He’ll be back… with a veto by John Reid

California politics just got its Hollywood sequel. Governor Gavin Newsom, always the slick operator, seems to be eyeing a little Lone Star statecraft, a Texas-style remapping of federal congressional districts, only this time to tilt the chessboard toward his own party, the Democrats.

In Texas, Republicans used the map-maker’s pen like a scalpel, carving out districts to ensure their grip on power. Now Newsom, draped in the blue cloak of California progressivism, appears ready to return the favor in reverse. The move may be legal, but it reeks of the same cynical gamesmanship he and his allies have decried for years. What’s sauce for the goose, apparently, is sauce for the Sacramento gander.

Arnold Schwarzenegger now, the former governor, lifelong showman, and self-appointed guardian of fair play in politics. When Arnold says, “I’ll be back,” you’d expect another Terminator reboot. Instead, he’s coming for the gerrymander.

Arnold’s outrage isn’t just about partisan hypocrisy, it’s personal. During his time in office, he championed California’s independent redistricting commission, a bipartisan safeguard meant to strip raw political advantage from the process and hand it back to voters. The system wasn’t perfect, but it was a statement: California would rise above the grubby knife-fight of gerrymandering.

Now, Newsom’s flirtation with a “Texas trick” would gut that legacy. Schwarzenegger’s not having it. “I will not let it happen,” he declared, sounding every bit the action hero, minus the special effects. It was the kind of plainspoken warning you rarely hear from today’s poll-tested politicians and it landed like a steel-tipped barb in the middle of California’s political arena.

This is where the story turns from a fight about lines on a map into something larger, a referendum on whether California is truly as morally superior as it likes to believe. The Golden State has long sold itself as the antidote to Southern voter suppression and Midwestern power grabs. But if Newsom pushes this through, it will confirm what cynics have said all along: every party wants “fair” maps only when they’re losing.

Schwarzenegger, for all his celebrity and self-promotion, understands the rot here. Gerrymandering is political cheating in slow motion. It’s the art of choosing your voters instead of letting voters choose you. Whether the hand holding the pen is red or blue doesn’t change the fact that it’s rigging the game.

California Democrats should think twice before they light this match. Not just because Schwarzenegger is promising to stand in the doorway with his sunglasses on, but because once you torch the principle of independent mapping, you can’t put that fire out. One day, the other party will hold the pen and they will draw the lines as mercilessly as you did.

Maybe Newsom believes he can outmaneuver the critics. Maybe he thinks voters will overlook the hypocrisy because it’s in service of “the right side of history.” But here’s the thing about history: it remembers who drew the lines, and why. And if Arnold Schwarzenegger has anything to say about it, California’s next political chapter will not be written in Texas ink.

For now, the fight is on. And the former governor has delivered his opening line with all the subtlety of a blockbuster trailer: He’s back.