Redistricting campaign

DNC jumps in to help Gavin Newsom’s redistricting campaign

The national party organization is launching a new organizing effort and ad campaign to target Latino voters.

By Aaron Pellish

The Democratic National Committee is jumping into Gavin Newsom’s redistricting campaign in California for the first time with an initiative to target Latino voters, a crucial voting bloc that helped Republicans make significant gains in California and across the country last year.

The DNC on Thursday announced a bilingual organizing effort designed to push Latino voters to back Prop 50, the redistricting measure. The organizing team includes 41,000 volunteers to make calls, send texts and knock on doors in English and Spanish.

The new effort also includes digital ads targeting Latinos throughout the state, which will be released in coming days.

It’s a modest intervention. But the organizing and ad campaigns mark the first official support from the DNC for Newsom’s effort with less than two months until November’s election — a sign of the national stakes of this year’s redistricting wars. The California Democratic Party has assisted in organizing and fundraising, while House Democrats’ largest super PAC has contributed millions to the measure so far.

“California is home to the most Latino voters in the country, and too often, this core group gets ignored,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “It’s our job to make sure every Californian knows that this is a chance to even out the playing field after Trump and his Republican enablers tried to rig the Congressional maps to avoid accountability for cutting health care and food assistance for millions of Americans.”

Democrats suffered losses up and down the ballot last November in part because of gains made by Republicans with Latino voters — and Republicans in California are hoping to roll over Trump’s gains with Latino voters to help block California’s new maps.

But since last year, Latino voters have shown some signs of shifting away from Republicans after Trump targeted immigrants in California and elsewhere with ICE raids and mass deportations.