Matthews on The Great Redistricting War & VA polling (10-15-2025--Hour3)

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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. Are you hey, Pete, how's it going? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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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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. Today. 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. So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once Again Pete's Pack. 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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, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. 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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 without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. 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