HOUSTON — California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s victory lap over passage of Proposition 50 reached Texas on Saturday, days after his state greenlit his plan to blunt Gov. Greg Abbott’s redistricting effort to get more Texas Republicans in Congress.
Before Newsom could start speaking during his brief stop at a rally in Houston, the crowd of around 800 Democrats took the chance to yell out “thank you,” and he returned the sentiment.
“You woke us up,” Newsom said, referring to Democrats’ resistance to redistricting. “You didn’t just have your back here, you had our back in the state of California.“
after Abbott signed a new congressional map in August that was redrawn to maximize the state’s Republican representation in washington D.C., amid pressure from President Donald Trump, Newsom pitched an idea to voters to offset texas’ GOP gains with additional Democratic seats in California.
California voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 50 on Tuesday, a plan Newsom crafted to directly target Texas’ new congressional map. The ballot measure cleared the way for Newsom to allow the legislature to approve the Golden State’s redrawn congressional districts to carve out five more Democratic seats. Abbott bypassed that step, putting it up to the state’s lawmakers to decide on a new map without voter’s permission.
The California ballot measure passed with nearly 64% of the vote, and its decisive approval is a big win for Newsom, who is considering a presidential bid in 2028. If the new maps pass as planned,nearly all of California’s congressional representatives will be Democrats.California currently has 43 Democratic House members and nine Republicans — the new maps would secure 48 blue seats. And Newsom took to Texas, the very state Prop 50 targets, to celebrate.
Saturday’s crowd celebrated with him, including 18-year-old Ben Webb of Cypress, a northwest suburb of Houston.
“He did it with voter approval, which Greg Abbott didn’t do,” said Webb, who recently became a registered voter. “So I would say that’s an even bigger political win.”
Webb’s friend, Thomas Mitschke, who is also 18, echoed that sentiment.
“He took it to the voters instead of just doing it like Greg abbott and kind of just jamming it in without voter approval,” Mitschke said. “That’s how democracy is supposed to work.”
Abbott’s office has not responded to a request for comment.
Texas’ new congressional district lines have the potential to boost the GOP’s footing in Congress by squeezing more Democratic voters in Houston and Dallas into districts the minority party already controls — a strategy known as “packing.” It also “cracks” left-leaning communities by splitting voters who supported Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 into Republican districts, according to an analysis by The Texas Tribune.
For example,the 9th Congressional District in Southwest Houston,represented by Congressman Al Green,went from voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 percentage points to one that Trump would have carried by a 20-point margin under the new lines. Much of the 9th District was merged into the 18th, where Green, who spoke at the rally, will now be seeking reelection. He would now face the winner of the upcoming special election runoff for the seat in the March primary.
The maps, along with a list of other reasons, is why both Webb and Mitschke said they will be casting some of their first votes to replace Abbott with a Democratic governor. They also said if Newsroom ran for president, he would have their vote.
Texas’ maps have been caught in a web of legal challenges since 2021 when the current districts were approved. Lawsuits claim that the mid-decade redistricting process was flawed from the start, and that effort came at the cost of Latino and Black communities, which have largely supported Democratic candidates.
Newsom’s rally drew a range of Democratic leaders across Harris County and the state, including Harris County Commissioners Adrian garcia and Rodney Ellis, Congresswomen Lizzie Fletcher and Jasmine crockett, and gubernatorial candidate and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
Newsom’s plan to blunt abbott’s effort was a long shot. Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant who leads the Center for the political Future at the University of Southern California, told the Guardian that Newsom took a big gamble on Prop 50 — and it paid off.
“But more than that is the fact that he fought back — that he dared to do this, that people said it was dangerous for him, and he forged ahead with it anyway,” he said.
Kathleen Davies, a reverend at a Presbyterian church in Southwest Houston who was born and raised in California, said Newsom’s visit reminded her that despite being a Democrat in a deeply red state, she still has a voice.
“We’re a big state, and he’s in a big state, and I think it’s important for us to know that we still are all connected as Americans,” said Davies, who moved to Texas about three decades ago. “Even though there’s so much talk about, like, keep California out of Texas or whatever, I mean, we’re all americans who want to be represented and the gerrymandering has got to stop.”
Newsom isn’t stopping with California. He’s encouraging other governors in blue states, such as Illinois and New York, to follow his lead and push back against Trump’s effort to hold onto a Republican-controlled Congress.
“We cannot rest,” Newsom said on Saturday before heading to Brazil for a conference, “until we take back the House of Representatives.”
