Hey, I'm Matt Rothschild and welcome to this episode of the Wisconsin Ford podcast on
the Civic Media Radio Network.
Today, we're going to be talking about the response by California Governor Newsom to the
gerrymandering down in Texas.
And the question for the day is, should Democrats be fighting fire with fire or should they uphold
the principle that gerrymandering is wrong no matter who's doing it?
My first guest is Ruth Conough, Editor-in-Chief of the Wisconsin Examiner and former editor
of the Progressive Magazine.
Full disclosure, Ruth and I worked together at the Progressive for many, many years.
In mid-August, Ruth broke this issue right out into the open by writing two editorials
in opposition to Newsom's response.
The first was entitled, we can't gerrymander our way back to democracy.
And the second one was called, we need a populist pro-democracy movement, not more gerrymandering.
Ruth Conough, welcome to the Wisconsin Ford podcast.
Great to be here.
So what spurred you to write those two columns and plunge into this debate?
Well, you know, Wisconsin has really been through it as you well know since you've been
heavily involved in the anti-gerrymandering effort here and it has taken us years and years
to overcome this outrageous two-thirds majority in the legislature, the Republicans managed
to wangle in a state that has just evenly divided 50-50 and that has consistently elected
Democrats in statewide races, so they still managed to, you know, hold this huge majority
in our state legislature until finally through a multi-step process, the most inspiring step
of which was this massive pro-democracy movement that demanded fair maps across the state.
We now have maps that actually reflect the partisan makeup of the state and the will of
the voters in legislative districts.
So they can, you know, talk to their legislators and expect that their legislators might be
somewhat responsive to their concerns because they're not gerrymandered into a sure bat
in their seat.
And that is really the core of democracy across the country, I believe.
And I think here in Wisconsin we have a unique perspective on this push to out gerrymander,
one party trying to out gerrymander the other to grab control of Congress, which is that
it stinks.
It's anti-democratic.
It, you know, gerrymandering relies on making sure that you disempower voters, that, you
know, politicians get to pick who votes for them, not voters getting to pick who represents
them.
And I just think in this moment of intense crisis in democracy in the United States where
we are looking at armed troops in cities, we're looking at an administration that utterly
flouts the rule of law, the wrong place to go with that is to say, let's see if we can
be as bad as the other side and, you know, snatch up a few seats in the house, which, by
the way, you know, it's not going to, it's not going to yield anything until 2027.
So the emergency that we face is not going to be solved by a slim democratic majority
in the House of Representatives, but I think what we give up, if, you know, people who
used to advocate for fair maps, just throw that aside and say, no, you know, we, we didn't
really mean it or we don't mean it when it really matters, you know, I think we give
up the potential for mobilizing a massive popular resistance to authoritarianism, which
is actually the only path out of the crisis work.
It also, to my mind anyway, increases cynicism among the public, especially among people
who aren't diehard Democrats, everyone else is going to look at what Newsom is doing
in California, you're going to say, wow, this is class, cynical, hypocritical, I can't
stand either party, they both, you know, just try to manipulate the system to benefit
themselves.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
And I think it is the wrong direction for a democratic party that is trying to figure
out how to mount an effective resistance to Donald Trump and to just copy his playbook
just seems like a disastrous response.
And yet you mentioned the dire circumstances we're in with ice and the military taking
over our cities and Trump acting like a dictator already.
So people seize on those facts and say, well, we got to fight fire with fire.
Yeah.
And I think that also people are desperate for somebody to stand up to Trump.
And so the fact that Gavin Newsom in California is, you know, not only proposing this very
creative solution to the Jury Manor in Texas, but also just putting out those ridiculous
tweets where he imitates Trump's style and basically taking it to Trump, people really
just want to see something.
They want to see some aggressive resistance.
And this looks like a thing.
And so people like it.
And I understand that.
I really understand that.
But I don't think that I think there's several reasons why it doesn't work well when
we just talked about the Democrats look weak and they look like they don't actually stand
for anything.
And, you know, also they're not going to win in the long term as this Jury Manor in
the testicizes if Indiana and Missouri and Florida, which are all threatening to get
into it, also do mid district, mid decade redistricting, you know, Republicans will come
out on top and then Democrats will have given up both the moral high ground and the actual
practical means of resisting.
And I think doing what they need to do because I think what Democrats need to focus on
is, why did they lose the industrial Midwest?
Why have they lost rural voters?
