California Today: A Snooze of a Senate Race

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Let’s turn it over to Adam Nagourney, our Los Angeles bureau chief.

The race to succeed Senator Barbara L. Boxer of California was supposed to be one of the marquee contests of the year. It is a contest to fill the first open Senate seat in the nation’s largest state since 1992. It offers a window into the ethnic kaleidoscope that is California: Pitting a Latino, Representative Loretta Sanchez, against an African-American, Kamala Harris, the state attorney general.

It also is the beginning of the changing of the guard in a Democratic political leadership that is decidedly on the old side. (Ms. Boxer is 75, her fellow-senator, Dianne Feinstein, is 83, and Gov. Jerry Brown just turned 78.)

Instead, the race has turned into something of a snooze. For one thing, it has been almost completely overshadowed by the presidential contest. For another, the electoral system in place — where the top two winners of a primary face each other in a general, regardless of party — means that both candidates are Democrats.

As a result, in a year when Democrats are hoping to take over the Senate, California is not going to make a difference. And the fact that both candidates are of the same party means that Ms. Sanchez and Ms. Harris don’t have a lot to argue about — and that Democratic donors don’t have much reason to write them checks.

“This is the first open Senate race in the nation’s largest state in almost a quarter of a century and nobody cares,” said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “Democrats don’t see the stakes as very high and Republicans don’t see their interests being represented.”

Ms. Sanchez does not have the money to finance the large-scale television campaign needed in a state as vast as California. Her campaign has been marred by missteps, such as when she appeared to disparage American Indians by making a whooping noise.

Polls shows Ms. Harris with a significant lead over Ms. Sanchez. That has only encouraged the tendency of the attorney general to play it safe. ‘She’s deliberately tried to make sure there wasn’t any interest in the race,” said Bill Carrick, who is the chief campaign consultant for Ms. Sanchez.

Nathan Click, the communications director for Ms. Harris, disputed that suggestion. “We’re not taking anything for granted,” he said. “We are competing for every vote.”

November Ballot Countdown: 40 Days

See reporting in The New York Times on the Nov. 8 ballot initiatives: Proposition 51 (a new school bond) | Propositions 62 and 66 (death penalty questions) | Propositions 65 and 67 (on banning plastic bags).

And dig into analyses of all 17 statewide measures by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, CALmatters and Ballotpedia.

Tensions in El Cajon

Protesters gathered on the streets of El Cajon on Wednesday after the fatal police shooting of a black man a day earlier. They demanded a federal investigation and the release of video footage of the shooting.

The police said the man, identified as Alfred Olango, 38, had pulled a vape smoking device from his pocket and took “what appeared to be a shooting stance.”

The shooting came after recent fatal police shootings of black men in Tulsa, Okla., and Charlotte, N.C., that heightened tensions across the nation.

California Online

• Gov. Jerry Brown signed a measure that will allow thousands of felons to vote in California elections. [Los Angeles Times]

• He also signed a bill that ends a statute of limitations on prosecuting rape cases in the wake of sexual assault accusations against Bill Cosby. [NPR]

• If you live in California, the value of your vote this November will be much smaller. Is there anything you can do? [The New York Times]

• A once-in-a-lifetime festival in the Coachella Valley will feature the likes of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Neil Young. [The New York Times]

• Hidden treasures: Downtown San Francisco offers a bounty of rooftops open to the public that would make a cinematographer swoon. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Despite pressure to resign, the arts patron Diane (Dede) Wilsey managed to hold onto most of her power at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. [The New York Times]

• Citing Wells Fargo’s “venal abuse of its customers,” the California treasurer suspended many of its ties with the San Francisco bank. [The New York Times]

• Yahoo insiders say defending against hackers took a back seat at the company, leading to the 2014 breach of 500 million users. [The New York Times]

• We dug up the best recordings by Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers, from outside the baseball diamond. [The New York Times]

• Brian Anderson, a skateboarding star with ties to San Francisco, recently became the sport’s first openly gay professional. [The New York Times]

And Finally ...

An analysis this month that found a place in California with essentially no gender pay gap seemed like a success story in the campaign for wage equity.

The American Association of University Women studied median earnings in 2015, and found that women nationwide working full-time were paid 80 percent of men’s earnings. But in the 37th U.S. Congressional District, based in Los Angeles County, women’s median earnings were actually slightly ahead of men’s.

Of California’s 53 congressional districts, it was the only one with a reverse pay gap. Statewide, the earnings ratio was about 86 percent, the study said.

It turns out, however, that this rare distinction may have had little to do with the shattering of glass ceilings.

The 37th district, which includes Culver City and neighborhoods in the south and west of Los Angeles, is made up of a combined majority of African-Americans and Hispanics with only roughly a quarter of residents who are white.

Researchers say that because black and Hispanic men earn much less on average than white men, the gender pay gap within those groups is much narrower.

Among Hispanics nationally, for example, women earn 92 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to census data. The gap is roughly the same among blacks. For white women, it’s 76 cents to the dollar.

The relatively small white population in the 37th district, along with other contributing factors like minimum pay rules and a slightly younger work force, combined to level out wages across genders, said Catherine Hill, a vice president for research at the American Association of University Women.

“So, unfortunately, that’s not the good news, right?” she said. “The good news would be we see higher women’s wages, not that this is an area we see lower male wages.”

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter.

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