing campaigns sought after other cash elsewhere.

For whom the kettlebell tolls

Munger’s individual fortune was sufficient to offer assistance adversaries characterize their mission early. Inside days, Munger’s campaign landed its to begin with communication in the mailboxes of persuadable voters, saying that Prop 50 was “weakening our majority rule process” and conspicuously citing the president of the Alliance of Ladies Voters of California.

Protect Voters To begin with was checking on good-government bunches to approve their contentions to centrist and left-leaning voters in California as of now cautious of giving lawmakers more control. Common Cause, particularly, had a long relationship with Munger, having allowed him its National Civic Authority Grant in 2012 for his work on redistricting reforms.But by 2025, circumstances had changed. On Admirable 20, the day some time recently Newsom put Prop 50 on the poll, California Common Cause declared that the degree met its “fairness criteria,” angering a few of its claim administration. (The bunch denied a consequent Munger ask for a assembly, and at that point a $200,000 gift from him with the clarification Common Cause “could not be bought.”)

A week afterward, the Alliance of Ladies Voters sponsored absent from its possess long relationship with Munger. The league’s state chapter reported it would not take a position on Prop 50, avoiding that “it is time for the voters to decide.”

Schwarzenegger, as well, appeared recently irresolute almost the cause. After his starting Instagram post on Aug. 15, the assumed confront of an resistance exertion had gone quiet almost Prop 50. When Munger flew down to Los Angeles to meet with him, Schwarzenegger made it clear that he would not formally connect any committee.

With few other major givers, Munger’s outsized centrality to the No side’s campaign before long got to be a obligation. Seizing on his riches and party association, California Democrats started bludgeoning Munger in early September as an “anti-choice mega millionaire” and derided him in promotions as the Jack to Trump’s Ruler in a fixed card game.Munger’s group couldn’t very concur on how to battle back. When Munger’s staff encouraged him to tell the open that he was not in-fact anti-choice or homophobic, he stood up to. Counsels needed Munger to go assist in restriction to the Texas gerrymander, in expansion to California’s. A few proposed enlisting a demographer to offer assistance decipher modern locale maps so the campaign seem make personalized requests to voters almost how the changes would influence their political representation.

The campaign’s promotions were put in the hands of Beam McNally and Richard Sanctuary, whose McNally Sanctuary Partners had won Munger’s devotion on his past effective redistricting campaigns. Their to begin with advertisement against Prop 50 — and for weeks Ensure Voters First’s most broadly publicized message — appearing a kettlebell smashing wood squares perusing “Fair Elections” was broadly panned for its school building feel.

“When I saw that advertisement, I was like…what the fuck is this,” said a no-side expert, allowed secrecy to talk unreservedly approximately strategies. “But [Munger] is a exceptionally faithful man.”

Despite its vigorous budget, the Munger campaign conceded advanced space to Newsom and other Majority rule figures organizing back for the Yes side online. Whereas Munger had kettlebells, Newsom was facilitating a telethon-style occasion with social-media influencers and rehashing himself as a high-concept Trump impressionist. In September, Ensure Voters To begin with accounts had posted fair a modest bunch of times on X and Facebook, to as it were a few dozen supporters on each platform.

Schwarzenegger did, eventually, swim into the talk about — but as it were on his terms. On Sept. 15, he made his most substantive comments in resistance to Newsom’s redistricting campaign at a College of Southern California gathering, calling Prop 50 “insane” and caution voters not to “get closer to the cliff.” Schwarzenegger’s counsels permitted Munger’s group to send a camera team, the closest he would come to recording an notice for Secure Voters To begin with. One including Schwarzenegger’s comments rapidly supplanted the kettlebells.

The McCarthy-led campaign, for its portion, was attempting to mount an plainly divided exertion to lock in Republicans. When inquired on Sept. 3 what would have to go off-base for the No side to lose, Millan Patterson’s reaction to the speculative was “we didn’t have the assets to turn out our voters.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/05/no-tick-tock-hed-00631875

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