What can they do to actually speak to people's real needs and desires and represent, you
know, be the populist party, be the party of the little guy, really, you reclaim that.
And that, you know, this Jury Manor thing goes in absolutely the opposite direction from
that.
No, I posted on Facebook your two columns and said, I agreed with you and I got some
blowback on that.
I imagine you got a lot of blowback.
What was that like?
You know, I sympathize with the fact that people are really upset about the Trump administration
and feel like it's, they want to play hardball and that's what, that's what this Jury
Manor issue has come to represent for people and I got it and I just think it's shortsighted
and it's not going to work.
Well, Ruth Kahnoff, thanks so much for being my guest today on Wisconsin Board Podcast.
Yeah, great to meet you, Matt.
My next guest is Sally Flores.
She's the organizing director for the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition and full disclosure, I worked
with Sally for a couple years when I was at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Sally Flores, welcome to the Wisconsin Forward Podcast.
Thanks.
It's always the pleasure to be in community with you.
Likewise.
You know, I just want to get initially your reaction when you heard that Governor Newsom
was going to Jury Manor in California and answer retaliation for the Texas Jury Manor.
I'm literally shaking my head.
It's unbelievable that we at the Fair Maps Coalition used California as an example to draft
a proposal for an independent redistricting commission here in Wisconsin and now to hear
Newsom completely Polo 180.
I think it's ridiculous.
I think people fought for an independent redistricting commission in California for a reason
and now we're just seeing all of that sort of take 10 steps back.
It's ridiculous.
Is it demoralizing for you and for people at the grassroots that you work with all the
time at the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition?
I think what we said was that there's not enough Neal Sporen to cover all of the burns
if you try to fight fire with fire and that's what they're trying to do.
You know, some people even on our side think, well, the stakes are so high with Trump and
what he's doing that you've got to do it.
And I hear that all the time on the Tom Hartman show, Stephanie Miller too.
Sometimes I had a debate in Ruth Conneff had a debate with Maggie Don on the Maggie Don
show and she was taking that position as well.
How do you respond to that?
I thinkfully I'm a native Spanish speaker and so my question is so you're okay with
undermining democracy.
If you want to gerrymandere, you're also okay with falsifying an election because gerrymandering
there isn't a word for it in Spanish, it just translates to manipulating election results.
So if Democrats solve much value democracy, but they're okay with manipulating the election,
it just makes me question our integrity and our values as a pro-democratic nation or here's
hoping.
The thing is gerrymandering is disenfranchising people.
That's what it does.
It takes people's voices away because it crams, you know, one group's political identification
into a small portion of the map as possible so they lose their voice.
And so it's just a bad thing to do.
And so there is a, ends and means problem here.
Of course.
And I just, I can't believe that Democrats are almost like falling for it.
That they're like, okay, now we're going to fight fire with fire.
When were you fighting fire with fire decades ago when this issue was so prevalent in Wisconsin?
It's like, it's too late now and you're just going to get burned.
And it's just showing that it's an undemocratic process that we cannot follow.
And yet you have people like even President Obama saying it's okay, how'd you respond to
that?
Again, people that are okay with manipulating election results to benefit their party are
still participating in undemocratic values.
I can't say that enough.
It's unbelievable to me to recognize that we've worked so hard to educate folks on gerrymandering,
which is to us like all good, all press is good press, right?
The fact that now more people know what gerrymandering means, we're taking that as a crutch
to really work into educating folks onto what the next best thing is, which is an independent
redistricting commission, which is what they haven't got for it.
Tell me about the Wisconsin Fair Maps coalition.
What is it?
Yeah.
So we are a pro-democracy group that's now been in existence since 2017 and so on.
We are made up of a lot of pro-democracy organizations, about 40 of them.
We have a lead team, which includes the League of Women Voters, Wisconsin Democracy
Campaign, Common Cause, an array of amazing individuals, and we just finished drafting
a proposal for an independent redistricting commission that we've been taking through
the state.
I was just in Beloit and then Waukesha, going all the way to Dorr County, finding Joey
and doing that.
So I got to go horseback riding through the state trails and just finding moments of
joy in this space, but we have been taking public input.
What should go into an IRC?
How much money should commissioners get paid?
Should they get paid?
Like we are really listening to what the public wants us to do before we solicit sponsors
for the bill in late October.
So we're still on tour, we're still hearing people and every Monday we meet for almost
three hours sometimes to review all of the questions that people ask because we really
want to make this a citizen-led process.
