Paul Mitchell, a veteran redistricting specialist at a California voter data firm, was in the middle of packing for a European trip when he got the call: Time to draw the map. It was late July 2025 and, after weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, Gov. Gavin Newsom was moving ahead with his plans to reconfigure California’s congressional districts — and Mitchell was the person with the expertise to do it.
With a new California map getting the green light, Mitchell’s other maps — “I’m a cyclist, so we had planned it, and I had purposefully put all the nice little rides that I wanted to do,” he told me recently — got shelved. He drove his wife and daughter to the airport and, instead of exploring London, Paris, Switzerland and Italy, he spent the next two weeks studying towns like Fallbrook, San Marcos and Temecula. His mandate: Counter the redistricting that could lead to five additional GOP House seats in Texas by creating five new Democratic seats in California.
As soon as he got back from the airport, the calls began. Could Democratic Rep. Mike Levin on the coast of northern San Diego County and southern Orange County spare a few votes? Would Palm Springs Democrats be OK with getting attached to northeastern San Diego County? Would incumbent Republican Reps. Young Kim and Ken Calvert — who represented different districts in Riverside County — tear themselves apart in an unexpected primary?