On pace for record turnout + California animal rights law halted + Remembering Pete Price

Good morning and happy Thursday! The end of the week is nigh!

FIRST UP: California Republicans have no plans to pull the ballot collection boxes they posted in churches and gun stores despite demands from top state Democrats that they end the practice.

“We believe that temporarily holding VBM ballots in a locked box at a church or local Party headquarters is more secure than a Party volunteer or paid operative holding harvested ballots collected from voters at a senior center in the back seat of his or her car – though both are legal,” the party said in its letter to state leaders.

The Sacramento Bee’s Lara Korte has more in this story.

A PROMISING SIGN FOR TURNOUT

Via Lara Korte...

Californians aren’t wasting time returning their ballots this year.

The Secretary of State reports more than 1.5 million vote-by-mail ballots have been returned as of Wednesday morning. That’s nearly 10 times the number of ballots that were returned at this point in 2016.

California hit a record number of registered voters this year, and all 21 million of them will receive vote-by-mail ballots. Due to the uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic, elections officials are encouraging voters to return their ballots in a timely manner. Voters can return them in official drop boxes, at their county elections offices, or through the U.S. Postage Service.

“More Californians voting early will mean a safer Election Day for everyone,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said.

FEDERAL JUDGE PUTS PAUSE ON CALIFORNIA LAW

A federal judge with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California has issued a preliminary injunction against a California law banning the sale of alligator and crocodile products in the state.

If you’ll recall, California lawmakers in 2019 passed the ban in 2019, and it was set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, until the state was sued by an assortment of businesses in the alligator and crocodile skin trade.

Plaintiffs argued that the ban was unconstitutional because it was pre-empted by the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution and in violation of the due process and commerce clauses.

“They assert enforcement of (the ban) would cause them lost sales and canceled orders, inventory liquidations, job eliminations, erosion of goodwill and business relationships, business dissolutions and forced relocations, constituting irreparable injury,” according to the preliminary injunction order.

The judge ruled that the plaintiffs had demonstrated how allowing the ban to go into effect would lead to irreparable injury.

The judge also weighed in on the intersection of state and federal law when it comes to public interest.

“For a district court to answer the question of which system would better serve the public interest risks crossing the line from law into policy. Here, setting aside the policy judgments this dispute encompasses, the court concludes plaintiffs’ likelihood of success as to preemption compels finding in favor of plaintiffs. The question is not which policy better protects animals, but whether state or federal law controls,” the judge wrote. “Although California has its own interest in protecting animals, the reach of that interest ends where the preemptive effect of federal law begins. Because plaintiffs make a strong showing of preemption, the court finds the public interest weighs in their favor.”

REMEMBERING PETE PRICE

A longtime environmental advocate and former adviser to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown has passed away.

Pete Price worked in the Capitol for 30 years, and then went on to form the environmental lobbying firm Price Consulting. He died Sept. 23.

Dan Jacobson, director of Environment California, recalled Price fondly in a recent interview.

“He was one of the good ones,” Jacobson said, a refrain he said he keeps hearing from people.

Jacobson and Price were colleagues for two decades.

“The way I sort of think of Pete’s life is there’s not a piece of important environmental legislation from 1995 to 2015 that passed that didn’t have Pete’s fingerprints on them,” Jacobson said.

Whether it was clean water, pesticide reform or promoting organics, Price was a champion for the cause.

“Pete really had a policy expertise and a knack for winning when it came to protecting the environment in California,” Jacobson said.

That was because he had the ability to grab a cup of coffee with the opposing side and work with them to amend his bills if necessary, Jacobson said.

“He was so honest in the way that he negotiated that people on both sides of the aisle really trusted Pete,” he said.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I acknowledge that I’m not a committee chair, I’m not in leadership, and I’m not at the negotiating table. But I’m an equal member of Congress, elected to represent a constituency just like everyone else here. Make a deal, get folks the help they need.”

- Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, via Twitter.

Best of the Bee:

• Gig companies present a black-and-white message to their users: If Proposition 22 fails, they will have to pay more and wait longer for a ride or a delivery order, via Jeong Park.

• Preservationists in Nevada City thought they’d won a landmark victory last month against PG&E Corp., securing a court ruling preventing California’s largest utility from chopping down hundreds of trees in their community to reduce wildfire risks. Now PG&E has won a green light to resume cutting, via Dale Kasler.

• California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and a trio of Bay Area district attorneys are among more than 60 prosecutors nationwide vowing not to prosecute women who obtain abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, via Darrell Smith.

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