You can track your ballot in California. Here’s how to make sure your vote is accepted
Sacramento Bee's HANNAH POUKISH: "Ballots for the 2024 presidential election have been mailed to California’s 22 million registered voters.
Californians can vote on candidates running for president, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as a number of statewide ballot propositions."
Some legislators miss hundreds of votes, but even ‘excused’ absences count as a ‘no’
CALMatters's SAMEEA KAMAL: "Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Corona who is running for state Senate, missed about two-thirds of her votes this year — 1,647 of 2,510 voting opportunities she had based on her committee assignments and floor sessions.
In most cases, the missed votes came from two “excused” absences during busy times of the year — once for a death in her family, and once due to illness after attending the Democratic National Convention in August, according to her staff."
LAT's ANDREA CASTILLO: "On a recent Tuesday in Sacramento, Alexa Sosa Nunez put in her AirPods, stacked her printed script and took a deep breath before she dialed her first call on behalf of Democratic congressional candidate Rudy Salas.
The 50-year-old woman who answered the phone said immigration is her top priority this election."
The Micheli Minute for October 21, 2024
Capitol Weekly's STAFF: "Lobbyist and author Chris Micheli offers a quick look at what’s coming up this week under the Capitol dome in Sacramento."
Why California Democrats believe abortion issue can win them back the U.S. House
CALMatters's JEANNE KUANG, JENNA PETERSON: "Three years ago, it wasn’t such a potential liability for a California Republican in Congress to be anti-abortion. Now, several of them are in competitive races to keep their seats.
Four signed a brief in 2021 urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the federal constitutional right to the procedure. Three of them co-sponsored a bill aiming to give equal protection under the Constitution to “preborn” life, which it stated started at fertilization. The legislation, which was backed by 166 House GOP members but never made it out of a committee, was essentially an attempted national abortion ban with no exceptions."
Where is Nikki Ellis? Sacramento Assembly candidate trades campaign for world travels
Sacramento Bee's NICOLE NIXON: "With less than three weeks until the November election, the Republican candidate for a state legislative seat representing the heart of California’s capital city has swapped her campaign for a far-flung international tour.
Nikki Ellis has not reported any campaign activity or fundraising with the Secretary of State’s office since filing to run for the seat. A campaign website lists affordability and homelessness as her top issues but she does not appear to have participated in any other campaign activity since she advanced from the March 5 primary."
S.F. Chronicle poll: Lurie surges in mayor’s race, positioned to edge out Breed
The Chronicle's CHRISTIAN LEONARD: "Nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie is pulling ahead of his competitors in the San Francisco mayoral race, according to a new poll commissioned by the Chronicle.
Roughly 23% of likely voters said Lurie is their top pick for mayor, nearly identical to the 24% who said the same of Mayor London Breed. But when accounting for voters’ second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-place picks — reflecting San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system — Lurie led Breed 56% to 44% in the final tally."
‘I am the change.’ Facing tough reelection, London Breed says she’s still what San Francisco needs
LAT's HANNAH WILEY: "If there’s anything Mayor London Breed has learned in office, it’s that compassion has its limits.
So when she talks about her steady tack right in recent years on issues such as retail crime and homelessness, she’s direct and unapologetic. Sitting at the helm of one of America’s most celebrated cities and trying to keep that city on course, she said, has opened her eyes to some hard truths. Among them: That without guardrails, there are people who will take advantage of San Francisco’s generous spirit and behave in ways that drag the city down."
Daniel Lurie would be S.F.’s least experienced mayor in a long time. He says that’s a good thing
The Chronicle's J.D. MORRIS: "In his ascendant campaign to unseat Mayor London Breed, wealthy nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie is asking San Francisco voters to do what they haven’t done in more than a century: elect a mayor who never has served in government before.
Lurie would be the first person since 1911 to be elected mayor of the city without those credentials. An heir to the Levi Strauss fortune by way of his late stepfather, Lurie touts a resume consisting largely of his time leading Tipping Point Community, the anti-poverty organization he created about two decades ago."
Mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin is campaigning with food. Are his recipes any good?
The Chronicle's SOLEIL HO: "As night fell in North Beach, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, the longtime politician who hopes to be San Francisco’s next mayor, leaned his back against his home kitchen counter, affecting his most casual, “What’s up, doc?” stance as his wife, Nancy, recorded him on video. The man once called the “Napoleon of North Beach” was about to make bean salad.
With dried butter beans from Iacopi Farms of Half Moon Bay and jarred tuna that he picked up at Molinari Delicatessen in North Beach, Peskin whipped together a recipe from Italian food writer Marcella Hazan, all while talking about the recent rent control expansion he presided over as the president of the Board of Supervisors."
