With just one week before California voters are set to head to the polls to decide on the state’s redistricting proposal, Gavin Newsom sent an unexpected message to would-be donors: keep your money.
“We have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50. You can stop donating,” the California governor said in an email.
In 10 weeks, the campaign to support Proposition 50, which seeks to give Democrats more seats in the House in response to recently passed gerrymandered maps in Texas, raised $38m from about 1.2m “small-dollar donations”, the governor said.
The campaign also attracted significant large donations, including nearly $15m from a Democratic Super Pac, $10m from a lobbying group funded by George Soros and almost $4m from a state teachers union, among others. Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former Democratic presidential candidate, has spent $12m in support of the proposition.
Proposition 50 has grown in popularity since the state announced the proposal in August. In the last weeks of the campaign, prominent Democrats like Barack Obama have been urging voters to back the measure: “California, the whole nation is counting on you,” Obama said in one ad. “Democracy is on the ballot.”
A recent poll from CBS News found that 62% of likely voters said they would vote yes on the proposition while an Emerson College poll indicated that 57% of likely voters in California supported it, and 37% were opposed.
Meanwhile, the campaign against the ballot measure has crumbled in recent weeks, according to media reports. The groups urging voters to support 50 have far out-raised their opponents, with the Sacramento Bee describing the “cash-strapped” campaign against the proposition as going out with a “whimper”. Newsom’s campaign still has $37m on hand while two no groups have just $2.3m, the outlet reported.
The billionaire Charles Munger Jr, who Politico described as the most significant funder of the campaign against the proposition, has significantly slowed funding to the effort. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, had pledged to raise $100m against Prop 50, but has raised $11m.
With support for the proposition high and significant cash on hand, Newsom’s advisers last week suggested he could halt small-dollar donations in the final days of the campaign, the New York Times reported. “I love it,” Newsom said, according to the outlet.
“Now it’s about executing the plan,” Newsom wrote in the email announcing that supporters could stop donating. “If we can do that, we’re going to win.”
The Yes on 50 campaign will only send out emails with updates on the proposition or to request support for other states “trying to stop Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts”, Newsom said.
