California and Texas Redistricting

Governor Gavin Newsome is calling for California to redistrict in an effort to combat efforts in Texas. Fox News Radio's Ryan Schmelz joins us with details on the redistricting battle. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well as those Texas Democratic lawmakers are headed back to
Texas to face the music California as a plan. This
is West Michigan's Morning News Steve Kelly and Brett mkita
in Washington, d C. Where I'm guessing it's a little
lighter than it is here in West Michigan, Fox News Radios.
Ryan Schmells, good.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Morning, Hey, good morning, how are you great?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Thank It's back to school for a lot of folks
here in West Michigan. I bring up the light because
it's darker than it has been all summer. But talk
to us a little bit about what's a foot in
California and where do we stand with the idea of
Gavin Newsom, their governor as a presidential candidate.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, Gavin Newsom has certainly positioned himself to be in
a good situation to not only combat the Trump administration,
but also to gain attention while doing it. You know,
this has been a running issue for members of Congress,
especially once who are in the House, is that it's
hard to get attention when you're the minority. But it's
even harder to get attention when you're in the minority.

(01:03):
And Donald Trump is in the White House. Because he
just eats up a lot of the news cycle. So,
you know, Newsom has been kind of in this position,
especially being in you know, the biggest state in the country,
which is California. They'll really go after the Trump administration.
But this a lot of this is really in response
to the jerrymannering efforts from Texas where Texas governor the

(01:23):
Texas governor and is called another special session to essentially
try to get this new map passed. The only problem
is that Democrats keep walking out and they fail to
reach a corp each time they've done this so far,
so they're a little bit at a standstill there. But
in California they're Newsom is attempting this process where he
is trying to get the legislature to put on the

(01:46):
ballot a constitutional amendment to overturn the state's non partisan
commission that essentially draws the state's congressional map. So what
Republicans think is that this is something that does not
say well with voters. For the most part, they believe
that the polling out their shows that voters overwhelmingly support
a non partisan commission drawing the state maps. But we'll

(02:09):
have to wait and see what Democrats are able to
accomplish you.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
With this, I guess, and you can understand arguments to
sort of follow the way this thing is run, meaning
you do it after the census results are in. You
can't necessarily sent it up every month. But that being said,
an awful lot say that things are underrepresented when it
comes to Republicans or Democrats.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes, and I think there's a lot of different evidence
that shows that there are certain states that are probably
run by Democrats and are more gerrymandered than Republican ones.
There's a back and forth between both sides on that.
But Republicans like the point in massachusettst the example of
that where you know, in most races, the Republican candidate,
whether it's a presidential or for the governor, you know

(02:53):
that the Republicans get upwards are forty percent of the vote,
yet they don't have a single seat in the in
that that's pretty much favorable to Republican voters at all
in that state. In California's case, though, what's interesting is
that you have a Republican member of Congress named Kevin
Kylie who is pushing a peace of legislation that would
pretty much overturn overturn mid decade redistricting nationwide, So pretty

(03:20):
much banning Texas that ability to Jerry manner, but also
banning the ability for California, Illinois, pretty much any state
in the country from being able to try this redrawing
of their maps mid decade.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
So I guess a bigger question that pops into my mind,
and maybe you don't have the answer to this, is
who has the ultimate authority to decide a state's representation
in Washington, d c A. Meaning will this be an
issue that ultimately ends up in front of the Supreme
Court or will it be something that ends up in
the Supreme Court at each state?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Pretty much right now, it's the state's rights issue. The
federal government has pretty much just said, you know, take
the census data and this is how many congressional districts
you get because of that, and so go ahead and
redraw your map how you see fit. So for the
most part, it seems like it's the states to get
the decision to do this. Then you're you're kind of
seeing the difference in state law here, because in Texas case,

(04:16):
they pretty much can just do this based off their
legislature and they can just redraw the maps and then say, Okay,
this is the map we got. You know, here we go.
But in the other case, you know, like California, they
have this non partisan redistricting commission that's appointed by that
pretty much is in the state constitution. So it's a

(04:36):
very hard process for Gavin Newsom to go about this,
this redistricting push, as opposed to Texas, where it seems
like it's a lot simpler and a lot easier for
them to just go ahead and do it.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
I get it. Hence the vote there in California. Ryan
Schmells with FOSH News Radio in Washington, DC.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Good stuff, Thank you, of course, thank you.