Arnold Schwarzenegger, the motion star and former Republican governor of California, urged voters within the state to oppose Proposition 50, a poll initiative backed by Democrats that might enable the occasion to briefly redraw the state’s congressional maps.
“I hate to get political here, but this is not political. This is more about democracy,” he stated throughout an look on the University of Southern California on Monday. “If you vote yes on that, we go backwards.”
The feedback mark the previous governor’s first main public look in opposition to redistricting since Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom led the hassle to put a proposition on the November poll to override the state Constitution and redraw the state’s congressional maps via 2030. Last month, he posted a picture of himself understanding in a shirt that stated “Terminate Gerrymandering.”
The proposed maps may give Democrats 5 further congressional seats within the state. Democrats have argued they wanted to reply to Texas, the place Republicans redrew their congressional maps to doubtlessly give the GOP 5 seats on the behest of President Donald Trump.
Schwarzenegger, who backed the poll initiatives that created the impartial fee drawing the state’s congressional and state strains, stated Democrats need to “dismantle” the fee. Under the Newsom-backed referendum, the state would return to congressional maps drawn by the fee in 2032.
“They want to get rid of it under the auspices of, ‘We have to fight Trump.’ Doesn’t make any sense to me,” he stated, saying that Democrats need to “become Trump” to combat the president. “Two bad behaviors don’t make a right behavior. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Schwarzenegger appeared on the University of Southern California’s International Day of Democracy celebration, the place he was interviewed by the college’s interim president and took questions from college students.
One pupil requested why the redistricting push issues in gentle of “more existential issues” involving the Supreme Court and the federal government’s use of the National Guard. Schwarzenegger stated that supporters of Prop 50 have been making excuses in regards to the want to redraw the maps and voters shouldn’t get “sidetracked” with arguments about what’s occurring nationally.
“I don’t think that they use it for any other purpose other than weakening democracy in California, to be honest with you,” he stated. “I think that we have to do everything that we can to educate the people and to make sure that the people understand that the politicians want to take the power away from the people here in California.”
At one level, the previous governor identified 4 former commissioners sitting within the entrance row and requested if that they had been invited to assist draw the proposed congressional maps. They had not.
“It was the politicians that drew the maps, and there was no one from the public at all participating in this process,” he stated. “They are trying to fight for democracy by getting rid of the democratic principles of California.”
Schwarzenegger, who served as governor from 2003 to 2011, stated he realized whereas he was in workplace that the maps incentivized candidates working to the left of sitting Democrats or the best of sitting Republicans.
“I could see, when I was sitting as governor, how we couldn’t get things done because of the way the districts were drawn,” he stated.
After a poll initiative he backed to have judges draw the strains failed, voters permitted a 2008 poll initiative to mandate that an impartial fee would draw state legislative maps. A second measure, in 2010, enable congressional maps to even be drawn by the fee.
“We lost and we lost and we lost, but eventually the people voted yes, and we had, all of a sudden, an independent commission to draw the district lines,” he stated. “So we were true leaders in California.”
A spokesperson for “Yes on 50,” the coalition backing the referendum, didn’t reply instantly to Schwarzenegger however targeted on Trump as a substitute.
“Voting Yes on 50 is California’s best chance of blocking Trump’s unprecedented redistricting power grab,” spokesperson Hannah Milgrom stated in an announcement. “If Trump is able to steal unchecked power for two more years, he’ll have free reign to keep up his assault on our rights – taking away healthcare, denying a woman’s right to choose, and cutting funding for universities — including 400m from USC alone.”