Newsom kicks off revision of voting maps

Democrats will ask voters in November to block Trump from 'rigging' midterms.

- BY SEEMA МЕНТА AND LAURA J. NELSON

"WE HAVE got to meet fire with fire," Gov. Gavin Newsom said of Texas Republicans' effort to redraw their state's congressional maps.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democratic lawmakers and their allies on Thursday launched a special election campaign urging California voters to approve new congressional districts to shrink the state's Republican delegation, a move that could determine control of Congress next year and stymie President Trump's agenda.

The special election effort is a response to Republican-led states, notably Texas, pushing at Trump's behest to redraw their congressional maps to favor Republicans and reduce the number of Democrats in the narrowly divided U.S. House of Representatives.

Speaking to a fired-up partisan crowd at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, Newsom described the effort by Republicans as a desperate effort by a failed president to hold on to power by keeping Congress under his control.

"He doesn't play by a different set of rules — he doesn't believe in the rules," Newsom said. "And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It's not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt, and we have got to meet fire with fire." The governor was joined by California's U.S. senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff; Southern California's Democrats in Congress, and union leaders who would provide the funding and volunteers for the campaign.

The ballot measure, the "Election Rigging Response Act," would temporarily scrap the congressional districts enacted by the state's voter-approved independent redistricting commission.