Come with me… if you want congressional districts to be drawn fairly.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has launched a nationwide anti-gerrymandering campaign that aims to place Congressional re-districting in the hands of independent, unbiased commissions.
In a post to his Facebook page this week, the 69-year-old actor and former California governor promised to match any donations made to his new fundraising campaign, which is aimed at fixing what he calls a “broken” system of drawing district lines in which representatives with approval ratings worse than “herpes, colonoscopies and cockroaches” continually get re-elected.
“At the same time, it seems like the American people are more divided than at any time in recent memory,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “That’s no accident – our politicians have literally divided us, drawing map lines so that they can pick the voters they want to represent, instead of letting the voters pick them.”
“When I was elected Governor of California in 2003 a lot of voters imagined I would be the Kindergarten Cop and break the gridlock in the legislature singlehandedly, but I realized very quickly that the problem ran much deeper,” he added. “Because legislators were drawing their own districts, they were picking their voters and virtually assuring their own re-election. Most politicians came from hardcore Democratic districts or hardcore Republican districts and had no incentive to leave their partisan corners to come together for the people of California.”
Schwarzenegger went on to explain that California’s adoption of an independent commission to draw congressional districts nearly ten years ago resulted in four House seats changing party hands in the 2008 election, what he said was a 400 percent increase from the past decade in just one year.
“It’s a three-pronged attack – we will fight gerrymandering with grassroots initiatives, we will fight it by lobbying in state capitols, and we will fight it in the courts,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “Together, we will win.”
As of Sunday afternoon, the “Terminate Gerrymandering” fundraising page on CrowdPac had raised more than $15,000.
Schwarzenegger has been both politically active and gone back to his acting roots in recent months.
In addition to feuding openly with President Donald Trump, the former governor hosted a reboot of Trump’s popular Apprentice reality show, before announcing earlier this year he would not return for a second season.
Earlier this month, Schwarzenegger told Entertainment Weekly that he hoped to begin shooting a sequel to his 1988 comedy Twins — tentatively titled Triplets — later this year.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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