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Since he first floated the idea on a podcast this summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been the face of a plan to redraw California’s congressional lines to favor Democrats.

Now, as the state hurtles toward a Nov. 4 special election in which voters will decide whether to adopt a new gerrymandered map, opponents are grappling with how much to center Newsom in their campaign to defeat the proposal.

At the California Republican Party convention in Garden Grove this past weekend — which aimed to mobilize conservatives against Newsom’s measure, known as Proposition 50 — the governor was a curiously negligible presence.

In strategy sessions and trainings, GOP leaders largely looked beyond Newsom, whose

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