Can this man draw the Democrats a House majority?
Over 30 years ago, Paul Mitchell was an energetic community college student who smelled of patchouli oil and wore hair so long he could “tuck it into his back pocket.” Last week, he became the most powerful person in California politics.
A student government campaign innovator turned legislative staffer turned political data nerd, Mitchell was tapped this summer by the state’s Democratic leaders to engineer Gov. Gavin Newsom’s brazen attempt to match Texas’s mid-decade partisan gerrymander of its U.S. House map with one that gives Democrats offsetting gains in California.
Newsom’s cause will require many hands to be successful: lawmakers to muscle a constitutional amendment through the Legislature in mere days, attorneys to ward off incoming litigation and campaigners to pitch the concept to voters this fall. But it is Mitchell’s hand that currently faces the heaviest task — drawing the maps whose warped new districts will deliver on Newsom’s promise to create five new Democratic members of Congress.
To pull it off, Mitchell has to juggle a variety of competing political interests and legal obligations. There is the Voting Rights Act, which requires racial and ethnic minorities to be represented equitably. There are the Democratic House incumbents, wary of losing a grip on their districts, and the ambitious state legislators who may want to challenge them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/15/california-gerrymander-paul-mitchell-00510786
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