Democrats like Gavin Newsom win gold in hypocrisy on Texas gerrymandering | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Democrats criticize Texas gerrymandering, despite similar moves in their states.
- Newsom, Pritzker and Hochul accuse GOP of tactics their states already employ.
- Claims of defending democracy clash with documented manipulation of district maps.
Any politician with a career of appreciable length will eventually get caught in hypocrisy. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is reaching a level of shamelessness that, if it were a virtue, might propel him straight to the presidency he so clearly desires.
Most of Newsom’s fellow big-state Democratic governors have succumbed to the same inconsistency in their furious responses to Texas Republicans’ plans to redraw congressional districts. But in this unending game of “How low can you go?”, they are amateurs against a master.
Newsom penned a letter this week to President Donald Trump, asking him to call off the Texas proposal. It’s well established that Trump’s political operation suggested the bad idea of redrawing Texas districts in the middle of the decade to add even more partisan gerrymandering. The president and his aides reportedly fear that a Democratic House majority next year that would block his agenda and try to impeach him again.
The Californian declared the Texas effort “an affront to American democracy” and said it risks destabilizing the body politic. Sounds pretty terrible, right? And yet, Newsom vowed, he would do the exact same thing if the Texas Legislature proceeds after House Democrats finally return to Austin.
The way Newsom describes it mimics the logic of the Cold War: mutually assured destruction. In this case, though, Democrats launched their missiles first.
Newsom’s party boasts an edge of 43-9 in California’s U.S. House delegation. That’s 83%. Texas probably would go from a Republican advantage of 25-13 (66%) to 30-8 (79%). Democracy, it appears, was long ago affronted.
The governor also had the cheek to say that “legislative district maps should be drawn by independent, citizen-led efforts, as we have done in California for the last two decades.” What a funny coincidence that those independents landed on a map where Democrats did even better than their home-state presidential candidate, Californian Kamala Harris, who took 58.5% in 2024.
Except that it’s no coincidence. The problems with supposedly independent commissions are well-documented, but the bottom line is that they, too, fall prey to partisanship. Newsom’s Democrats were caught red-handed manipulating the process. Left unsaid in the governor’s letter is that to retaliate over Texas redistricting, his state will have to abandon the very model he professes to love.
Another Democratic leader who sees a president in the mirror every morning when he shaves is JB Pritzker of Illinois. He’s made a big show of welcoming the Texas Democrats to the Chicago area, stacking up favors he’ll no doubt try to collect on in the 2028 primaries.
Illinois, however, might win the world championship of gerrymandering, with its 14-3 Democratic split (82%). The congressional map is drawn so brazenly that Chicago’s O’Hare airport lies in two different districts, the conservative Washington Free Beacon news site reported.
When presented on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” with evidence of what his party has done to democracy, Pritzker labeled it “a distraction.” In the same answer, he warned that if Texas redistricts half as effectively as Illinois, “democracy is at stake.”
The governor declared that Trump and Texas Republicans were trying to “steal seats.” Living in Chicago will distort your definition of crime, but Pritzker’s faux outrage smacks of Al Capone lecturing about the evils of liquor.
To recap: If Texas goes through with the GOP plan, the state will still be less gerrymandered than either California or Illinois. Looks like democracy there ended a while ago.
The bronze medal goes to Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, where Democrats hold a 19-7 advantage. Texas is attempting a “legal insurrection,” she cried in a guest column written for the Houston Chronicle.
She should know, since her state was busted for what, under her own terms, could only be called an illegal insurrection. A New York state appeals court declared that New York violated the law when, in 2021, it attempted to boost the Democrats’ share of U.S. House seats to 22 out of 26.
The person who signed off on that map, of course, was Hochul.
Redistricting is a sordid affair. Thanks to supercomputers and ever-escalating partisanship, districts can be drawn with contortions and narrow connections that link voters of a certain party who live far from each other.
The latest Texas effort is not virtuous. Redoing a map in the middle of the decade opens the door to constant redistricting. The likely outcome would be fewer districts where minority voters control the outcome, a backward step that doesn’t serve the state’s interests.
But Democrats have displayed mastery of cynical partisanship. Newsom, Pritzker and Hochul should heed advice from the “Anchorman” characters: “Take it easy, Champ. Why don’t you stop talking for a while? Maybe sit the next couple plays out.”
This story was originally published August 14, 2025 at 4:55 AM with the headline "Democrats like Gavin Newsom win gold in hypocrisy on Texas gerrymandering | Opinion."
