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your support. All right so over at RedState dot com.
Our pal Stacy Matthews aka Sister Toldja writing a couple
of pieces here that we're going to talk with her
about in a moment. With early voting already underway, with
less than a month left before California voters take to
the polls on election day, proponents and opponents of the
controversial Proposition fifty redistricting proposal continue to make their pitches
to voters, with Governor Gavin Newsom using the usual scare
tactics and his critics surging voters to pump the brakes
on his jerry mandering scheme. We have her now, okay, Stacey,
welcome to the program. Hello Stacey, how.
Speaker 2: Are you hey, Pete, how's it going?
Speaker 1: All right? All right? So all right, let's talk about
the redistricting case here in California, and I actually have
I've got some stuff here as well, because a lot
is being made about the comparison to Texas and that
California is only doing this because Texas is doing this.
But there's some backstory on the Texas front. So give
us the update, like on where California is and then
the general landscape as I guess, the redistricting wars are
starting to heat up.
Speaker 2: Well Texas, I mean, they didn't really initiate, like you said,
there's a backstory there. But in response to Texas, you know,
announcing in I think it was in early July that
they were going to proceed with doing a mid decade
redistricting for their state, Gavin Newsom, you know, pushed back
and eventually it led to the passage of fifty legislation,
which is going to be taken to the voters for
their decision, and that's going to be in less than
a month. Election day there is I think it's November
the fourth, and there's already early voting going on for
Prop fifty and Gavin Newsom is basically saying he's doing
this as a temporary solution for California to the wart
the GOP trying to expand their majority with mid decade redistricting. Again,
like you said, there's some backstory that I'm sure that
we'll get to. But in response to Gavin Newsom doing that,
which is basically it's going to revolve around I think
five seats or so that potentially could go back to Democrats.
Other states have gotten into the mixed red states and
blue states. You've had Missouri, You've had Indiana at New
York talking about it. In North Carolina has now entered
the chat. Phil Berger and Destin Hall noted a couple
of days ago they're entering the chat now and they
are going to be redrawing maps that will presumably be
voted on as early as next week that potentially could
net the GOP another seat next year, which would be
the seat currently held most likely be the seat being
held by Don Davis and District one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I covered this, I guess on Monday when
the announcement was made. We went like way in depth
on sort of the politics of it, and you know
the potential downside that Republicans could have if they mess
up on the lines basically and make District three two
competitive and you get a lot of Democrat turnout, you
could actually lose both of those seats. The Texas backstory
I found pretty interesting a constitutional an election law attorney
with Dylon Law Group Harmeie Dylon's law group guy by
the name of Mark Muser, and he pointed out that
Texas was actually forced to read district because the Biden
DOJ sued Galveston County and lost, which then changed the law,
thus making four Texas congressional districts unconstitutional. And he goes
over the entire timeline here. But the bottom line is
that the reason why you hear Gavin Newsom or the
reason why Gavin Newsom is wrong and he's talking about
jerrymandering all this, but he is, he is wrong. Texas
didn't didn't ought to do this on their own. The
reason they had to redraw the congressional districts is because
they got sued by Biden's DOJ who lost. And like
that's it's a very I'm going to go into it
after we let you go, But like there's a whole
backstory here. So now we got these redistricting wars heating up,
and now we've got the Supreme Court they heard oral
arguments today. Democrats are very upset about what might happen
if this this decision goes the way that conservatives wanted
to go. It could end up swinging another dozen districts
as well based on voter rights at rules. So, and
I'm gonna circle back to all of that too. Another
election that matters up in Virginia, and this people usually
point to Virginia as sort of the as a bell
weather for where like the the midterms might go because it's,
you know, an off year election. They are in early
voting as well for governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor. We
covered I guess it was last week. The text mess Yeah,
the text messages by Jay Jones, this guy running for
attorney general where he fantasized about, you know, murdering a
Republican Speaker of the House and his two kids, murdering
his two kids in front of his family so they
would see that children die in order to get them
to change their positions on on policy and nobody. Democrats
don't seem to be distancing themselves from him. They're not
saying he should drop out, and I suspect that's because
we are in early voting. They can't replace him on
the ballot, so they're just going to have to ride
or die with this guy. Maybe not the best phrase
to use there, but what do we see now? How
is this impacting voter perception of Jay Jones and the
other candidates that are running, including the good natorial race.
