Editor:
For the sake of democracy – and for the sake of Democratic Party chances in 2028, California voters should defeat Proposition 50.
Political observers know that Prop 50 retreats from democratic principles. California Gov. Gavin Newsom complains that the Republican dominated Texas state legislature has passed an undemocratic Congressional gerrymandering scheme. So to save what he and other establishment Democrats routinely call “our” democracy, they claim to “fight fire with fire” … with their own undemocratic Congressional gerrymandering scheme. Prop. 50 will burn off our democratic and nonpartisan redistricting commission for at least six years.
That Prop. 50 is as bad for the Democratic Party as it is for democracy is less obvious but just as real. Passing Prop. 50 will establish Gavin Newsom as the front runner for the 2028 Democratic Presidential nomination. But Newsom would be the weakest Democratic Presidential candidate in 2028. Citing his multi-billion dollar policy mishaps – from the high speed railroad boondoggle to the forest mismanagement that provided tinder for cataclysmic wildfires and now a confusing response to the Bay Area public transportation crisis – “He ruined California!” would be the Republicans overpowering campaign slogan.
Even as Newsom brags that California’s economy is the world’s fourth largest, he distracts from the fact that our state’s economy has America’s worst rate of poverty. These and his other failures would make Newsom an almost sure loser in November 2028. Newsom dismisses these failures with the smug style that he displayed at the French Laundry and in his sarcastically cynical dismissal of democratic norms at last year’s Democratic Convention on Pod Save America.
In a one party state like California, Newsom can get away with his tone deaf campaign style. But it’s toxic to independent voters who decide the swing states.
To preserve California’s democratic, nonpartisan redistricting commission and stop establishment Democrats from nominating their weakest Presidential candidate, vote “no” on Prop. 50.
Howard Isaac Williams, Richmond District resident.
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Republicans stopped playing by the rules years ago. Trump tried to overturn an election and Democrats failed to successfully prosecute him for that, despite a taped phone call of Trump asking the Secretary of Sate of Georgia to “find 11,780 votes,” the fake elector scheme, and Trump’s speech at the ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021 in which he told people to “march to the Capitol and fight like hell.” There was no accountability for any of this.
Now, Texas is redrawing the map to give Republicans an advantage in the mid-terms. Democrats are once again expected to take the high road and play by the rules while the Republicans break those very same rules?
I think we have to give Gavin created for letting the voters in California decide. It shows respect for the democratic process. The Texas state legislature did not ask for input from Texas voters; they just did it. Also, California’s new map will expire in 2031 (assuming 50 passes) while Texas’s new map is permanent.
I’ll be voting “yes” on 50. I think everyone should.
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Heck No Howard! What Trump Wants, and What MAGA Wants is your No Vote on Prop 50! … WRONG! … Vote YES on Prop 50! … We NEED our Democracy!!
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Redistricting should not be partisan. Californians already decided this issue. Now Newsom wants to change these districts. In doing so, he disenfranchises voters who may have a different opinion on issues than he does. If he wants to win over these people, he needs to do so by acknowledging their opinions and making compromises.
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I respectfully disagree.
The Larger issue is Trump destroying America by an overt and blatant Theft of the MidTerm elections. This id huge. This will install the racist MAGA regime and eliminate our Democratic Process of Fair Elections!
We need to counter Trump’s authorization Theft of the coming elections by fighting Fire with Fire. Thus Prop 50. And this will Return to Normal after these elections!
The MAGA thing is to vote No. The Democratic move is to Vote Yes on Prop 50!
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So you think it’s OK to disenfranchise people who have a different view on issues who live in these proposed gerrymandered districts? I’ll be voting NO on 50, and I am in no way MAGA.
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Remember, Prop 50 is a temporary measure that will sunset after the 2030 census. It temporarily replaces the Citizens Redistricting Commission until Trump stops trying to steal the House of Representatives from the people. The new maps would only be used for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 congressional elections whereas the Texas redistricting plan is an attempt to permanently steal the People’s House five years before the next Census. How many letters, I wonder, have Howard and Mari sent to show their outrage over what is happening in Texas? I hope dozens. I suspect none. Why none? Perhaps because they will fluster and bluster about it being “someone else’s” problem. Well, nope. We are Americans as well as Californians.
Trump’s and Abbot’s Texas is a hijacked vehicle, a pawn in a pretty hysterical endeavor to steal the People’s House permanently from essentially hard-working, reasonable people who they routinely vilify, slander, malign. And remember, these are the people who voted down The [bipartisan] Border Act (S.4361) last year because they wanted the problem of immigration to exist as a political weapon (!) showing no interest in supporting a conservative strict package of laws that would have gone a long way to solve the problems we continue to face.
Please recall that the Senate and electoral College are both already skewed “red” by representing States, not people. The House of Representatives, the People’s House, is the only institution within the three co-equal branches that is truly one person-one vote. We need the House to retain its oversight role and the power of the purse.
Don’t let Trump’s “fearful followers” take away our individual freedoms. If we do, we betray our ancestors so many of whom lived and died to maintain and celebrate a just society with co-equal branches, and a balance of power, under the rule of law. “With peace in our hearts,” we can fight to maintain the power of one-person-one-vote from those who wish to use fear and lies to wrestle it away. Prop 50 is a peaceful, non-violent, honest tactic in defense of sacred values against brazen attack. It is not fighting “fire with fire” so much as it is fighting a multi-pronged, carefully orchestrated coup with imaginative resistance. Again: remember, we are Americans as well as Californians.
