Farmers are fighting back against Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attempt to redistrict their counties.
Central Valley farmers and ranchers are teaming up with the California Farm Bureau to donate tens of thousands of dollars against Newsom’s Proposition 50.
Farmers generally "get" along and "go" along. They're good people.
I grew up in an orchard in the Yakima Valley.
Farmers will go along because they are good, honest, hard-working people.
But don't mess with them.
Governor Newsom is messing with the farmers in California's Central Valley.
Be informed, not misled.
Politico, a left-leaning news organization, says, "If passed by California voters during a special election in November, Prop 50 would redistrict the entire state, targeting five Republican federal representatives in what is perceived to be a blatant attempt at Democratic gerrymandering."
Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, whose district is one of the proposition’s targets, told Politico he is “one of the few counterbalanced voices.”
“Rural folks just want to be left alone. That would completely change,” he said.
The farmers say that Newsom’s redistricting could cause real harm to the state’s farmers, as the GOP incumbents are closely tied to the interests of the California farm belt. Prop 50 would split the state’s most rural areas with urban ones, whose voters have different priorities
Indeed, they do.
California Farm Bureau President Shannon Douglas, who’s been quoted on statewide mailers by the “no” campaign, told Politico, “We want to make sure that our members and our rural neighbors and communities get the representation that they really deserve.”
She fears farmers will lose access to valuable resources when their needs — such as roads, schools, and irrigation systems — are placed in direct conflict with more populated areas.
The bureau has not yet decided whether it will spend any money against the campaign, possibly due to self-interest or lack of time to plan a full response before the Nov. 4 election.
The bill comes as a response to Texas’s attempt to redraw its maps before the 2026 midterm election — a move Newsom believes would unfairly shift the balance of Congress. In the summer of 2025, Democrats fled Texas for Illinois to block a quorum.
Texas has sparked a nationwide rush to redraw district maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. To understand why this domino effect was triggered, it’s important to start at the beginning, when Gov. Abbott was forced to choose between keeping the existing map, already under legal challenge from both sides of the political aisle, or drawing new lines.
Abbott called a special session to redraw Texas’s district map in October of 2021. After it was signed into law and used in the 2022 primaries, the map was challenged by the League of United Latin American Citizens. They argued that it violated the 14th and 15th Amendments as well as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting Latino voting power and marginalizing minority communities. The case was consolidated with others, including United States v. Texas (filed by the Biden administration), streamlining multiple legal challenges into a single high-stakes proceeding. But it didn’t stop there.
In a separate case, Biden’s U.S. Department of Justice filed Petteway v. Galveston County, Texas, alleging that Galveston County’s 2021 redistricting plan for its Commissioners Court violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Though the U.S. District Court ruled the plan illegal, the Fifth Circuit delivered a landmark reversal on appeal and overturned more than three decades of precedent. The court held that the Voting Rights Act did not protect “coalition districts,” which are intentionally drawn to unite multiple minority groups into a majority. Instead, the Fifth Circuit interpreted such districts as political alliances rather than protected entities under the law.
This summer, under President Trump, the DOJ sent an official letter to Governor Abbott and the Texas Attorney General declaring that districts 33, 9, 18, and 29 were “unconstitutional ‘coalition districts’” and ordered Texas to redraw the 2021 map.
The DOJ letter was blunt: “Although the State’s interest… was to comply with Fifth Circuit precedent prior to the 2024 Petteway decision, that interest no longer exists.”
We'll see how the election goes for Prop 50.
As I wrote this, several thoughts crossed my mind.
Not the least of them was a speech Paul Harvey had given at the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention. The speech was first published in 1986 in Harvey's syndicated column:
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker."
-- so God made a Farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board."
-- so God made a Farmer.
"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it"
-- so God made a Farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt, and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks, and shoe scraps; who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then with pain from tractor back, put in another seventy-two hours"
-- so God made a Farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds, and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place
-- so God made a Farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark."
--so God made a farmer.
It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners; somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church; somebody who would bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says that he wants to spend his life "doing what dad does"
-- so God made a Farmer.
Thank God for the farmers.
Have a great weekend.
Be Informed. Be Blessed.