Speaker 2: Shortly after the texting scandal with j Jones broke, his
own campaign released internal polling that's about three or four
days after the texting scandal work, and it showed him
only ahead by Jason Mayara of Jason Maris like one point,
which is a statistical tie. And as we all know,
internal polling typically tries to make the candidate that the
poll is being conducted on behalf of looks better than
they actually are, So he was probably already behind by
that point. But a release by Trafalgar earlier this week
actually Saturday, showed that not only had had the script
flipped and my rs is now ahead of Jones in
that race but I think six points, but also it's
also changed the trajectory presumably in the governor's race, in
the lieutenant governor's race, because when some fears the lieutenant
governor who has taken on Abigail Spandrover, the Democrat nominee,
she is now in a statistical pie with Abigail Spanberger,
and that this this scandal is having a it's not
a down ballot effect, it's actually an up ballot effect
because my rs is the attorney general and you know,
this is impacting the lieutenant governor's race and the gubernatorial race.
And this this kind of reminds me a little bit
of what happened with Terry mccauliff in twenty twenty one,
where he seemed to kind of be coasting on to
another time as governor there, but then he you know,
made that epic some would calling a mistake, I would say,
say in the quiet part out loud about saying what
he thought about how parents shouldn't be advising teachers on
what they should teach children. And so, you know, after
that happened, his campaign just absolutely imploded. He didn't do
himself any favors by how he responded to it, and
the rest is history. It helped all the other candidates
as well, in addition to Glenn Youngkin. So I'm seeing
that kind of play out here, because if the poll
that I'm referring to there was a there was a
poll by this same polling group for Fogger about a
week before the scandal broke, and it showed, you know,
that Jones was kind of in a comfortable lead, and
Spamberger and the lieutenant governor candidate apologized for not remember
the person's name. They the Democrat candidates were ahead, uh,
outside of the statistical margin this margin of error, and
now and now they're both everything is either tied or
in my rs case, he's actually ahead. And we've got
what three weeks to go before they vote there, and
again early voting is already taking place there as well.
So I do believe we've had a shift here. And
we have also had a gubernatorial debate, the only one
that they had this election cycle, and Spamberger had an
awful debate when some sears she really hammered her on
the issue of boys and girls locker rooms and also
the j Jones issue in the as she put out,
and this is not hyperbole, they were brutal against Spamberger.
I mean, they really made her look like she was
cold and indifferent to somebody on her ticket talking about
murdering another GEO, former GOP colleague. So it just this
has just totally changed the dynamic. It's just almost like
all three candidates are in a free fall because Spamberger
won't respond like she should to the Jones scandal. And
that's having a having a down ballot and an up ballot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a blast Yeah, it's a blast zone around
Jay Jones and everybody is getting hit. All of his
fellow Democrats are getting hit by that. And uh yeah,
and and as you mentioned that debate performance, she was awful.
I'm sure she was coached and told like, don't look
at Winsome Sears, don't look at her, don't respond to
her whatever. But the way it came across was just cold,
icy and uh, sort of like looking down on her,
like you, I don't even need to respond to you,
like I'm on such a higher level. Just really arrogant
and condescending kind of vibe going on. And it was
just and just socially awkward, just staring straight ahead at
the moderators rather than answer the questions that were being
thrown at her by Sears. She just seemed detached and weird. Ye,
So yeah, I mean couldn't happen to a better candidate
that you know, candidate's matty.
Speaker 2: Let me let me let me add something real quick.
You talked about the backstory to what was going on
in Texas. There's actually a backstory to the backstory, and
you're probably aware of it. But the twenty twenty census,
I believe the DOJ. I forget who it was that
discovered that actually there was some undercounting done in some
of the red states and there was overcounting done in
some of the Blue states. So and even though Blue
states lost some congressional seats after the twenty twenty census,
they actually should have lost more and Republicans should Red
states should have gained more.
Speaker 1: Correct So, yeah, I think it was like it was
like over a dozen states that had problems with the counts,
and when you broke them down, it was like half
were overcounted, half were undercounted. And in those cohorts, like
five of the six undercounts were Republican states and five
of the six overcounts were Democrat states.
Speaker 2: That's why people when they hear about you know, North
Carolina jumping into this battle and some other restates, don't
look at it as cheating because basically they're doing what
should have been They're doing the correction now that probably
should have been done three or four years ago when
this problem with the census was discovered. So I don't
view this as cheating. I view it as something that
should have been corrected a long time ago. So that's
another thing that people need to keep in mind when
they hear about these red states that are kind of
jumping into the phrase that, well, you know, blue state's
had it common.
Speaker 1: So yeah, hey, I appreciate the time as always, Stacy Matthews,
you can reader work at RedState dot com. Thanks Stacy,
We'll talk to you next month. Thank you, all right,
take care at Stacy Matthews writes under the nom dipnume
sister told you at RedState dot com. Here's a great idea.
