Top Ten Winners & Losers In California Politics This Week - The Prop. 50 Edition
Each week we pick ten people or groups that had a particularly good or bad week, and label them winners or losers! For the week ending 11/7/25, it’s all about Prop. 50…
Below is our Top Ten List of Winners and Losers for the Week. This feature available to all of our subscribers, free and paid.
⏱️ 4 minute read
This is where we look over state and local politics (or national with a California angle), and highlight people (or groups) that have had some solid wins, or who have just had a really rough week. For this week we are looking exclusively at winners and losers as it relates to the successful Prop. 50 campaign. Readers know that I opposed this cynical effort to have politicians pick their voters instead of the other way around. But readers also know that while I have my views, I try hard to call balls and strikes pretty objectively. Which made assembly this list a very depressing task, indeed!
Each week I do a short video highlighting one of our awardees… You will find that below.
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Top Ten Winners & Losers This Week in California Politics
⬆️ WINNER: GAVIN NEWSOM
Starting from his X post to President Trump on August 11 — Newsom drove Prop. 50 from idea, to legislative achievement, to a massively bankrolled ballot measure, to a successful statewide vote (with a huge margin of victory). All in less than three months. His ability to dominate the process, especially getting massive amounts of money in the door from so many unions and others that benefit financially from state government spending and policies, with both impressive and frightening. He has successfully further diminished California Republican voters, which I did not think was possible. And has pushed himself, for now, into pole position in these early states of the race for the Democratic nomination for President.
⬇️ LOSER: FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER KEVIN MCCARTHY
First rule of life - under promise and over deliver. When Newsom moved forward with his plans McCarthy was quick to proclaim in political circles that he would take ownership of raising $500 million for the partisan efforts to fight Prop. 50. So instead of being a winner for raising tens of millions of dollars, an impressive feat, he’s the loser who raised less than 10% of his goal. By the way, not easy to raise big bucks when GOP decision-makers inside the Beltway decide the risk/reward proposition didn’t make sense for them to go in with big bucks against the measure. For falling short of expectations he created, he gets this award.
⬇️ LOSER: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
The Governator is a political loser because of lack of true meaningful engagement in the effort to stop Prop. 50. The Former Governor could have helped raise campaign funds. He didn’t. He is vastly wealthy and could have put in some of his own money. He didn’t. He could have traveled the state going earned media events like when he ran for office (remember the broom?). He didn’t. He made some public comments — but he never truly engaged. The non-action hero watched Gavin Newsom take a hatchet to part of his legacy.
⬆ SHAWN STEEL, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEEMAN
Even Generals in wars that are lost can show their quality, and their worth. Shawn took it upon himself to embark an uphill quest to raise money from DC to fight Prop. 50. Even though more direct and higher profile efforts failed to meet expectations (See McCarthy) Shawn was able to successfully raise around $11 million (which was unexpected). He also successfully lobbied the National Republican Congressional Committee to retain the Dhillon Law Group to litigate against Prop. 50. Solid work from my friend of … 37 years? Time flies.
⬆️ WINNER: PAUL MITCHELL, REDISTRICTING PARTNERS
When Prop. 50 in legislative form was being shoved quite in-artfully through the legislative process, a partisan train running over anyone in its tracks, firebrand GOP Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo lit up the Democrats who simply did not want to say that Democratic consultant Paul Mitchell drew the lines. I watched this with fascination while listening to Paul on a podcast for Capitol Weekly happily talking about what it was like to draw the lines. As a conservative I hate these lines so much that Paul has to be a winner. It occurs to me that someone also drew up the plans to the Death Star, as well. And convince Darth Vader the plans were good.
⬇️ LOSER: CHARLES MUNGER, JR.
The scion of a wealthy family, Munger’s father was the billionaire business partner to Warren Buffet, Munger is not a loser like Schwarzenegger, who didn’t meaningfully engage. On the contrary, Munger, who spent heavily back in 2008 and 2010 to fund the efforts to first create the independent redistricting measure and then have it apply it’s worth to House districts, spent over $32 million of his not hard earned money to try and stop Prop. 50. He happily put that in, no doubt on the presumption (note the grand promises of McCarthy) that he would be met on the field of battle with big bucks from the GOP establishment. Oh there were healthy funds raised, until you compared to the over $170 million raised by the Yes on 50 efforts. Munger is a political loser for watching Newsom take a cleaver to his legacy. You almost personally bad for Charles.
⬇️ LOSERS: CA GOP HOUSE MEMBERS LA MALFA, KILEY, VALADEO, CALVERT, KIM AND ISSA
Ahhh, the hardest part of this column to write. Some of these folks are close friends — all of them I know and are dealing with being on the losing end of carefully drawn lines (see Winner Mitchell) that now make it likely that only one, maybe two of them are going to be sworn in to another term in 2027. La Malfa will have to run against State Senate President Mike McGuire who “lucked” into a brand new safe Democratic seat, which is like storming Normandy beach without air cover. Kiley’s district was ripped into a bunch of pieces. Unless he were to tilt at conservative hero Congressman Tom McClintock, in a new seat where McClintock has been representing 80% of the voters, he’s going to have to charge uphill hard. Valadeo has been barely getting reelected in what was a tough seat for a Republican, and now the seat just got a lot worse. Calvert and Kim were both drawn into the same ruby red district but to use the only Highlander creed, “There can be only one.” Finally Issa’s safe seat went from very red to definitely leaning/likely blue. There is some thought he may just go jump into the mosh pit with Calvert and Kim. All in all, a crap-sandwich for these great Representatives who are victims of the new maps.
⬆️ WINNERS: DEMOCRAT CONSULTANT JIM DEBOO & HIS TEAM
Longtime Democratic operative, and for a time Chief of Staff to Governor Newsom, DeBoo was the top person in charge of a vast organization charged with implementing the vision that Newsom threw up on X in early August. His winner status here isn’t really just for him, but for a bunch of lefty smart people who I don’t know but who really stepped it up in the moment. In the Academy Awards these are the people who get their Oscars at that lunch where all of the technical achievements are recognized. Having personally overseen an organization that successfully passed twelve statewide ballot measures around the country, I have tremendous respect for the achievement here.
⬇️ LOSERS: COMMON CAUSE AND THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS
These groups purport to support “good government” and were both strong supports of creating the commission in the first place. Under the sheer political might of Newsom and his partisan organization, these groups just folded up their card tables and went home. Words to not describe these groups that come to mind are principled, courageous, and committed. For those who enjoyed the movie Braveheart, these groups were basically Robert the Bruce, betraying their principles and showing themselves to be cowards.
⬆️WINNERS: THE TEAM OVER AT POLITICO
There was some great coverage of the entire Prop. 50 campaign from a lot of publications, but frankly the team at Politico took their reporting on this huge thing to another level - in both the quality, depth and quantity of their efforts. I guess the praise starts for the organization itself, for placing so many assets on covering this California political earthquake. The reporting was thorough, accurate, deep, and I will add creative. They covered angles on this that no one else did (like this one). I would name all of the reporters if I could, and all of the editors and graphics people and fact checkers. Too many to list. But great job to all of you, truly.
Now that you see what this column is all about, keep your eyes peeled. If you have someone to suggest to be considered for featuring in this column next week, drop me a note. I will keep confidential the names of those who make the suggestions!
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