Governor Gavin Newsom is campaigning to suspend state constitutional provisions that bar gerrymandering. Launching the gambit in the style of President Trump, he’s muddling his message with snark while defying the state’s voters and its last GOP governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Plans in Texas to carve out Republican seats gave Mr. Newsom, who leads of the only state with a larger population, a gift. He could cast himself as a defender of democracy by “fighting fire with fire,” advancing the notion that his Democratic Party is innocent of gerrymandering despite employing it in blue states. 

Yet California’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, created with initiatives in 2008 and 2010, is an obstacle. On Friday, the Hill described it as “a gold standard in fair, redistricting efforts,” and Mr. Newsom faces an uphill battle to convince his constituents to spin that gold into straw.

A Politico-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey concluded on Tuesday found overwhelming support for the commission. Sixty-four percent of registered voters in the Golden State supported keeping it versus just 36 percent who’d return its function to Sacramento.

Although California’s legislature is Democratic, 61 percent of the party faithful back the commission; only 39 percent favor politicians again drawing maps. Mr. Newsom won both a recall in 2021 and reelection in 2022 with around 60 percent of the vote, but there are too many variables to guarantee that popularity transfers to redistricting. 

California lawmakers will meet next week to cobble together the new maps, which require a two-thirds majority to pass. They’ll also schedule a November 4 special election so voters can suspend the commission amendments through 2030. 

On Friday, Mr. Newsom made his case at a rally and in remarks @GavinNewsomPress. His signed tweets, offered in all caps as Mr. Trump often does, read as if the governor had asked Grok to restate his position in the president’s pugnacious style. 

Mr. Trump is “no longer ‘hot,’” Mr. Newsom said. He appropriated Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2015 barb about the president’s “tiny” hands, a dig at the first manhood, and alleged that a “low-ratings” Fox News host “can’t stop talking about my beautiful maps.”

Mr. Newsom dubbed his announcement “Liberation Day,” Mr. Trump’s name for his April 2 tariff launch. “Many people are saying,” the governor wrote, that he, “America’s favorite governor,” deserves “the Nobel Peace Prize” for “the ‘most incredible maps in the history of mapping.’”

Emulating Mr. Trump’s syntax and fondness for the Caps Lock button elicits laughs. But at his rally, Mr. Newsom said Democrats couldn’t “watch this democracy disappear district by district all across the country.” Using the situation as grist for a Vaudeville routine undermines his case that the issue is of grave importance. 

Mr. Schwarzenegger struck a more even-handed pose. His spokesman, Daniel Ketchell, touted “The Terminator” star’s support for the commission, his “20-year history of battling gerrymandering,” and his belief that it’s “evil no matter who does it” and that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Friday on X, Mr. Schwarzenegger responded to accusations that he’d ignored Republican maps. “It’s very hard,” he wrote, “to imagine someone who has principles that don’t change with a partisan lens, but Google or ask your AI about my history of fighting gerrymandering whether it is by Democrats or by Republicans.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger had earlier posted a photograph of himself pumping iron. “I’m getting ready,” he wrote, “for the gerrymandering battle.” The seven-time Mr. Olympia sported a shirt that read “F,” four stars, “the politicians. Terminate gerrymandering.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger, who endorsed Vice President Harris last year, offers a stark contrast to Mr. Newsom. The action star doesn’t need to copy the president — and, since he’s a naturalized citizen and ineligible for the presidency, his stance come across as public service rather than self-serving.

November 4 is shaping up to be a rare off-year election with national stakes. Whether Mr. Newsom can settle on a consistent, persuasive message will go a long way to deciding if Democrats embrace him as their 2028 presidential candidate, or if they reject copies of Mr. Trump as much as they do the original.