Newsom's battle with wildfires + A very early Senate endorsement + California's top Republican

Aug. 27--Good morning and happy Thursday!

WHY WEREN'T WE READY?

via Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabalow

Gavin Newsom had been governor for just one day when he appeared at a Cal Fire station in the Sierra foothills and outlined his plan for protecting California from major wildfires.

More helicopters. Better alert systems. Additional firefighters. Infrared cameras for early detection. In the months that followed, the administration sent out crews with chainsaws and wood chippers to cut brush and trees at dozens of projects near fire-prone communities.

Nineteen months later, wildfire risks seem as bad as ever in California. A series of lightning strikes touched off hundreds of fires that devoured more than 1.3 million acres in barely a week, killing seven people and destroying more than 1,000 homes and other buildings. Despite beefed-up staffing, Cal Fire has been strained to the breaking point.

"We're deploying every resource we have," Newsom said Monday.

Since Newsom took office in January 2019, the state has spent several hundred million dollars expanding Cal Fire's personnel and equipment. He signed a bill requiring PG&E Corp. and the other major utilities to spend a combined $5 billion on wildfire safety.

Yet the fires seem to keep coming, and experts say they'll continue to roar in the months and years ahead, unless the state and federal governments continue to spend billions of dollars more on making California communities more resilient to fire.

There's a lot of ground to cover: California has 33 million acres of forests, plus another 15 million acres of grassland and scrubby terrain called chaparral, the dense brush that surrounds many foothill communities up and down the state.

That's 48 million acres, nearly half the state's total landmass, at considerable risk of burning. Approximately 3 million California homes, about a quarter of the total, lie within risky "fire hazard severity zones" mapped out by Cal Fire.

These were places that burned regularly before homes were built, and before the state and federal governments spent decades racing to put out every fire that ignited to protect communities and lucrative timber stocks. UC Berkeley researchers estimate that prior to 1800, about 4.5 million acres of California burned in a typical year. Around half of those acres burned because Native Americans intentionally ignited them as part of their traditional land-management practices.

An executive order Newsom signed in January 2019 was intended to reduce the state's "fire deficit." Newsom drafted a Cal Fire blueprint for removing excess trees and brush from 35 high-priority hot spots around the state within months.

But the projects, in all, covered about 90,000 acres of land, a sliver of what's needed.

"I don't think at this point we've gotten much traction with the problem," said Malcolm North, a fire ecologist at UC Davis and the U.S. Forest Service. "The enormity of it ... it would probably take years. There's no simple or cheap solution to this problem."

RELATED: California lawmakers seek $2.5 billion to protect homes from wildfire, thin forests.

COUNTING CHICKENS ...

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have yet to win their campaign to unseat President Donald Trump. That isn't stopping a progressive Latino advocacy group from making plans for Harris' senate seat.

Latino Victory, a progressive political action committee, announced a five-figure digital ad campaign on Wednesday advocating for the appointment of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla as Harris' successor in the U.S. Senate if she becomes the next country's next vice president.

"We want to make sure that we have a diverse voice in that U.S. Senate seat, and I think the earlier that we can coalesce around one leader, the better," said Nathalie Rayes, president and CEO of Latino Victory. "We want to make history."

Kim Bojórquez has more in this story.

KEVIN MCCARTHY SET TO SPEAK

If you can't wait to see House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy at the Republican National Convention tonight, you can catch this morning at the Public Policy Institute of California's 2020 Speaker Series.

McCarthy and PPIC President Mark Baldassare will engage in "a wide-ranging conversation about leadership in complex and difficult times" this morning at 9:30 a.m.

You can sign up to watch the event by visiting here.

McCarthy is a featured speaker at the RNC. He's expected to speak from the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial at the U.S. Capitol, the Bakersfield Californian reports.

Cathy Abernathy, a friend of McCarthy's, told the Californian the congressman will talk about the United States being a nation "where you can make your dream come true."

"I can trust that Kevin's words will inspire us that we're good people but we are at a crucial juncture," she said. "You have to take very serious this election."

NEWSOM SIGNS ELECTION EXECUTIVE ORDER

Gov. Newsom has signed an executive order extending the deadline for county elections officials to count and verify signatures submitted for ballot initiative petitions seeking to get on the November 2022 ballot, "giving the elections officials needed flexibility to focus on preparations for the general election this November," according to Newsom's office.

The deadline extensions give county elections officials until March 9 to determine the number of qualified voters who have signed an initiative petition between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2020.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"State Sen. Brian Jones had taken to calling the governor 'King Newsom' and agitating against public health measures to prevent the coronavirus' spread.His Instagram indicates he was a fan of violating social distancing rules before he ... got the virus." -- McClatchy California Opinion Editor Gil Duran, via Twitter.

Best of the Bee:

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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced a new contract with a medical diagnostics company he says will allow California to more than double its coronavirus testing capacity, get results faster and cut costs, via Sophia Bollag.

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A California Republican state senator announced Wednesday that he has tested positive for COVID-19, scrambling plans for the Legislature's end-of-session schedule days before lawmakers are supposed to recess for the year on Aug. 31, via Hannah Wiley.

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Ambrosia Cafe, a Capitol and state worker favorite, closes in downtown Sacramento, via Benjy Egel.

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