Schwarzenegger urges Californians to oppose Newsom’s redistricting plan

By Arit John, CNN

(CNN) — Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action star and former Republican governor of California, urged voters in the state to oppose Proposition 50, a ballot initiative backed by Democrats that would allow the party to temporarily redraw the state’s congressional maps.

“I hate to get political here, but this is not political. This is more about democracy,” he said during an appearance at the University of Southern California on Monday. “If you vote yes on that, we go backwards.”

The comments mark the former governor’s first major public appearance against redistricting since Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom led the effort to put a proposition on the November ballot to override the state Constitution and redraw the state’s congressional maps through 2030. Last month, he posted a picture of himself working out in a shirt that said “Terminate Gerrymandering.”

The proposed maps could give Democrats five additional congressional seats in the state. Democrats have argued they needed to respond to Texas, where Republicans redrew their congressional maps to potentially give the GOP five seats at the behest of President Donald Trump.

Schwarzenegger, who backed the ballot initiatives that created the independent commission drawing the state’s congressional and state lines, said Democrats want to “dismantle” the commission. Under the Newsom-backed referendum, the state would return to congressional maps drawn by the commission 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 said, saying that Democrats want to “become Trump” to fight the president. “Two bad behaviors don’t make a right behavior. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Schwarzenegger appeared at the University of Southern California’s International Day of Democracy celebration, where he was interviewed by the university’s interim president and took questions from students.

One student asked why the redistricting push matters in light of “more existential issues” involving the Supreme Court and the government’s use of the National Guard. Schwarzenegger said that supporters of Prop 50 were making excuses about the need to redraw the maps and voters shouldn’t get “sidetracked” with arguments about what’s happening 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 said. “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 point, the former governor pointed out four former commissioners sitting in the front row and asked if they had been invited to help 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 said. “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, said he realized while he was in office that the maps incentivized candidates running to the left of sitting Democrats or the right 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 said.

After a ballot initiative he backed to have judges draw the lines failed, voters approved a 2008 ballot initiative to mandate that an independent commission would draw state legislative maps. A second measure, in 2010, allow congressional maps to also be drawn by the commission.

“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 said. “So we were true leaders in California.”

A spokesperson for “Yes on 50,” the coalition backing the referendum, did not respond directly to Schwarzenegger but focused on Trump instead.

“Voting Yes on 50 is California’s best chance of blocking Trump’s unprecedented redistricting power grab,” spokesperson Hannah Milgrom said in a statement. “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.”

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