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Gov. Gavin Newsom fired back Wednesday at a top California Republican who proposed a “two-state solution” in response to the Democrats’ mid-decennial redistricting effort.
“A person who seeks to split California does not deserve to hold office in the Golden State. This is a stunt that will go nowhere,” Newsom told Nexstar Broadcasting and FOX-40 reporter Eytan Wallace later Wednesday.
Newsom was referring to California Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, who announced a new bill to split California into two new states along a north-south line as a response to Newsom’s redistricting effort.
Gallagher’s plan, laid out in what will be filed as AJR-23, would create a new state featuring its liberal coast and another uniting California’s conservative inland counties.
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Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, left; Gov. Gavin Newsom, right (Getty Images)
Gallagher dubbed the move a “two-state solution” – a term more identified with territorial clashes in the Middle East – to Newsom’s own clash with Republicans, which is the governor’s reply to Texas’ redistricting efforts.
“The people of inland California have been overlooked for too long. It’s time for a two-state solution,” Gallagher said.
Responding to Newsom after Wallace’s report, Gallagher tweeted that he has been “duly elected six times over and I assure you my actions represent exactly how my people feel.”
“We will not allow you to strip us of representation,” Gallagher said of Newsom.
Gallagher’s resolution responds to Sacramento Democrats’ attempt to permanently redraw California’s congressional maps – an act he says would silence rural voices and rig the political system forever.
While the political power of California’s overall current landmass would be diminished, the new “Inland” California would be one of the largest states by population in the nation, and reliably right-leaning.
Following a series of county lines generally slightly west of Interstate 5 – which runs the 800-mile height of the state – the new coastal state would retain many notably left-wing communities like San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and Sonoma.
It would also include the relatively center-right Orange County, as well as San Diego County, where the state’s Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones hails from.
Jones said earlier this month that Newsom wasn’t elected “to play gerrymandering games to boost his presidential campaign, [but] to solve problems here at home.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Jones and Newsom for comment.
Gallagher’s home county – Sutter, located north of Sacramento – would fall in the new conservative inland state.
It would also include right-leaning Truckee – where Interstate 80 crosses the Sierras – along with Kern County, where former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., hails from.
San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties – which today make up what is similarly called the “Inland Empire” – would also fall in the new state.
The 17 coastal counties would together create a state of 29.5 million people while the inland state would be home to 10 million, according to the Manteca Bulletin.
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Texas would become the nation’s most populous state, edging out Coastal California by about 1.5 million, while Inland California would become the 11th most populous state – fitting in between Michigan and New Jersey.
Gallagher has lambasted what he calls Newsom’s “mid-decade power grab” as a “mockery of democracy.”
“Don’t p— on my boots and tell me it’s raining. These are rigged maps, drawn in secret to give Democrat politicians more power by dismantling the independent commission Californians created to keep them out of map-drawing,” he said in a statement earlier this month. His comments came after Newsom approved the Democrats’ plan to place a resolution on the November ballot allowing the state to circumvent its semi-independent redistricting board.
“Californians should choose their representatives, not the other way around,” he said.
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Sen. Megan Dahle, R-Bieber, who represents a large swath of rural northeastern California also welcomed the move on Wednesday:
“I don’t have any illusion that this plan to split California will succeed where the many previous efforts have failed, but I signed on as a coauthor of this resolution to share the frustration of more conservative rural Californians that their voice goes unheard in Sacramento,” Dahle told Fox News Digital.
“Last week’s vote by the Democrats to carve up the North State’s congressional districts to try to gerrymander our elected representatives out of office is just the latest blatant example.”
State Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, had thrown a procedural hurdle in the redistricting process last Monday by indicating in a letter to the Senate’s secretary that he would withhold approval of unanimous consent requests for Tuesday’s legislative session.
“The majority party drafted new congressional districts behind closed doors with D.C.-based political operatives to undermine the work of California’s citizen-led commission in charge of redistricting,” Niello said in a statement.
In a statement last week, state Senate GOP lawmakers said “Democratic legislators have also been crystal clear about their support for independent redistricting as recently as July.
But in just a few weeks, a mysterious case of collective (and selective) amnesia seems to have set in. Let’s rewind the tape and hear them in their own words.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that California Senate Republicans issued a statement saying Democrats have a “mysterious case of collective amnesia” and that state Sen. Roger Niello said he would withhold approval of unanimous consent.