California Governor Gavin Newsom. Photo / Getty Images
When a pair of Democratic door-knockers asked Reid Pelsue on a recent Saturday whether he was familiar with an upcoming high-stakes special election, he told them he had no idea what they were talking about.
When they said they were pushing a ballot measure to fight what they called United States President Donald Trump’s “power grab”, by enabling Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional map and add as many as five more seats to offset what Republicans were doing outside California, he was sold.
“It just hurts,” Pelsue, 23, said of Trump’s second term, citing the Administration’s immigration crackdown and voicing concern about the President’s mid-decade redistricting push.
Shooing his cats back inside, Pelsue went to grab his phone so the organisers could guide him to a website where he could request a ballot and find polling locations.
As California Governor Gavin Newsom (Democrat) and his allies try to nudge their plan across the finish line in Wednesday’s election, they are focusing squarely on Trump.
They’re running television commercials, digital ads and an aggressive canvassing operation that holds up the President as their chief adversary.
Their bet, placed months ago before they had even launched the campaign, is that anger with Trump in a deep-blue state will motivate people to vote yes on Proposition 50 and simplify an appeal some initially worried could become muddled in the arcana of redistricting.
The strategy appears to be paying dividends as the campaign nears its conclusion, fuelling a stark fundraising advantage and edge in the polls that Democrats hope will help deliver a concrete rebuttal to Trump’s political agenda less than a year into his second term.
Proponents of Prop 50, which include a constellation of committees led by one Newsom is helming, outraised the opposing side by a wide margin to October 18, campaign finance data show.
At a critical juncture last month when many voters had received their mailed ballots, two of the main committees urging Californians to vote no went dark on broadcast and satellite television, according to data from AdImpact, the latest indicator of an opposition campaign that has sputtered.
The fundraising imbalance had tipped so far in favour of advocates of the ballot measure last week that Newsom sent a fundraising message last Tuesday telling supporters they could “stop donating”.
“We have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50,” the Governor wrote.
“Now it’s about executing the plan. If we can do that, we’re going to win.”
The election in California, one of several states casting ballots, will provide a measure of the potency of Democrats’ frequently used anti-Trump message in a setting where it has not been tested.
That’s an off-year election in the country’s most populous state, with no candidates on the ballot.
While Newsom and his allies are sounding confident notes, observers cautioned that since the election is unlike most others in recent memory, a surprise outcome is possible.
A Public Policy Institute of California poll showed that 56% of likely California voters said they will vote yes on Prop 50, while 43% said they will vote no. A CBS News survey showed a 62% to 38% spread.
Newsom and his allies released a closing ad last week that tells viewers they can “stand up to Donald Trump”.
It features former president Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).
Trump has avoided getting directly or publicly involved in campaign activities involving the California ballot measure.
But he recently sought, without evidence, to discredit the vote in a Truth Social post.
Trump has also repeatedly insulted Newsom’s competence as governor. Newsom has trolled the President with mocking posts on his own social media. The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Newsom, who initially tried to collaborate with Trump after he was elected, pivoted to a sharply adversarial posture after Trump sent military troops into Los Angeles mid-year in the midst of immigration protests - before making Trump his chief foil in the redistricting campaign.
“Fear and anger are very powerful forces in politics - and it’s the Democrats that are fearful and angry,” said California Republican strategist Kevin Spillane.
California Democrats have pointed frequently to the outsize impact of Trump’s tactics on the state - from the Administration’s immigration raids, to his deployment of federal troops in Los Angeles, to the slashing of key education and research grants for California institutions.
Underpinning those figures are the low approval ratings for Trump and his actions in California.
The PPIC poll showed that just 26% of Californians approve of the way Trump is handling his job.
Large majorities of Californians disapprove of the job that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing (71%) and the tariffs the US has placed on imports (72%).
Opponents of Newsom’s plan have used an array of tactics aimed at different parts of the electorate.
They range from ads suggesting it would destroy the state’s independent redistricting process to events where they have argued the new maps would break up Asian American communities and dilute the power of rural constituencies.
In one ad, they also featured comments from former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (Republican) arguing for keeping the independent redistricting system he helped create and stating that Prop 50 would “take us backwards”. Privately, many Republicans in the state have been critical of what they viewed as a scattered unfocused message from the “no” side.
Jessica Millan Patterson, the chair of No on 50 - Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab, one of the committees opposing Newsom’s ballot measure, said in a recent interview that her group believes the vote will be close and credited Trump’s team for helping with turnout efforts.
She argued that their message that “the power is being taken away from the people” with Newsom’s ballot measure resonates with many independent voters. The committee is backed by former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California).
“We always knew this was going to be an uphill battle for us,” she said. “We are making sure that we are targeting specific individuals that are persuadable in these last few days.”
The Congressonal Leadership Fund, which is aligned with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), gave money to the committee as well as the state GOP. Charles Munger - the Stanford physicist and Berkshire Hathaway heir who helped finance the original ballot measures creating the state’s independent process - funded a different committee opposing the measure with nearly US$33 million.
Some of the money that opponents of the measure hoped would materialise has not arrived - all while the opposition has raised money at a brisk pace.
Newsom’s ballot committee raised US$114m to October 18, while the McCarthy-aligned No on Prop 50 - Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab and the Munger-aligned No on Prop 50 - Protect Voters First, raised US$43.7m over that same period.
“While we are being significantly outspent, there are still millions of votes to be submitted, and the campaign will focus on communicating to persuadable voters and turning out supporters,” said Amy Thoma Tan, a spokeswoman for the Munger-aligned committee who declined to discuss the campaign’s fundraising strategy.
About a fifth of the 23 million ballots sent out had been returned as of last Wednesday, according to Political Data Incorporated, which supplies data to Democratic groups and campaigns, and of those ballots, more than half were from Democrats.
“Nine days before the election, ballots are coming in at a faster pace than they were in the 2024 general election,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president at PDI. He said that is in part because there is only one question on the ballot.
Newsom worked with members of Congress and the California legislature to get the Democratic-leaning maps on the November ballot once it became clear that Texas lawmakers were going to approve maps creating five new GOP-leaning seats at Trump’s behest.
They pitched the measure as a direct response to Trump - a temporary patch that would put the new maps in place for 2026, 2028 and 2030, before allowing the state’s independent commission to resume its work drawing lines.
Newsom’s ballot measure offered donors and voters a chance to deliver a tangible blow to Trump’s agenda.
The money quickly started pouring in and the enormous war chest allowed Newsom’s ballot committee to flood the airwaves and digital media with ads.
“Wake up America,” Newsom said in one ad, accusing Trump of trying to “rig the system” and warning that democracy would disappear district by district.
The most widely circulated ad of the yes campaign featured Obama, a onetime critic of partisan gerrymandering.
He accused the GOP of trying to “steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election” and give Trump “unchecked power for two more years”. Prop 50, the former president argued, “levels the playing field”.
Democrats have urged voters not to get complacent. At the doors she has knocked on in Cheviot Hills and Long Beach, including Pelsue’s, Anissa Raja has repeatedly described the ballot question to voters as an “emergency measure”.
“This is for all the folks who want to get involved,” said Raja, who heads the Los Angeles County Young Democrats, as she walked doors with her script.
“You want to figure out how to fight back? Yeah, it’s by voting.”
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