New homes fill the Grove Village subdivision in Santa Rosa. California lags far behind some red states in developing policies to encourage new housing.

When California’s leaders really put their minds to something, there’s seemingly no stopping them.

Last month, the Legislature declared a Nov. 4 special election to send voters a ballot measure asking them to approve temporarily allowing gerrymandering to increase the state’s Democratic delegation to Congress. So determined were California Democrats to counter Texas’ gerrymandered maps favoring Republicans — drawn at the behest of President Donald Trump — that they pushed three complex, politically challenging bills across the finish line less than a week after they were introduced.

If only California could summon similar guts to harness the most powerful political tool in its arsenal — housing.

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For years, blue state political superiority was considered a matter of demographic inevitability. It was only a matter of time before the country’s increasingly diverse populace would give Democrats an unbeatable supermajority at the federal level.

That prospective future didn’t pan out for a variety of reasons — and a building boom in red states is now effectively putting a nail in its coffin.

Sure, California lawmakers did exempt urban infill projects from unnecessary environmental review this year. But they arguably did so only because Gov. Gavin Newsom craftily tied reforming the California Environmental Quality Act to the passage of the state budget — and they didn’t want to go without a paycheck.

California still lags far behind Texas, which continues to liberalize its already relaxed housing development policies and is projected to gain four congressional seats in 2030. Meanwhile,

© San Francisco Chronicle