Posted on 10/30/2025 10:04:57 AM PDT by Angelino97
Democratic politicians throughout California — those already in office and those who want in — assume that voters will rearrange the state’s 52 congressional districts next month and create new career opportunities.
The assumption is well grounded. A recent CBS News poll found 62% of the state’s likely voters, driven by disdain for President Donald Trump, will enact Proposition 50, a plan to shift five more congressional seats to Democrats even though they already have 43.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gerrymander would offset pro-Republican redistricting schemes in Texas and other states that Trump seeks to retain, or perhaps expand, the GOP’s paper-thin majority in the House next year.
With Prop. 50 seemingly a slam-dunk, current Democratic congressional members and wannabes are trying to sort out who will run for what — no small feat. To create the new seats, the Democrats’ political cartographers have to spread the party’s 10.4 million voters more thinly, reducing its margins in districts it already holds.
California also is not immune to the Democrats’ generational conflict, in the wake of their loss to Trump last year after an aged and obviously impaired President Joe Biden dropped out.
Politico declares that “fully half of the state’s older House Democrats are set to face same-party challengers next year…”
The most interesting example is in San Francisco, where 85-year-old Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who has held her congressional seat for nearly 40 years, has already drawn two primary opponents even though she hasn’t announced whether she’ll run again.
First in was 39-year-old Saikat Chakrabarti, a former campaign aide and staffer to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, typifying the young progressives who have chafed at their party’s geriatric leadership.
His candidacy forced the issue for state Sen. Scott Wiener, who at 55 is no spring chicken. He has been waiting patiently for years for Pelosi to retire. Wiener declared his candidacy this week, telling the New York Times, “The world changes. I made a decision that it makes sense for me to get into the race now because I’m passionate about San Francisco having the best possible representation.”
Pelosi won’t announce her intentions until after Prop. 50 is decided. But if she does retire, she likely wants to choose her successor — which is how she got her congressional seat in 1987.
San Francisco politics have a long history of control by a few powerful factions, most prominently one created in the 1950s by Willie Brown, brothers Phillip and John Burton and George Moscone.
The Burtons both served in Congress. John Burton was a long-time legislative leader and Moscone, then the city’s mayor, was assassinated in 1978.
Brown, now 91 and the only one of them still alive, wields massive influence in the city, after being the longest-tenured Assembly speaker and winning two terms as mayor. He was instrumental in the careers of Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Pelosi, born into a powerful political family in Baltimore, continued the family business in 1963 after marrying Paul Pelosi, scion of an influential San Francisco family, and moving to his city.
She integrated into the Brown-Burton-Moscone organization. When Phillip Burton died in 1983, his widow, Sala, took over his congressional seat and then, before dying in 1987, designated Pelosi as her successor.
San Francisco media have speculated that if Pelosi steps down, she might favor Connie Chan, a city supervisor, as her successor, noting that Chan was the only local official to speak alongside Pelosi at a recent Prop. 50 rally. However, it’s also been rumored that daughter Christine Pelosi might want to succeed her mother.
That’s the way things have gone in San Francisco for decades. Will it continue or is evolution in the air?
Our gerrymandered congressional districts seem immune to reform. D or R. North or south the whole process is corrupt.
It’s corrupt because Republicans are complacent.
When Newscum proposed the idea it was widely touted that it had no chance as it would repeal the initiative that created the Redistricting Commission, which was a farce itself.
So the Klooless Klowns in the Republicant party went to sleep, content to know they had no problem.
Except they did. They didn’t understand the unhinged gangster behavior of the Rats in this state. Doesn’t MATTER to them that they are dismembering the vote of the people: hell, they did that with glee to Prop. 187 which had passed 60-40. They don’t give a s**t about “democracy”, they only care about stomping out any opposition to The Party.
Meanwhile the Orange County Republitards squeak “I’m not a raciss!” and go out to hire some more Mexican illegals to work on their houses...which leads to the supermajority of the Looter class here.
But back at the golf course, the checked pants morons are still discussing the sunday ball games. Everything will always be the same in their little universe!
Until it isn’t, and they’re staring into the face of a Mamdami, gulping and saying “yessir”.
LOSERS.
The Republicans can zap the filibuster and cede much of the state back to Mexico.
The San Francisco Bay area might be handed over to the Republic of China.
Ceding territory can be done by majority vote.
We could cede Massachusetts to Somalia. Not that we should, but we could.
Federal elections are in November of even years. That leaves two months to cast off Democratic areas otherwise possible Democratic representatives.
You could also cede parts of Minnesota and Maine to Somalia.
White Flight has been the conservative game plan for generations. Escape to the suburbs, cede the cities. Escape to the South, cede the Northeast. Escape Atlanta, etc.
We're running out of places to escape to.
“Orange County”
Once it got returned to Mexico, Sheinbaum would remove Hondurans and El Salvadoreans so fast Holman’s jaw would drop.
When I retired my wife refused to leave California to be by her family.
She finally agreed to leave because of prop 50. This communist POS state will be getting no more taxes from us as soon as we can get out. It would have been so much easier if we had left 8 years ago when I retired.
Most people think “hispanics” are a monolithic group because of the language cohort.
But you’re correct, they are hypernationalist and literally hate each other. The only reason they let the ridiculous caravans march up through Mexico was that they saw it as screwing the gringos.
Thank you for posting Regulator.
Since gerrymandering is possibly a violation of Section 2 of the 14th Amendment imo, that section a penalty for states where voting integrity has been compromised, both Democrats and RINOs are ignoring their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution by not investigating possible violation of that section.
Note the zero tolerance, "hair trigger" wording of that section that should have gotten rid of not only elite, cheating Democrats, but also lead from the rear Republicans who don't defend Section 2 imo.
Excerpted from 14A:
But when the right to vote at any election
is denied to any
or in any way abridged,
Section 2: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election [all emphases added] for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. [Apportionment of Representatives]
"Section 5: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
Here is third party opinion that both state and federal governments are wrongly ignoring Section 2 imo.
No serious effort was ever made in Congress to effectuate § 2, and the only judicial attempt was rebuffed.2 , cert. denied, 328 U.S. 870 (1946). —Apportionment Clause
The Section had long been dead. But there are two camps of legal scholars who wish to revive it. The first consists of those who would like to see Section Two enforced to punish states that abridge their citizens’ right to vote, especially in the wake of Shelby County v. Holder. Recently, Joshua Geltzer, the executive director at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and the former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, added himself to this camp. The second camp is using Section Two, which distinguishes on the basis of gender, as evidence that Section One’s Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit gender-based discrimination. Jonathan Mitchell spearheads this movement. —The Worrisome Ghost of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Second Section
Note Thomas Jefferson's advice against ignoring parts of the Constitution.
"The general rule [is] that an instrument is to be so construed as to reconcile and give meaning and effect to all its parts.
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