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A newly emboldened Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking his show on the road.
Four days after spearheading a ballot box landslide victory in his home state of California in the high-stakes battle over congressional redistricting, the two-term governor and potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender will headline a rally Saturday in Republican-leaning Texas.
Newsom was the driving force behind Tuesday’s passage of Proposition 50, a ballot initiative which will temporarily sidetrack Democratic-leaning California’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which would counter the passage earlier this year in the reliable red state of Texas of a new map that aims to create up to five right-leaning House seats.
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“California stepped up. Now, we are taking this fight across the country — helping Democrats in other states push back against Trump’s election rigging,” Newsom said in a statement to Fox News Digital, as he pointed to the push by President Donald Trump and Republicans for rare mid-decade redistricting.
It’s part of a broad effort by Trump’s political team and the GOP to pad the party’s razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats. Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push.
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Trump is aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
Failure to approve what’s known as Proposition 50 would have been a stinging setback for Democrats.
But Newsom was victorious and now has a message for fellow Democrats from coast to coast.
“We need to see other states, their remarkable leaders that have been doing remarkable things, meet this moment head-on as well,” he said on Tuesday night as he celebrated passage of the ballot initiative. “We can de facto end Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it, the minute Speaker Jeffries gets sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives. It is all on the line.”
Newsom is expected to rally with Texas Democrats at an afternoon event in Houston.
While two other Democratic blue state governors with likely national ambitions in 2028, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland, are mulling new maps in their states to create one or two more blue-leaning congressional districts, Newsom has been the most visible leader so far in the redistricting wars and the first Democrat to succeed.
And the campaign for Prop 50 passage only burnished Newsom’s already solid credentials as an anti-Trump warrior, which could pay dividends for him down the road in what’s expected to be a crowded and competitive 2028 Democratic presidential nomination race.
“He put a lot of effort into this, and it was not a sure thing when it first started,” veteran Democratic strategist Maria Cardona told Fox News Digital. “He galvanized and mobilized California voters.”
And Cardona, a committee member on the Democratic National Committee, said, “I certainly think it burnished Gavin Newsom’s brand not just as the anti-Trump, but right now I think it puts him as one of the leaders in contention for 2028.”
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