And by the way, “the people” (who are united, and one can hope will never be defeated) are for the most part good, beautiful hard-working, and reasonable. Never forget it. Don’t let the right-wing propagandists win the day with their bizarre and unrelenting hysteria that “the people” are actually “communists” or “extremists,” “antifa” or “radical.” “Retribution” against democrats, journalists, artists, immigrants, as “enemies.” Such are the lies, the blood thrown in the water, that chums these authoritarian frenzies. When the media and the authoritarian playbook gang up on our norms and institutions, and thereby on the rights and needs of regular folks, we centrists (those folks Martin Luther King called “extremists for love”) have to use imaginative non-violent strategies to defend what is sacred.
We moderates will keep peaceful, keep working as we must, keep voting, keep marching, keep listening and writing and communicating, and move together past this giant but temporary sinkhole-of-a-regime—on the larger road of progress. We the people can and will endure and triumph and maintain our people’s house, even as authoritarians lick their chops at their adolescent authoritarian dreams—and at our own infighting. Absolutely, friends: YES ON 50.
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A principled stand is to reject a method that you know is dishonest, even if the other guy will be using it to their advantage. If it’s disenfranchisement of rural voters from a fair district election to decide their representative, I can’t support that. It will only cement the tactic and make it even more widespread as it is weaponized against us further. As someone who voted to recall a liar, there’s no way I can support taking away anyone else’s voice and vote even if Trump and Co is doing exactly that.
When they go low, we go high. Wrestling muddy pigs is not a strategy.
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Foolish but principled. Versus Trump’s unprincipled and evil. .. You propose bringing paper and pens to a Gun Fight. .. This will LOSE. Trump will WIN.
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I actually do think principles win vs Trump. America is foolish but not evil. He has spent his cachet of pretense and whether or not there are a few more in Congress as a result of his partisan machinations, it will be so unpopular and politically crazy to support his legacy by the time he’s gone, it won’t be a thing. America has peaks and valleys. Don’t think Trump’s crevasse is endlessly deep, because it too shall end. Someday the Republicans will realize he was never really one of them, ever.
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Nice words. But We Still Lose.
Trump is AT WAR with us. You Underestimate Him!
He is quickly and decisively Dismantling Our Democracy!
Without the House to Block his Destruction of our Government,
We will have Full Blown Autocracy and Fascism. He will become Supreme Dictator.
The Repugnants are moving So Fast, we have No Choice. Yes on Prop 50!
.. besides, this will all revert to how it was with the Next Census!
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But isn’t that just the point? You are not fighting Texas’s “method that you know is dishonest.” And by not fighting Abbot and Trump tirelessly, you are indeed supporting “taking away [someone] else’s voice and vote.” You have every power every moment of your life to fight the Texas power grab. If moderate republicans fought the Trump/ Abbot power grab, there would be no need for Prop 50. You need to see more clearly that you yourself could devote all your political energy and intellect to that Texas fight. Instead, you pretend (pretending and denial are the au courant republican high fashion, though I sense that you are not a republican 😉 that because it is taking place in another state, the Texas coup is not your problem. Once you see the mountain of denial you are living in (Texas not my state, not my problem), it will dawn on you that Prop 50 is a Solomon-like attempt at a solution (it sunsets, it brings the discussion of Trump and Abbot tactics to the fore, it asks transparently and temporarily to expose and negate a crass evil). I think the difference between you and me is that you somehow don’t see yourself first as an American. My parents and I owe so much to this country. Prop 50 fights this corrupt Texas power grab peacefully and forcefully. True, some California voters are temporarily (for six years) partially disenfranchised by Prop 50. No, that is not a good thing. Therefore, what? Therefore, republicans in those districts maybe should wake up (about time? as if they don’t know already what’s going on in Texas is wrong?) and start sending letters to Greg Abbot and Donald Trump. Republican silence in deference to Trump has to be roiled, wakened. And therefore, hey Trump and minions, stop the coup! Do you see what you, not prop 50, are doing to this country? Country first. Prop 50 is going high. Silent republicans in this country saying nothing in the face of trump—there is your mud, there are your pigs, there is your going low. See it, please.
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Thank you to those who responded to my post. One suspected that Mari and I have not objected to the Texas gerrymandering scam. By objecting to gerrymandering in principle and without making any excuses for it, both of us are objecting to the Texas con as well as all others including Newsom’s scam (not his first). But I will add another objection against Trump and Texas Republicans for unnecessarily putting more polarized politics into our national discourse. And one more for giving Gavin Newsom the excuse he wants to advance his career at the expense of democratic norms. He showed his sarcastic contempt for democratic norms even at last year’s Democratic National Convention. Look up “Gavin Newsom Pod Save America at Democratic National Convention.” This hurt Kamala Harris’s chances last year … which helped Newsom’s in 2028.
Another respondent seemed to imply that “Democrats take the high road,” the truth is they often don’t. The reason why California has a nonpartisan anti-gerrymandering commission in the first place is because Democratic legislators were disenfranchising rural voters. Mari and MP warn us that this is what Prop 50 will do again. “Rural voters” is another way of saying “the people who feed us city folks” even as some of us look down on them for not voting the way we want them to. And we are to trust politicians in this one party state that it will only be for 3 elections.
Until I registered “No Party Preference” last June, I had been a Democrat for 53 years. The first candidate I voted for was George McGovern, a man who would not succeed today in either party for his integrity and authentic – not performative – compassion. One reason I became independent is because Democrat leaders have imitated the same polarizing tactics invented by Newt Gingrich in the 90s that are poisoning our civil discourse. When Democrats say they’re saving “our” democracy, I and millions of others, including independents and even rank & file Democrats, are not included in that “our.”
If those who sincerely believe that Prop 50 is the best way to save democracy even as they admit that it is undemocratic and unprincipled, I can only warn them that it will strengthen Gavin Newsom, the same man who locked down poor and working class children out of public schools while his stayed in private school … and the same man who will – for so many other reasons – be the weakest possible Democratic candidate in 2028.
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