Why Gavin Newsom isn't even bothering to campaign for reelection
Politico, LARA KORTE: "Gavin Newsom is not asking for your vote. He doesn’t need it.
The first-term governor is up 20 points in the polls after defeating a recall attempt around this time last year. He has famously spent campaign cash on billboards in Texas and TV ads in Florida, but has spent little time or money directly boosting his California reelection bid.
His campaign website doesn’t include a platform. He’s not airing reelection ads. And the one and only debate he agreed to was held on a Sunday afternoon during primetime football, as the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Chargers took the field."
Last-minute oil millions flowing to moderate California Democrats are a ‘double-edged sword’
LINDSEY HOLDEN, SacBee: "Oil companies are spending big on California legislative candidates in the closing weeks of the fall campaign, especially moderate Democrats they hope will be friendly if elected.
A political action committee with a freight train of a name — Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class, Including Energy Companies Who Produce Gas, Oil, Jobs And Pay Taxes — is funded by Chevron, Valero, Phillips 66 and Marathon Petroleum.
They’ve dumped millions into Sacramento-area state Senate and Assembly races in October. Since Oct. 10, the PAC has spent more than $2.6 million on independent expenditure ad campaigns supporting Assembly District 10 candidate Stephanie Nguyen and Senate District 8 candidate Angelique Ashby, according to campaign finance records from the Secretary of State’s Office."
Ex-girlfriend of suspect in Paul Pelosi attack says he struggled with mental illness, drugs, believed he was ‘Jesus for a year’
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "The imprisoned longtime partner of David DePape, the suspect in the attack on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, said Sunday that mental illness and drug use had caused him to deteriorate so profoundly that he once grew convinced that “he was Jesus for a year.”
“He has never been able to hold a job,” Oxane “Gypsy” Taub said Sunday evening. “He has been homeless. This person really does suffer from mental illness and that is probably why he was there at 2 a.m.”"
Elon Musk spreads unfounded conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack on Twitter
LA Tmes, BEN POSTON/RICHARD WINTON: "Days after taking control of Twitter, Elon Musk on Sunday posted and later deleted an unfounded conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton tweeted a Los Angeles Times story profiling the suspect, who is accused of breaking into the Pelosis’ home and attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer, and his far-right extremist views.
“The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories,” she wrote. “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.”"
California Assembly Speaker duel splits Democratic funding, unity ahead of election
STEPHEN HOBBS and LINDSY HOLDEN, SacBee: "One of the most competitive races in California politics is not on the Nov. 8 ballot. Yet it looms over legislative contests across the state...
Who will be California’s next Assembly Speaker?
Supporters of Assemblyman Robert Rivas, a Central Coast Democrat, say the job should be his soon."
California banned affirmative action in 1996. Inside the UC struggle for diversity
LA Times, TERESA WATANABE: "For nearly half a century, the University of California has been at the center of national debates over affirmative action and who is entitled to coveted seats in the premier public higher education system.
In 1974, after Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was rejected from the UC Davis medical school, he alleged reverse discrimination and sued, becoming the namesake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case curbing racial quotas. In 1995, UC regents voted to eliminate affirmative action and one of them, Ward Connerly, championed a successful campaign a year later to pass Proposition 209, the nation’s first ballot initiative to ban consideration of race and gender in public education, hiring and contracting. Over the last decade, California legislators have launched at least three attempts to restore affirmative action in college admissions — all have failed.
As the U.S. Supreme Court opens oral arguments Monday on whether to strike down affirmative action in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, UC’s long struggle to bring diversity to its 10 campuses offers lessons on the promise and limitations of race-neutral admission practices."
Stanford-Harvard 'scorecard' translates California's test scores into months of missed learning
EdSource, JOHN FENSTERWALD: "Amassive data project by researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities, released Friday, has converted national and state test scores into the equivalent measure of learning decline during the pandemic for every school district and student group in California and 28 other states."
"The interactive data in the Education Recovery Scorecard confirm, in clear and stark terms, the disparities in performance and learning loss among states, districts within states and racial, ethnic and income groups within districts for grades three to eight. (Go here to start with California and other states.)"
"For California, the data in math translated into a straight downward line on a graph, showing that wealthier districts, those with a small percentage of low-income students, experienced the least loss of learning — a matter of a few weeks in Orinda, Lafayette and Los Gatos in the Bay Area — compared with the loss of three quarters or more in a grade equivalent in Bakersfield City and Mountain View Elementary school districts. (Go here for an interactive graphic showing learning decline in math for California districts — the blue circles.)"
Atmospheric rivers will hit the West soon. What does it mean for California?
The Chronicle, JACK LEE: "Back-to-back atmospheric rivers are expected to bring 3 to 6 inches of precipitation to parts of the Pacific Northwest through the middle of next week. But is the storm system going to make it all the way to California?
Not exactly, Newsroom Meteorologist Gerry Díaz said, but the remnants of the atmospheric river means the Bay Area will likely see rain next week. Díaz compared moisture from an atmospheric river to gasoline.
“You’re filling up your car at a gas station - that gas is the atmospheric river and the car engine is the storm itself,” Diaz said. “Eureka, Redding … the storm will have plenty of fuel to work with up there, but as it starts moving toward the Bay Area the atmospheric river will have less and less fuel.”
She was a leading lesbian activist before disappearing into Northern California. A filmmaker wants to know why
The Chronicle, RYAN KOST: "There was a rhythm to life on The Land, a sweet cadence in the place up Sherwood Road, just outside Willits in unincorporated Mendocino County.
The days began at first light — a meal, perhaps, followed by the gathering of firewood. Early on, in the ’70s, days were spent building: constructing homes from scraps, developing a spring for running water, planting a garden and building a fence to keep the deer out.
At dusk, before the only light around came from flashlights, ingredients were gathered and a fire started. There was singing, too, and lots of laughter on this Northern California land, claimed and staked for women.
“Heaven” is how one woman described it."
How generational gap may have helped lead to South Korea’s Halloween tragedy
LAT, JEONG PARK: "In 2019, Hannah Lee, a college student from a suburb of Seoul, told her family that she was heading to the lively Itaewon neighborhood to celebrate Halloween.
Lee, now 23, was curious to see fellow young Koreans dressed as zombies. Elder family members were puzzled.
“All asked: Why?” she recalled. “They think it’s a foreign culture. It’s not even a Korean thing.”"
Lula defeats Bolsonaro to become Brazil’s president — again
AP, DIANE JEANTET/CARLA BRIDI: "Brazilians delivered a very tight victory to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a bitter presidential election, giving the leftist former president another shot at power in a rejection of incumbent Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right politics.
Da Silva, who is known as Lula, received 50.9% of the vote and Bolsonaro 49.1%, according to Brail’s election authority. Yet hours after the results were in — and congratulations poured in from world leaders — Bolsonaro had yet to publicly concede or react in any way, as truckers blockaded some roads across the country in protest.
Bolsonaro’s campaign had made repeated, and unproven, claims of possible electoral manipulation before the vote, raising fears that, if he lost, he would not accept defeat and try to challenge the results."