And following October and following finding champions for a bill, we're planning for
a rally, October 16th outside the Capitol at noon, so everyone's invited.
And after that, we know that we have to go through a constitutional amendment process
because we don't have a ballot initiative process like Michigan.
We also don't have an IRC like California.
So we have to get there somehow, thankfully the plane is still on the ground and we don't
have to build it while it's flying.
So it's really exciting to see everybody kind of provide input.
And what's happening is, I think the first time that I'm seeing sort of something really
truly citizen-led.
And the amazing thing on this issue is it's totally bipartisan.
I mean, Republicans don't like it, Democrats don't like it, independents don't like it,
they understand that someone's rigging the map, who's in power and wants to stay in power
by bad means.
And so I think people get at how important it is, especially here in Wisconsin since you've
been doing all this work in the other organizations.
And grassroots organizers in the Fair Maps Coalition have been doing all this work for quite
a while now.
For a while, yeah.
It was really beautiful to see that three years ago, we put out a brochure where we
tabled at county fairs, we tabled at farmer's markets.
And in the brochure three years ago, it was still showing what cracking and packing meant.
It still had the definition for what Jerry Mandering is.
And we just revamped a third version of it.
And now we're talking to folks who know what Jerry Mandering is, who don't need that like
101, who know that the next best thing is an independent redistricting commission.
So just seeing the two brochures almost side to side that in three years, we were able
to wake people up, share a collective psyche of like, oh, wow, what we need is something
better.
And here's what we have.
What about people here in Wisconsin who say, well, I thought we already got Fair Maps
here or Fair Maps.
Yeah.
I think that's the rainbow, beautiful unicorn visual that we all wanted to see following
either signing the Fair Maps.
And that's not the case.
We have been working really hard to do a lot of education against that thought because
people think it's one and done and this might happen again.
We're warning folks.
2030 might come around.
We don't know Wisconsin is so purple.
So we don't know what ways it's going to, you know, politics is going to lean.
And we might not get another chance to redraw the maps in a more ethical way if we don't
have an IRC.
And so the hope is to get this independent redistricting commission in the next during
the session.
Yeah.
Before the 2030 census.
And then how do you see us getting through this muddied period where some people are
for gerrymandering in a tactical way and saying that, well, we're just going to do it this
one time.
And then we're going to go back to the independent redistricting commission in California.
I mean, it's such a motherly message for the general public.
I think people are going to see through that and say, well, just on cynical to me.
Yeah.
I totally agree.
I think, again, all press is good press people are now learning what gerrymandering is
and people across all aisles agree that it's wrong.
I, we had this debate at the Fair Maps Coalition when we were releasing a statement.
What do we say to this?
Because common cause is one of our partners, common cause national, common cause Wisconsin
had a different statement.
What do we say to our people?
And again, if you're okay with undermining the election, then you are not for Fair Maps,
then you are not supportive of an independent redistricting commission.
And you're okay with, you know, manipulating maps.
Just say that because that's the truth.
That's what gerrymandering means.
And how do you keep energy up for this fight, given all the waves, ups and downs that you've
gone through?
I think leaving a place, you know, better than you found it.
So my goal is to leave Wisconsin better than I found it when I migrated here.
And I hope that other people do that too.
And when did you come here?
I came here when I was five.
So I'm undocumented.
I won't be able to serve on the independent redistricting commission as an undocumented individual
because I can't vote.
But I value the vote because the vote is the reason I have a work permit, you know, the
power of the people who spoke out in support of people like me to have and to sit in positions
like these is so important to me.
I can have you back, Sally, for another episode of Wisconsin Forward Podcasts, discuss immigration,
your story, your activism.
So I can't wait for that conversation too.
Please do.
We'll still be here.
Thanks for being my guest.
For another point of view on this, I'd like to introduce my next guest, his name is
Sachin Chetta.
And he was the co-founder of the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition, which he shared for many
years.
And I worked with Sachin closely during that time.
And I really respect Sachin Chetta a great deal.
Sachin is also a long time political consultant who now runs a consulting group called Earth-Rise
Strategies in Milwaukee.
Sachin Chetta, welcome to the Wisconsin Forward Podcast.
Matt, thanks so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on.
You got so much wisdom on politics.
And I wanted to get a different point of view from the one we've heard already.
So how'd you react when Governor Newsom responded to the gerrymandering in Texas by saying he'd
have the legislature redraw the maps in California to give Democrats more seats?