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this fellow Mark Muser, constitutional and election law attorney with
the Dylan Law Group. He also ran for US Senate
in California in twenty twenty two, and he took to
the Twitter machine formerly known as x and he said
he's tired of hearing that California is redistricting to combat
President Trump and Texas redistricting efforts. He goes through a
timeline here he says Texas was forced to redistrict because
the Biden DOJ sued Galveston County and lost. When Texas
drew its congressional districts back in twenty twenty one, they
created four congressional districts where they combined two minority communities
to create a minority majority district. Okay. Then in twenty
twenty two, the Biden DOJ sued Galveston County commissioners because
Galveston did not draw a coalition minority district for the
black and Latino populations. On October thirteenth, twenty twenty three,
a federal judge agreed with Biden's DOJ and found that
Galveston was required to draw a commissioner seat by combining
two minority communities. The next month, a three judge panel
of the Fifth Circuit Federal Court found that combining two
minority groups to create a minority majority district was unconstitutional,
and thus asked for an n Bank panel to review
the issue to overturn prior precedents. August twenty four, the
n Bank panel of the Fifth Circuit concluded that the
coalition claims do not comport with Section two statutory language
or with Supreme Court cases. The Fifth Circuit ruled coalition
minority districts are unconstitutional, which, by the way, this is
what's being argued at the US Supreme Court in this case,
but in a Louisiana case, it's the same issue at
the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: July this year, Trump's DOJ sent the letter to Texas
highlighting the Fifth Circuit order, pointing out that there are
four coalition minority congressional districts that are now deemed unconstitutional
and Texas needs to fix the problem. Texas made a
prudent choice to redraw the congressional districts so as to
save their taxpayers the expense of litigating the losing case
in trying to defend minority coalition districts. Texas did not
have to redraw four minority or they did not have
to redraw four minority coalition districts because of Trump. Texas
had to redraw the lines because Biden sued Galveston and
the law was clarified that these minority districts, these coalition
minority districts, were uncomm constitutional. That's what prompted this. Since
Texas law requires the legislature to draw the congressional districts,
the legislature followed the law California. Bit of a different story.
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Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: The US Supreme Court today heard oral arguments in a
case called Louisiana versus Calais No Relation, a case that
could effectively eliminate Section two of the Voting Rights Act,
the nation's central safeguard against racially discriminatory redistricting. This is
a piece atl dot com that is a leftist rag
written by Max Fluggrath flugraph flo Grath. I don't know
how he pronounces it. Here's the argument as I understood
it after listening to the oral arguments this morning before
the show, Democrats went to the US Supreme Court to
argue that their voters are racist. That was their case. Okay,
I mean it was an interesting strategy. We'll see how
it works for them, because the argument is that they
need to be able to pack black voters into one
district or multiple districts in order to ensure that they
win election to the House of Representatives, and that this
is allowable under the Section two of the Voting Rights Act. Now,
if you kind of think through how this actually works, right,
Democrat primaries are the first hurdle that a black candidate
would need to clear in order to make it to
a general election. Right, So by drawing a district that is,
you know, fifty percent plus one black, the idea is
that a black candidate would be ensured or has at
least a much greater opportunity to win that race over
a white candidate. But again, this is in a Democrat primary, right, Like,
that's the idea. You have to be able to clear
the Democrat primary, and so embedded in this argument is
that if you don't pack black voters into a single district,
then you will not be able to elect a black
candidate through the primary because if you're just drawing the
districts for partisan gain, which, as you know, the North
Carolina saga with all of our redistricting going all the
way to the US Supreme Court multiple times. They were
cited as well with the Rucho case that's named after
Bob Rucho, former state lawmaker. So they said that the
US Constitution is silent on using partisan affiliation or trying
to you know, draw districts for partisan benefit. And so
if states want to prohibit that, the states can do so,
but there's no prohibition from the from the Feds. So
if you're sitting down to draw a district and you're
a Republican map maker, right, just again, think this through.
How would this how this works? If you are the
Republican legislature and you want to draw maps that were
down to your benefit, you don't need to look at race,
You're just looking at partisan affiliation, and then you go
about drawing districts to make it more likely that more
Republicans will win more seats, and so you're just looking
at party affiliation. But Democrats say, no, you got to
look at race otherwise a black candidate will never win. Well,
wait a minute. If I draw in North Carolina, for example,
I've got fourteen districts. If I were to draw like
we currently have a map that has ten safe Republican
seats and four safe Democrat seats, then a black Democrat
could win in a black Democrat or a black Democrat
could win in a Democrat district. Right in the general election,
you put a Democrat black or white, you put them
up against a Republican in a Democrat heavy district, that
that Democrat's going to win that seat. Right, So this
isn't about the general election. This is about the primaries.
