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RECENT PODS:

• Political Breakdown (Scott Shafter and Marisa Lagos): California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot on confronting President Trump over climate change (2020-09-17)
• Inside Golden State Politics (Bill Boyarsky and Sherry Bebitch Jeffe): Trump and Newsom, Strange Political Bedfellows and a Strange Political World (2020-09-17)
• Political Breakdown  (Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos): former Assembly member Mike Gatto on end-of-session fallout, parenting in office and prison realignment (2020-09-11)
• Capitol Weekly Podcast (John Howard and Tim Foster): Lobbyist Jennifer Fearing (2020-09-11)

GENERAL ELECTION DATA POINTS

• Election Day: 43 days
• Ballots mailed to all California registered voters: 14 days (w/in 5 days)
• RealClearPolitics presidential average: Biden 49.5, Trump: 43.0 (9/7-9/20): Biden+6.5 -- updated today
• RealClearPolitics generic congressional average: Dems+6.0 (8/1-9/20) -- updated today

ATCpro SUBSCRIBER UPDATES: [A full list of recent election analysis is on the subscribers home page. If you have forgotten or haven't set a password, use the forgot password tool]

The Nooner for Monday, September 21, 2020, presented by SYASL Partners

• Money matters
• COVID-19
• Wildfires
• Ballot bonanza
• Employment
• Cakeday and classifieds 

Thursday is the deadline for state candidate committees to turn in their first pre-election report. I am short today because the CDC has a guidance but it's now been yanked. I never thought that I'd be writing on wildfires and a virus, but it is 2020 after all.

I'll be low in word cound today, but you understand why... The Giants continue to find the bat in blowout games while none In tough games. Lo se!

As the August Complex Fire creates new records for largest state wildfires by nearly doubling down on the second highest, report Ruben Vives and Alex Wigglesworth of the Times.

The Bobcat fire has grown to more than 103,000 acres, making it one of the largest wildfires in Los Angeles County history. The blaze continued to threaten some desert communities as well as the Mt. Wilson Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains on Sunday.

The fire was no longer bearing down on foothill communities such as Arcadia and Monrovia to the south, but it continued to move into some remote areas in the Antelope Valley to the north, destroying homes and prompting numerous evacuations, officials said.

“We’re still in the thick of a good firefight,” Andrew Mitchell, public information officer with the U.S. Forest Service, said Sunday.

 I am exhausted along wit law professors, fellow students, and so many more. To understand, deaths on the Court helps th heart of us all and goes far beyond politics that the media focuses on.

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MONEY MATTERS: highlights of filings from yesterday's daily reports. These do not include regular contributions to candidates or significant in-kind expenditures from the political parties, which are primarily for mail.

Legislative races - independent expenditures

• AD42 (Cathedral City, Twenty-Nine Palms, Yucaipa): $52,180 in mail IE by Keep California Golden (Cumulative total: $180,130) - recent donors are the California Association of Realtors ($200,000) and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association ($50,000).

Doing the Laundry: while individual contributors are limited to $4,700 to each candidate, if it passes through a party committee without specified destination, the money is washed...

• Like many other many other county Democratic parties, the Orange County Democratic Party reports a max contribution of $38,800 from the California State Council of Service Employees (SEIU).

COVID-19: 

-The numbers: 30 more Californians reportedly lost their lives to COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the total to 15,016. The usual caveat about weekend reporting applies, with lower numbers reported over the weekend and higher numbers midweek. The 14-day average positivity rate statewide is 3.1%, although testing rates have gone down amid smokey skies and warnings about social distancing. Frankly, nobody knows at this point, which creates a huge public policy quandary.

Source: State of California

WILDFIRES: 

-The numbers: 26 fatalities have been tallied and 6,546 structures destroyed or damaged in the Caliifornia fires. Five of the state's 20 largest fires in California history have occurred in 2020, with 3,472,947 acres burned. (The acreage number is updated occasionally and not daily like the individual fires.

Here are the five biggest currently burning:

1. August Complex (Mendocino, Humboldt counties): 837,241 acres, with 34% containment as of 7:21am
   - 1 death, 86 structures destroyed
   
   
2. SCU Lightning Complex (Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Stanislaus counties): 396,624 acres, with 98% containment as of 09/19 8:42
   - 222 structures destroyed
   
   
3. LNU Lightning Complex (Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Yolo, Solano counties): 363,220 acres, with 98% containment as of 09/19 8:38
   - 5 deaths; 1,491 structures destroyed
   
   
4. North Complex (Plumas, Butte, Yuba counties): 292,200 acres with 62% containment as of 8:15am
   - 15 deaths; 1,393 structures destroyed
   
   
5. Creek Fire (Fresno, Madera counties): 278,368 acres, with 25% containment as of 8:50am
   - 846 structures destroyed

-From the Desk of the Dean: George Skelton writes that California leaders need to look south to the other California to understand how to manage forests and minimize fire risk.

The Sierra de San Pedro Mártir is similar to the Sierra Nevada: dominated by Jeffrey pine and mixed conifer forests, winter snow, granite base and rainbow trout. The peaks aren’t nearly as high as in the Sierra Nevada, but they’re up there. The tallest is 10,157 feet.

The pristine Baja range “can be used as a reference to what the drier portions of … forests in the Sierra Nevada may have looked like without a history of extensive logging and fire suppression,” reads a research paper published in April by the California Fire Science Consortium at UC Berkeley.

...

EMPLOYMENT: In The Bee, Jeong Park and David Lightman look at what happens to individuals as the federal supplement to unemployment benefits disappears.

Losing the $300 often means incomes dip below what is regarded as low or very low income, according to a new study by the independent California Policy Lab.

It found that a California family with two parents collecting the maximum weekly benefit of $450 per person while supporting one child would be considered by the state “very low income” if they had no other income.

Of course, Washington has moved on from this crisis to filling the Supreme Court vacancy...

cakeday and classifieds after the jump...

CAKEDAY: Happy birthday to Brian Brokaw, John Casey, Assembly members Devon Mathis and Randy Voepel, former Assembly member John Longville!, and Kevin Trommer!