Yeah, look, the most important thing here is that I think we're sad that we're at this
moment where across the country, you know, in a fight that has started with Donald Trump
and his allies to rig the maps, even more rigs than they have been in the past that they
are in the present, taking gerrymandering to a whole new level.
It's sad.
It's sad for a country.
It's sad for a democracy.
It demonstrates that our political system does not well reflect the views and the will
of the people.
And so that's my first reaction, right, is that it's sad that it's gotten to this.
I think where I differ from other fair maps advocates is in two ways.
One is I am less critical of those on the left, the Democrats who are, I think, truly
being responsive to an attack.
I don't think they've started this fight, especially in this moment on the Congressional
Maps for 2026.
So I'm not critical of Governor Newsom and the Democrats in California's effort to redraw
the maps in response to Texas.
But more importantly, I actually have tremendous hope that this will lead to a nationwide end
to gerrymandering in the way that we've seen it.
I actually think the elevation of the issue, the concern that people are raising across
the political spectrum, the polling that we've seen, the effect on our democracy and our politics
that people are really starting to viscerally understand will lead to a better future.
But I also don't think that the left or Democrats unilaterally disarming is likely to bring
about an end to gerrymandering sooner.
In fact, I think it would actually make things worse in the short term if they didn't fight
back and by doing things like the redrawing in California.
That's where I may disagree with a lot of my respected colleagues in this movement.
How would it make things worse?
Well, I think the problem is that when power does matter, right?
And if we give power to people in a way that we cannot hold them accountable and we give
them more power with less accountability in the short term, then it is unlikely that
we will be able to turn the dial on that as quickly as we otherwise would.
What this fight is about is control of the U.S. House.
But it's not just about whether Democrats or Republicans should win.
It's about whether the will of the people will be reflected.
It is very clear that the public is opposed to a great amount of the Trump, and say that
very well, but to a great deal of the Trump agenda.
Trump was not honest with the people, and he realizes that it is unlikely that they
would retain the House under the current maps.
That accountability is really important.
That short term accountability, when a president of either party, when a majority party of
either party in either House of Congress does the wrong thing, we need to be able to hold
them accountable through an election, right?
And so if people don't support what, if people don't support what Donald Trump is doing
and what the Republican party is doing, they need to be able to elect the other party, right?
They need to, that needs to happen.
And so in the short term, if the Republicans are trying to rig the election by redrawing
the maps in Texas, and one way to counteract that is to redraw the maps in California,
so that we're more likely to see an election in 2026 that reflects the will of the people,
then that short term fight is probably the right thing to do.
Again, we shouldn't celebrate that.
We shouldn't say that's a good idea.
We shouldn't say this is wonderful and good for democracy.
What we should say is it's unfortunate that we need to do this.
We need to change the rules in response to the rules changing of the Republicans, but
then we also need to change them back, and we need to continue to fight for fair maps
across the country in every state, in legislatures, in Congress, in local elections.
And that's actually what Newsom and the Democrats are proposing in California.
It's a short term fix, unlike what they're doing in Texas, which they're trying to rig
the maps essentially forever.
And I do think that that will lead to change, right?
At some level, at some point, you have to elect a new president, and that president
has to appoint new Supreme Court justices who are going to do the right thing, who are
not going to be rigged for the right wing, the way this US Supreme Court is.
And again, that unfortunately might take decades.
What about the argument that Democrats are just going to end up losing more people nationally?
Because a lot of people don't like politics as usual.
Don't like politicians as usual.
They think they're all corrupt.
They're going to look at California's AC.
Democrats are as bad as Republicans.
They're all horrible.
Well, that's a really, look, it's a good point, right?
And I think that we see engagement in the political system weakening.
We see younger people, especially turning their back on our political system.
And that's bad, right?
And I don't mean to suggest that there won't be short-term pain.
There is going to be short-term pain.
My goal here in the context of gerrymandering is not to help Democrats win or Republicans
win.
My goal is to say we need to reflect the will of the people, right?
And I have differed from other Democratic consultants in saying, look, if we lose the
election, the response to that isn't to complain and try to rig it in our favor, the response
to that has to be, we have to put forward an agenda that the people will support.
The problem here, Matt, is that the Republicans aren't saying they're going to win the election
by putting forward an agenda that people will support.
They're saying, screw it, we're going to put forward an agenda that people hate.
But then we're going to rig the elections.
And so if you don't counteract that in any way, then how does that ever change?
They'll just keep rigging elections.
Our democracy will continue to weaken, right?
