Gavin Newsom is having a moment. In the national struggle over U.S. House control, perhaps no politician has more at stake than the California governor, who has emerged as the leading Democratic adversary to President Donald Trump.

Lofgren, the chair of California’s 43-member Democratic delegation, consulted in June with a trusted data expert who dismissed it as absurd — a foolhardy end-run around the state’s popular redistricting panel with no guarantee of yielding enough blue seats to fully offset Texas.