And what they're arguing is that Democrat white voters won't
vote for a black Democrat. That's their argument. I mean,
they don't make that argument explicitly, but that's their argument.
You can draw for partisanship. And one of the arguments
from the State of Louisiana was that there's no logical
endpoint to racial discrimination under Section two. And so the
louis State of Louisiana, and we saw this with the
North Carolina cases as well, is that the courts just
tell you what you can't do, and the states are
asking for clarity, like, we will draw the maps. However
the law requires us to draw the maps. We will
follow the law. But you can't keep telling us, Oh,
you can't draw a map like that. Okay, Well, what
should I use? We can't tell you, what's a better map?
What are the criteria I can use? Can't say? And
then you get sued, and then you go through this
long court process and you get even more confounded by
even less clarity. By the way, they were referring to
majority minority districts as opportunity districts. Okay, So the argument
was that you can't use race when you're drawing these
districts except to correct for racial discrimination. That was essentially
what the liberal justices were saying. That's what Section two
is about. Like, we're not saying you should discriminate, We're
saying because one of the one of the judges kept
asking that question. I think it was I think it
was a leido, can you use discrimination? Can you discriminate
when drawing a remedy to discrimination? And the lawyer for
the naacp who praised the deceased cop killer the other day.
But that's a difference. But she was arguing like she
didn't want to say discrimination. But that is what we're
talking about. That if Louisiana has this history of discriminatory behavior,
which it does, then you will never be able to
get out from underneath that history. So therefore we have
to use discrimination now, which is Ibra mex Kendy's argument,
critical race theory, anti racism stuff, which is the solution
to past discrimination, is current discrimination, that's their argument. You know,
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dot com. So this is Eric Daugherty over on Twitter
commenting on the oral arguments, and I heard this as well,
Clarence Thomas making the point that in Louisiana, the quote
unquote black district that was drawn, the second district that
was drawn to ensure a black candidate would win, that
it would not exist unless Louisiana was forced by the
courts to consider race. And that's the problem is that
you're using race to draw the lines. And they're like, well,
and the liberals were like, well, that's just the remedy. Yeah,
but it doesn't speak to the candidacy of the individuals
running for the offices. And again, the only way that
you would believe that a black Democrat cannot possibly win
in a Democrat majority district is to believe that white
Democrats won't vote for a black Democrat. That's what you're
telling us. That's the argument. And by the way, just
not for nothing. I would point out Mark Robinson won
the lieutenant governor nomination. He won the lieutenant governor race,
he won the governor nomination. He did not win the
governor's race. But Mark Robinson, black Republican win. Some seers
in Virginia, black Republican right, Black Republicans win, They win
their primaries, you know, not, I mean, not all of them,
but they do tend to do well. So this seems
to be Democrat on Democrat action going on here. Now
back to Max Flugraf at Slate again left this publication.
Louisiana versus Calais. This case began with a simple act
of compliance. After a federal court found the state's congressional
map violated the Voting Rights Act by weakening black voters power.
Louisiana Republican lawmakers were ordered to draw a second majority
black district. Okay, because they've got six districts and black
residents make up a third of Louisiana's population, air go,
there should be two blacks in Congress. That's the argument.
But the district, they only had one black majority district
air go Blacks can only win one seat, that's the thinking.
That's the explanation. So lawmakers followed through on the court's
order to do a new map, and then they got
sued again, this time by a group of white voters
who claimed that preventing proven discrimination was in was itself
racial discrimination, because it is. That's exactly what occurred. He
goes on to then say this is how democracy is erode.
So you get the gist of his piece here. And
what they're really really worried about is if you eliminate
Section two of the Voting Rights Act, it could actually
redound to Republicans benefits all across the country, to the
tune of somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe two dozen
additional congressional seats, maybe more like up the twenty seven
seats could swing to Republicans. And that's on top of
the ones that the states are looking to redistrict right now,
So you would you could see a massive shift. This
is what has the Republicans or Democrats rather freaking out.
So mister Flugrath offers the path forward he says, it's narrow,
but it exists and demands urgency. Democrats must act decisively
on two fronts. First, redraw maps aggressively wherever possible. So
what is he saying we have to jerrymander? People get
to more jerrymandering. The houses at state focus relentlessly on
retaking Congress. The Senate's steeper climb, but every seat matters.
The stakes are this high. That's what I mean. They're
not opposed to gerrymandering, they're just opposed to Republicans doing it.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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