And so the problem is that moral victories don't get us changed.
Moral victories just simply make people say, okay, I've got the upper hand and I can go
to my grave saying I did the right thing.
But if the power is held by an extreme fringe minority for the next 20, 30, 40 years,
we won't have the country.
You know, Donald Trump has this weird way of talking and he says, we won't even have
a country.
That's actually true.
We won't have a country.
We won't have the shining light on the hill.
We won't have an America where the arc of our moral universe bends towards justice in
the long term, unless we are willing to fight on the terms that our enemies have put forward
in the short term, right?
I do think there are limits to what we can do, right?
But at the same time, if we're talking specifically about what Newsom and the Democrats are doing
in California, I think they have calibrated their response.
They're not saying get rid of the independent redistricting commission forever, they're
not saying rig the maps forever, they're saying in the short term, we have to give Democrats
the opportunity to compete as close to a level playing field as possible for 2026.
And then this can be revisited going forward.
And I think that that is the right narrow, narrowly construed response in the near term.
But I think a lot of people are going to hear it as a muddied message and are just going
to take away, well, California Newsom's doing it, Dems are doing it, Republicans are doing
it, they all do it.
They're always going to help themselves if they can get away with it.
Yeah, but this is not a theoretical exercise, Matt.
This is not a theoretical exercise, right?
They are cutting research funding that is broadly supported.
They are cutting access to health care that is broadly supported across the country.
They are reducing our footprint in the world to help reduce poverty and disease, that
they are putting at risk millions of lives through death and destruction by war and
disease and lack of education and access to clean water and clean air.
This is not a theoretical exercise.
I don't know.
This is about a system in which we are under assault and our entire system of government
and our entire way of life is under assault from every front.
And so I can't narrowly just look at it and say, well, you know what, I guess that's
just what's going to happen.
They can rig the maps in Texas and maybe the Republicans will narrowly hold onto the
house, but we will have stood by our principles.
That feels like the wrong response.
I mean, I'll give you one really clear example.
I have a family member who is who access gender affirming care while a minor.
I believe that their medical records were subpoenaed by Pam Bommi in the DOJ.
I don't know that for sure because there's no transparency in the Trump administration.
They are blowing through our norms at a record setting pace, norms that George W. Bush
did not attack, norms that Ronald Reagan even didn't attack in terms of how our system
of a government is organized.
And so I think this idea that we should operate in a vacuum as if those things are not happening
is simply wrong headed.
We have to realize the reality.
We have to realize the reality that our entire way of life, the planet is under assault by
a fringe minority.
These are not normal people.
These are not folks who are the mainstream of the Republican Party or conservatives.
I don't even call them conservatives, right?
These are fringe right wing actors who have taken control of our government.
And they've done that through lies and misrepresentation and by creating a media infrastructure on
the right that is completely disconnected from reality, but frankly probably reaches more
people than mainstream news does now.
And so we can't just put our weapons down and say we're not going to fight, we're only
going to fight on the last battlefield, but we're not going to fight on the next battlefield
because we are actually fighting for a better world and a better country.
And sometimes you have to do things that you don't like, right?
War is ugly.
And this is a war for the soul of our country.
I think Joe Biden is somebody who said that.
And frankly, we're losing.
We're losing that battle.
And so winning a fight over gerrymandering in California in 2025 strikes me as not the
hill that we need to die on.
We need to die on the hill of vaccinating children and protecting the First Amendment
and not occupying every major city in the country with a military that they're trying
to control to do things that are awful.
And I think disconnecting this conversation from the real world impact of all the things
that Bobby Kennedy and Pam Bondy and Pegs that they're doing is simply the wrong thing
to do.
Well, Sachin Chatta, thanks so much for being my guest on this episode of the Wisconsin
Forward podcast.
Really appreciate speaking with you.
I really appreciate being here at Maddits.
Always great to see you and I look forward to talking more.
So as you can see, there's a range of opinion on this tricky issue, even among friends and
former colleagues.
And that's okay.
We don't have to agree all the time on every single thing.
But we can have civil debate and we can't have civil dialogue.
That's what the Civic Media Radio Network is all about.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
I want to thank all three of my guests, Ruth Kahnov, Sally Flores and Sachin Chatta for
coming on and sharing their views.
And I want to thank Dom Lee for his expert engineering and editing as usual.
I'll be back soon with another episode of the Wisconsin Forward podcast on the threat
that Trump's militarization of police poses for our democracy.
So please stay tuned for that one.
