Could a Californian Be Vice President?

Good morning.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to finally announce his running mate — well, if not this week, then soon.

And while one woman who represents California in Congress has shot to the top of the list, it may not be the one you thought.

Representative Karen Bass, a respected consensus-builder who made history as the first Black woman in the country to serve as the speaker of a state legislature, has become a leading contender amid what my colleagues reported has been intense jockeying.

As my colleagues have written, Ms. Bass’s credentials as an advocate for social justice and racial equity run deep: Her political career is rooted in her work as a community organizer in South Los Angeles during the 1990s, when the crack cocaine epidemic was ravaging the community and when rage against racist policing bubbled over in the Rodney King uprisings.

Ms. Bass also explicitly worked to bring together Black and Latino community members, as Jose A. Del Real reported for The Washington Post.

Today, she’s a five-term congresswoman and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who is close with Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But Senator Kamala Harris is by no means out of the picture. You may recall she also ran for president, and she still has many of the things going for her that made her a major candidate for the Oval Office: a barrier-breaking political career in which she has won multiple statewide races; sharp speaking skills, which she said she’d use to “prosecute the case” against President Trump; and name recognition both within and outside California.

Still, some observers have said Ms. Harris might be too focused on her own presidential aspirations to make for a second-in-command.

Politico reported that Senator Chris Dodd, a member of Mr. Biden’s search committee, told a donor that Ms. Harris “had no remorse” for her comments in a dramatic exchange with Mr. Biden over busing during one of the Democratic primary debates. Over the weekend, though, Politico also reported that the senator’s allies talked with Mr. Biden’s vetting team in an effort to smooth things over.

“The Bidens are looking for somebody as loyal to them as they were to Barack and Michelle Obama,” Christine Pelosi, the daughter of the speaker, told my colleagues recently.

Although, as my colleague Lisa Lerer wrote, it’s best not to get too caught up in the chatter.

So, how does this all affect California?

Ms. Bass and Ms. Harris are not the only competitors, of course; the Biden campaign is orchestrating an unusually public “veepstakes,” in which all the contenders are established public servants who would represent subtly different visions of the Democratic Party, said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

And Mr. Biden’s announcement during the primaries that he’d choose a woman for the job has helped head off less substantive discussion about a woman’s electability and instead focused it on which woman would be most likely to help Mr. Biden beat the president. That, Mr. Sonenshein told me, is the biggest priority for many California Democrats.

Still, he said, it’s notable — nay, “exciting” — to have two Californians at the top of the list.

“What’s interesting is, historically, California has not been a site for Democrats to get on the national ticket,” he said.

Despite Democrats’ current dominance within the nation’s most populous state, when it comes to national elections, California has been a more powerful springboard for Republican politicians — think Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

Now, Mr. Sonenshein said, no matter how the veepstakes shakes out, “a number of California politicians are going to get called to Washington — it’s probably long overdue.”

Ms. Harris and Ms. Bass, he said, represent parts of the Democratic base that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve: women in general, Black women in particular — and Californians.

“You could make a case for both of them,” he said. “Bass has a reputation as a first-class legislator and Harris is a strong litigator.”

Mr. Sonenshein said he got out of the predictions business after 2016 (seems wise), but one thing is certain: If either Californian is tapped to join a Biden administration, it’ll set off a reshuffling of Democratic power in the Golden State.

If Ms. Harris leaves her Senate post, he said, “You’re going to see a game of musical chairs like you’ve never seen before.”

Read more:

• Meet all the women who are in the running to be Mr. Biden’s pick for vice president. [The New York Times]

• Why does it matter whom Mr. Biden chooses? To start, he’s hinted that he might serve only one term if he wins, which would set up his vice president to be a 2024 front-runner. [The New York Times]

• In any case, don’t expect to know who won on election night, The Times’s media columnist wrote. [The New York Times]

• We’re somehow less than 100 days away from Nov. 3. But Californians can (and should, if possible) start voting earlier. Every registered voter is set to get a vote-by-mail ballot. See if you’re registered here.

(This article is part of the California Today newsletter. Sign up to get it by email.)

Encouraging signs in California virus data

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered encouraging news for residents who have been whipsawed by moves to push ahead with a patchwork reopening process and surging case numbers.

The state’s average number of new cases each day over the past week had decreased, as had intensive care admissions. The state’s average positivity rate over the past two weeks decreased to 7 percent.

[Track virus case trends in every California county.]

But Mr. Newsom cautioned that the numbers aren’t a sign that the state should consider easing restrictions again.

“It’s good to see this number trending down, not trending up,” he said. “We need to see another few weeks of this kind of data coming in to feel more confident about where we are as a state.”

[Read our coverage of California’s reopening.]

He repeated that the effects of the virus are disparate across California; broad averages can mask some of the pandemic’s most dire impacts. Right now, he said, the state is focusing on the Central Valley, where Mr. Newsom said state and federal “strike teams” are using strategies they honed when cases spiked in Imperial County.

That includes transferring patients out of overburdened smaller hospitals in rural communities and improving “culturally competent communication” in places where many people speak Spanish.

But increasingly, experts say that targeted response should have come sooner.

[Here’s why the Central Valley has become the state’s most pressing trouble spot.]

Read more:

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Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.