Sacramento Report: Republican Voters Brace for a Loss in Electoral Power

This post has been updated.

Welcome to a very spooky edition of the Sacramento Report.

This week, in my latest story for CalMatters, I asked voters about their thoughts on Proposition 50 and how it could affect San Diego County by joining coastal cities with rural towns.

If voters approve it, Tuesday’s ballot measure is expected to give California Democrats an advantage by relying on new House maps that connect San Diego’s rural and urban East County together in an effort to weaken Republican voting power. The temporary maps would change the makeup of two area districts known for their stalwart conservatism.

In Lakeside, former Naval Officer Fredrich Bahrke said he’s worried about the precedent the gerrymandering of California’s maps could set.

“I don’t like that they’re changing that and lumping us in the urban areas,” Bahrke, 65, said. “It’s going to put us in a district with people with very different views in our area.”

Longtime Republican Congressmember Darrell Issa represents this part of San Diego’s East County in the 48th House District. Issa, who has represented parts of San Diego County for decades, has cruised to re-election in the last two election cycles. Under the new proposed maps, the 48th District would take on more Latino voters to become more competitive in the 2026 midterm elections and the following two elections.

The proposed district would also be joined with parts of the Coachella Valley, a Democratic stronghold.

Meanwhile, east of San Diego, the district Republican Rep. Ken Calvert would move entirely outside of Riverside County into Los Angeles County and give Democrats a more than 10 percentage point voter registration advantage.

If voters approve Proposition 50, many residents currently in Calvert’s district would move into the 48th District and Republican-controlled 40th District in Orange County.

“If we have to break a rule, so to speak, to make sure what’s best for everyone occurs, we break that rule,” said Mary Rider, a retired community college counselor in Idyllwild.

She and other Riverside County voters would be shifted into the more competitive 48th District if voters approve the measure.

“I have never seen him. You don’t really hear about him,” Nickie Watts of Palm Desert said of Calvert, and that she views Proposition 50 as a tool to hold him accountable.

Calvert and Issa have been criticized  for abstaining from in-person town halls this year, where constituents outraged over Republican support for President Donald Trump’s policies have become common across the country.

“I am not a fan of President Trump,” said Maree Doden, a former city employee who lives in Palm Desert.  Still, she doesn’t believe Texas gerrymandering its own maps is enough reason to retaliate. 

Q&A with Marni von Wilpert

I also spoke to Democratic San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, one of the candidates who is running for District 48, about why she’s running now and her plan to appeal to the district’s more conservative voters.

Wilpert had previously announced she would run for a seat in the state Legislature to replace Democratic Sen. Brian Jones of San Diego before she launched her congressional campaign.

A city councilmember since 2020, Wilpert flipped her district blue after it was held by Republicans such as current Assemblymember Carl DeMaio. She’s received endorsements from congressmembers Mike Levin and Juan Vargas, former state Senate leader Toni Atkins and four out of nine city councilmembers.

She faces competition from Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat who ran for that district in 2020 and lost by eight percentage points. But Wilpert is banking on Proposition 50 to help her win.

Here is our conversation below, edited for brevity and clarity.

Can you introduce yourself and explain why you decided to pivot to run for Congress now?

I’m a San Diego native. I grew up here and I’ve been serving my city for the past five years on City Council. But before that, I’ve always been in public service.

I joined the Peace Corps and served in Sub-Saharan Africa after college and I worked for a nonprofit civil rights organization in Mississippi, worked for the Obama administration in Washington, D.C. enforcing workers’ rights, women’s rights. 

So, while I’ve been working so hard to protect workers and women and folks like me who are LGBTQ, I’m seeing people like Donald Trump and Darrell Issa do everything they can to crush my rights as a woman after we lost Roe v. Wade and crush my rights as an LGBTQ person.

I want to be in Congress so I can fight back against these horrible policies they have and instead bring down our cost of living, make health care affordable again and make government work for working people.

You’ve emphasized your ability to flip your city council district as one of the reasons you’re suited to run for this district. Could you talk more about that and your plan to appeal to more moderate voters?

Most people in Southern California want the same things. They want affordable access to housing, and they want to be able to buy homeowners insurance that isn’t going to cost them an arm and a leg.

Once I realized that there were so many things that we agreed on, I was able to get in there and work with everybody and then still stand strong on the things that I care deeply about.

For example, I wrote the first law in California banning untraceable ghost guns and the un-serialized precursor parts people were using to build guns at home or in the garage and sell them to prohibited buyers, like people with domestic violence restraining orders or people with violent felony convictions. 

And so when I passed this law, I brought law enforcement with me, because guess who else doesn’t like to be on the other end of legal weapons, is law enforcement.

We’re so often stuck in our partisan debates about this. Instead, I bought lawful gunners alongside high school students at my press conference to make sure that everybody knew this is an issue we can all move forward on. I’m used to governing in purple areas. I’m used to talking to all sides of the aisle to deliver results for my constituents.

This will likely be a competitive primary. How do you plan to distinguish yourself from other Democrats?

I’m the only Democrat running who’s actually won elections before and have a record to stand on. I know other candidates have run many times and lost elections, but I’ve won it and I’ve learned what it means to deliver results for my community.

And I know how to pass a balanced budget. I’ve worked very hard to make sure public safety is funded while passing a balanced budget, something that no one else, no other Democrat in this race, has done. And so that’s one way that I’m going to help distinguish myself against other candidates.

What’s your response to residents who are upset by Proposition 50 and do not want to support gerrymandering?

Voters should pick their elected officials, not the other way around. I’d like to see this nationwide not be allowed, but until we’re on an even playing field, I’m not willing to give up my rights and my voice in Congress.

We are asking voters to vote on Proposition 50. because, in Texas, they impose these maps on their people without any democratic vote whatsoever. So it’s a temporary measure, it will revert back to 2030. In time, I hope, nationwide we ban this practice and all of us stop doing this gerrymandering.

What I’m Reading Now

CalMatters reports on Chula Vista’s plans to open a hybrid campus that is expected to confer degrees as early as 2027.

The San Francisco Chronicle turned to an Oakland grocer to learn more about how SNAP benefits that are expected to expire this week will affect small businesses.

San Francisco launched its own program to provide millions of dollars in emergency food assistance as the Nov. 1 expiration date looms, The San Francisco Standard reports.

Thanks again for reading the Sacramento Report. If you have any tips or story ideas for my newsletter, please give me a shout: nadia@voiceofsandiego.org. Happy Halloween!

Oct. 31 correction: This post has been updated to correct that when Ammar Campa-Najjar ran against Darrell Issa in 2020 he lost by eight percentage points.

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