Fox News anchor Sandra Smith looked genuinely stumped by the results of new polling in California after voters passed Proposition 50, which allows the state legislature to bypass an independent commission to redraw congressional districts that favor Democrats.
In a Friday segment posted online, Smith noted that according to a Fox News poll, 82 percent of voters who supported the measure said they did so to counter redistricting efforts in Republican-led states.
Meanwhile, 64 percent who voted no said they did so because they believe it isn’t the best way to redraw district lines.
Then she revealed another polling stat that stunned her.
“We asked the voters how they would actually like to see these lines drawn… The irony of this…is that nine-out-of-ten voters – even more so – said they’d like to see this done by a non-partisan commission, not the party in power,” Smith continued.
“Well, that was preempted with the outcome of this vote,” the surprised anchor added.
Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who campaigned against Prop 50, rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claim that the proposed redistricting changes would be temporary, calling the idea “total fantasy.”
“I think when he — when they say this is temporary, there is no such thing. I mean, the longest programs are government programs that are temporary. Okay, just remember that if this is a tax program or if it is the redistricting program, anything that is temporary with government is permanent,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper a week before Tuesday’s vote.
Newsom urged the assembly to place Proposition 50 on the ballot to counter redistricting efforts in Republican-controlled states, such as Texas, Missouri, and Indiana, among others.
“In the year 2032 when the independent redistricting commission is supposed to come back, they‘re going to say, ‘Wait a minute. There‘s still gerrymandering going on in Texas. There‘s still gerrymandering going on in Ohio. There‘s still gerrymandering going on in Florida. We have to continue with gerrymandering.’ This is what‘s going to happen. They will find an excuse. So therefore I don‘t think it is temporary. So that‘s total fantasy,” Schwarzenegger said.
In response to critics who oppose Proposition 50, Newsom said, “Spare me the moral high ground.”
What he left unsaid is that his Democratic Party has gerrymandered the states it controls for decades, leading to more Democratic-controlled House seats than the party would otherwise have.
Schwarzenegger criticized the redistricting efforts by California Democrats as “cheating” and urged the party to focus on outperforming former President Donald Trump rather than manipulating district lines.
“What the Democrats should do is they should outperform Trump. To me, it‘s all about competition creates performance. And so what they do is with the redistricting commission is that they‘re going to go and try to draw the district lines in such a way that they get voted in, no matter if they work well or not for the American people. So the American people get cheated on this whole thing. That is really the problem here,” he told Tapper.
The former Republican governor of California acknowledged that partisan battles between Republicans and Democrats were inevitable, but argued that the real losers in the redistricting fight were ordinary Americans, who he said were “being cheated.”
“I think that if you want to really fight for democracy, why would you go in, destroy the Constitution in California, tear it up and redo it, do the whole thing? So to me, it just doesn‘t make any sense at all,” he added.
Schwarzenegger publicly came out against the redistricting proposal in a social media post, sharing a photo of himself at the gym wearing a T-shirt that read “Terminate Gerrymandering.”