California voters will determine whether or not to support a partisan gerrymandered Congressional map on Nov. 4, something Rep. Tom McClintock thinks voters will reject.
McClintock sat down for a podcast interview on Sunrise FM, where he shared his thoughts on redistricting and other topics.
Driving the news: Last month Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Election Rigging Response Act, which sets a special election on Nov. 4 to approve a new Congressional map that was proposed by the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature.
- California only has nine GOP representatives out of the 52 seats it has in Congress, despite voters supporting Congressional Republican candidates with around 40% of the vote last year.
- The new map targets five GOP-held districts, while McClintock would be one of only four Republicans to have their districts maintain a Republican advantage in voter registration.
What he’s saying: “Wherever you are politically, I think most people have a clear sense of right and wrong, of fair and unfair, and what Newsom is doing is unfair,” McClintock said. “Furthermore, even with the commission, it’s a stacked deck against Republicans, mainly because illegal immigrants are included in the population count, which inflates the importance of Democratic districts relative to the Republican ones.”
- McClintock compared the current Democratic redistricting effort to Proposition 27 in 2010. Prop 27 would have repealed the 2008 measure that established the independent citizens redistricting commission to draw Congressional and Legislative lines. Nearly 60% of voters rejected Prop 27 at the time, giving McClintock hope for a similar vote this November.
- “Democrats tried to abolish it in 2010, and they were rebuffed at the ballot box 60-40, so I think that we’re going to see the same thing happen this time – we have to if Democracy is to mean anything,” McClintock said.
- He also said he has not spent much time looking at the proposed map since he does not believe it will be approved.
- “We base our entire form of government on the assumption that people are fair minded most of the time, and the majority is right a majority of the time,” McClintock said. “And I think that’s a sound assumption. I think that’s going to play out in the election coming up on Nov. 4.”
