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half moon bay review
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Wednesday, August 19, 2020
[ event ]
Adam Pardee / Review
Volunteer Michelle Dragony shows Jenna Baxter where to park her truck for Thursday’s drive-in movie.
Coastsiders park themselves for night at movies ‘CHASING MAVERICKS’ BRINGS CROWD A famous movie character once said, “If you build it, they will come.” It turns out they will also come if you blow it
up — the movie screen that is. Coastsiders flocked to an empty field near the Johnston House in Half Moon Bay on Thursday for an entirely new experience. Julie Mell coordinated a drive-in movie using a gigantic inflatable screen and sound provided via car radios all under the moniker of
Beach Break Entertainment. Mell said 150 tickets were sold and each ticket admitted a carload of movie fans. (She guesses about 10 percent of ticketholders failed to show.) A spectacular sunset was just an added bonus for the dozens of families that came out to watch “Chasing Mavericks.” There are plans in the works for an encore. The first could be as early as Aug. 27 and would be shown at Ocean View Farms in Montara. Mell was still working on final approval at press time. Tickets could be on sale as early as this weekend. She is also looking for sponsors to fund movie tickets for Coastside Hope clients. Visit beachbreakentertainment. com for details on upcoming shows and for sponsorship opportunities. — from staff reports
Adam Pardee / Review
Moviegoers line up for the best bucket seat in the house.
Adam Pardee / Review
It was as if some unseen director said, “Cue sunset,” to project a spectacular display as a prelude to the evening’s feature film. [ california ]
Newsom considers Harris’ replacement COULD BE HISTORIC CHOICE By Ben Christopher CalMatters
Joe Biden’s choice of California’s junior senator, Kamala Harris, as his running mate brings to a close the presidential campaign’s most frenetic guessing game. It also opens up a relatively rare thing in the Golden State: the prospect of an open Senate seat. For career-minded Democrats, that holds the opportunity of a major promotion to the national stage and term-limitless job security, bolstered by the fact that California’s Democratic incumbent U.S. senators have a 28-year track record of winning. And the one man who could bestow that on them is Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Should a Biden-Harris ticket defeat President Donald Trump in November, state law gives the governor the power to fill Harris’ empty seat for the duration of her term, which ends with the 2022 election. And so, for politicos who enjoyed the spectacle of the veepstakes — the interpersonal drama, the last-minute
dark horse candidates, the feverish scrutiny by reporters of each possible nominee’s travel schedule — get ready for a fresh round as Newsom considers his options. And because California’s electorate predictably and overwhelmingly votes for Democrats, there’s a very deep bench of Democratic mayors, state legislators, statewide officeholders, members of Congress and other could-be senators who would love to hold one of those two seats. Consider the list of Harris allies who reportedly lobbied Biden to make the case for Harris in late July. Among them were Secretary of State Alex Padilla, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis. The governor will have until January to pick a replacement for Harris — if Trump loses the presidency. And as the last five months of pandemic, recession and civil unrest have shown, a lot can change in the meantime. But as Newsom chooses Harris’ successor, he’s likely to keep a few things in mind. First, there’s the state’s largest and thoroughly under-represented demographic group. “I would be shocked if it were not a Latino or Latina,
candidly,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant with a focus on Latino voting trends. Nearly 40% of Californians are Latino — yet the state has never been represented by a Latino in the U.S. Senate. That’s in part why prognosticators often name both California Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Attorney General Xavier Becerra as among the most likely to be appointed. And as a power bonus, naming either would give the governor the opportunity to choose their respective replacements as well. In one fell swoop, Newsom would “build an ally in the U.S. Senate, and you also get an opportunity to appoint their replacements in the interim, so (he would) get a whole lot of chits,” Madrid said. Former Labor Secretary and now Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, state Sen. Maria Durazo and Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia also appear on the guessing-game short lists of political consultants. Rep. Karen Bass, a Black congresswoman from Los Angeles who was circulated as a possible vice presidential choice for Biden, makes for another likely contender.
Although women have long represented California in the Senate, the governor will still be under pressure to choose a woman, said Ballard. With women making up just over a fourth of the Congress’ upper chamber for the first time in U.S. history, “you don’t want to be the one who diminishes the number of women who are in the Senate.” And Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez tweeted her suggestion for a twofer: Los Angeles state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, who recently has been perhaps the Legislature’s strongest advocate for extending Medi-Cal health care to qualifying undocumented residents. The daughter of migrant workers, she was a trade official before entering politics. Asked who she thought it might be, Rose Kapolczynski, president of the American Association of Political Consultants, who ran all four of former Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate campaigns, hedged in every way but one. “You could see an argument for a Latino. You could see an argument for a Black woman. Newsom has obviously made history for the LGBTQ community in the past,” she said. But a white guy? “Highly unlikely,” she said. r