Police cash flows to Hochman in D.A. race while support for Gascon dries up
LAT's JAMES QUEALLY, GABRIELLE LAMARR LEMEE: "When George Gascón ousted Jackie Lacey from office in 2020, it marked the end of the most expensive district attorney’s race in L.A. County history.
Four years later, the money is flowing again — just not to Gascón."
The Chronicle's DAVID HERNANDEZ: "Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price and about 100 supporters rallied Sunday against the recall effort against her, calling it a billionaire-funded attempt to halt much-needed criminal justice reforms.
“We are in the midst of a resistance that is more loud than massive,” Price said as she stood in front of her supporters on the steps in front of the Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland. The recall campaign, she said, “weaponizes people’s grief and pain,” and seeks to silence the voice of supporters of criminal justice reform."
‘People don't really know him’: Inside the rise of California wine’s billionaire sports tycoon
The Chronicle's JESS LANDER: "In June, billionaire Bill Foley — one of the most prolific buyers of California wineries in the past 20 years — told the Chronicle he was done buying wineries.
Just a month later, conglomerate Vintage Wine Estates declared bankruptcy, and Foley jumped at the chance to bid on its assets."
The Chronicle's JESSICA ROY: "Did California’s $20 fast food minimum wage immediately cost the state jobs and lead to massive price hikes when it went into effect? Critics predicted it would. A new study says it didn’t.
The Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley released research examining what impact the new requirement had in the first few months."
Abortion clinics in rural California challenge state’s reputation as haven for reproductive rights
The Chronicle's KEVIN FAGAN: "Damian Roberts glared at the man standing before him.
“What you have here is crap,” he yelled, pointing to the man’s pickup truck, parked a few feet away with a giant wooden cross fixed to the bed. A string of posters set up alongside the truck proclaimed, “You’re going to hell,” plus other slogans railing against abortion."
Kaiser mental health professionals in Southern California go on strike
LAT's EMILY ALPERT REYES: "Psychologists, therapists and other mental health professionals who work for Kaiser Permanente across Southern California went on strike Monday morning, protesting that the healthcare organization had failed to address enduring problems that hamper its mental health care.
The National Union of Healthcare Workers said that nearly 2,400 mental health workers had launched their job action after Kaiser management had turned down proposals that the union said would stanch employee turnover and improve care. The NUHW contract for the workers expired Sept. 30."
Infant mortality in the U.S. worsened after Supreme Court limited abortion access
LAT's KAREN KAPLAN: "Infant deaths have increased in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed states to make abortion illegal, researchers reported Monday.
The change became detectable three months after the June 2022 ruling with an elevated rate of infant mortality involving babies born with serious congenital anomalies, the researchers found."
What schools should know about the insurance crisis in foster care
EdSource's BETTY MARQUEZ ROSALES: "A seismic disruption of the foster system is underway in California, with no clear solution in sight for the 9,000 school-aged children whose lives and schooling may be severely impacted.
Most foster family agencies in California either lost insurance coverage on Sept. 30 or will lose it once their current policies end after their insurer pulled out of the market."
Major student loan company failed to process hundreds of thousands of applications
EdSource's LASHERICA THORNTON: "Mohela, a major student loan company, failed to process hundreds of thousands of applications for borrowers on income-driven repayment plans, preventing them from accessing more affordable monthly payments, according to Department of Education documents reviewed by Business Insider.
Mohela also failed to process loan forgiveness in a timely manner for eligible borrowers and incorrectly gave some borrowers a negative credit mark, among other errors, Business Insider reported."
Bay Area rain watch: Here are the chances for storms this week
The Chronicle's GREG PORTER: "It has been a surprisingly dry few months along both the East Coast and West Coast. Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are in the midst of record-breaking rainless stretches, with no significant rain in the forecast for the rest of the month.
Despite some unusual early-season rainfall in August and September, the past few months have also been abnormally dry in California and the Bay Area. The data for the Peninsula and the South Bay show these areas are particularly parched."
Latino residents slam ‘trust fund hipsters’ in L.A. gentrification battle that is getting personal
LAT's CLARA HARTER: "For the young and upwardly mobile hipsters of Northeast L.A., the Frogtown Flea Crawl was the hot new event of their perfectly Instagrammable dreams.
For many residents of the historically working-class Latino community, it was their breaking point."
Judge orders VA to build housing on UCLA baseball parking lot. On the double!
LAT's DOUG SMITH: In a matter of months, if a federal judge’s order holds up, the parking lot for UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Baseball Stadium will be filled with modular housing.
U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter on Friday ordered the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to select a vendor within a week and have a contract three weeks after that."