WASHINGTON — Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin will head to California on Thursday to stump for Proposition 50, which would temporarily redraw the state's congressional districts to elect more Democrats, Spectrum News has exclusively learned. 

What You Need To Know

  • With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, DNC Chair Ken Martin is heading to California to stump for Prop 50, Spectrum News has exclusively learned

  • In a wide-ranging interview with Spectrum News, Martin spoke about California's response to Texas Republicans redrawing their state's congressional maps to favor Republicans

  • Martin also weighed in on the Supreme Court's conservative majority seeming poised to overturn or severely restrict Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act

Proposition 50 is the only issue on the statewide ballot Nov. 4. The special election was added as a response to Texas redrawing its congressional maps to elect more Republicans.

“The Republicans wanted a showdown in Texas. We’ve given them a showdown,” Martin said in an exclusive interview with Spectrum News. 

“It's shameful what's happening, and Democrats and, frankly, independents and others are pissed off, and they're rolling up their sleeves, and they're saying we're no longer going to bring a pencil to a knife fight at this point. We're going to fight fire with fire.” 

During his time in California, Martin will participate in a bilingual phone bank in Los Angeles to reach voters ahead of Election Day, which is less than two weeks away. “We're trying to make sure people know how to vote, where to vote, what's at stake and what this will mean for the country,” he said.

Martin said he’s proud of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democratic officials who put Prop 50 on the ballot.

“It’s critical for our democracy,” argued Martin. “What we're seeing from the Republican Party is an unconstitutional power grab. In a moment where they know they're headed towards certain loss in 2026, they're trying to change the rules midstream and rig the maps.”

Republicans have criticized Newsom and California Democrats for the ballot question, which, if approved, would suspend the maps drawn by an independent redistricting commission.

“We're only supposed to do this once every decade, not in the middle of the decade," Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., told Spectrum News in August. "It's extremely disruptive to be upending district lines from one state to the next, as we could now see happening. It's not good for voters. It's not good for Democrats. It's not good for Republicans. It's not good for the country.”

But Democrats, including Martin, see this as a “proportional response” to the Texas maps drawn at the urging of President Donald Trump to create five more Republican-leaning congressional districts to bolster the Republicans’ chances of holding control of the U.S. House in next year’s election.

“We're going to actually have a counterpunch here that levels the playing field," Martin said. "And if they do this in Ohio or Indiana or Missouri or Florida or some of the other states that they're trying to do in it, we'll find other Democratic states to counter as well."

Last week, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court seemed to indicate they could be poised to overturn or severely restrict Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has helped many Black and Hispanic Democratic candidates get elected to Congress. 

Martin said he believes that if the court rules to throw out Louisiana’s congressional maps, it could have an impact on 2026, but likely would have a greater impact in 2028 and beyond.

“We’re going to fight tooth and nail to win up and down the ballot so we can put a check on the Trump administration's crazy, craven power grab, their unconstitutional acts, them completely gutting the Voting Rights Act and trying to disenfranchise millions of Black and brown voters around this country,” he said. “They know that they're about to lose, so what they're doing is that they're making it harder for people who don't support them to vote, and they're making it harder for people to actually have power by gerrymandering and diluting their power.”

While polls show California voters appear to be leaning in favor of Prop 50, turnout on Election Day will be the determining factor. Asked what happens if the ballot measure fails, Martin said Democrats would reevaluate, but he added that he feels confident about its chances of passage.

“I've always said in campaigns and elections, you run like you're 20 points behind, even if you're 20 points ahead,” Martin said. “I don't believe anything. I drown out the polls. I drown out all the noise. And what I do is stay focused on the work ahead of us. And so these next two weeks, we're going to do everything we can to win, and we'll worry about the consequences if we lose after the fact.

“But we're going to do everything we can right now to make sure we don't lose, because the stakes are so high.”