the police chief said our coverage have help the- ins lower by 20%. tonight on kqed news democratic president hopefuls president trump and front runner bijoe den, was it enough to change the state of the race? also, employees not necontracto a state bill could radically change the labor status of million workers including uber and lyft drivers. good evening, and welcome to kqed news room we bege tonight with democratic residential debate, how lot -- heldlast night in houston this time only 10 candidates,vying for a knockout moment for the first time front letter front runner's joe biden shared the stage with

kamala harris did not go off on joe biden this time it was his fellowrmer obamkelet -- cabinet member that made the attacks against biden.>> ith as now is jager foley he senior political writer for the san francisco chronicl as well as latimes political reporter see my meter --gr t to be -- thank you for coming to >> think you for having us. >>okay holy on castro going de after joe healy and castro has one job is to make a splash heat the lowest of the stage was take a list to that clip and get your reaction on the other side. >>are you forgetting what you

said two minutes ago? are you forgetting already what you said justs two minuteo? i cannot believe, that you said two minutes ago, that they had to buy and now you're saying they don't have to you forgetting that. >> fulfilling thlegacy of barack obama and you are not. >> that will be a surprise to him. >> a very ated moment. w did that ay? he is essentially going after joe biden's age it sounded like. >> absolutely, that is the sort of discussion it was about the obama legacy, but l anyone heard was a attack on joe biden. the mocrat circle thwagon around biden afterward saying oh my gosh this is terrible, but hey this is you know if biden is a nominee he will face 10 times worse from president trump, that's what trump rails on him about, sleepy joe den not mentally fit for the office. this is sort of a preliminary of what he will face.

it will make biden tougher, people want to see he's able to withstand the attacks, they can't take them from holy on castro is barely .2% how will he take them from the president of the united states as a master marketer, someone who tagged peopleth names, whether be quick, hillary clinton or what have you. how does joe biden take it? >> a nickname machine known him out it. >> how did that moment in houston, and did you see castro trying to distance himself from the imession that itleft on viewers? >> certainly the audience was not happy with the line of attack later on, castro said but a lot of people or democrats have beei disc privately he said it out loud i don't know if he did himself any favors by going downt the path, is something you hear from voters on the trial all the time. questions about joe biden is his 70does he have the physical cavity capacity which would be a long brutal campaign. >>to this question to,

the fact of the matters president trumjois 73, biden is 76, but it was pretty interesting for a lot of us to have seen elizabeth sawarren, bernieers and joe biden on e together, it will not be a difficulckline of atgiven they are all in relatively the same bracket age wise. >>the field does whittle down to the three and they are the front runners now it will be le of an issue because, you are quibbling over a few years between them but if there's intergenerational battle, as long as you have people whto judge is half of biden's age or castro was in his 40s and then it will become more e. a is you can see it, on the debate stage. >>okay let's talk about kamala harris who is the sole californian la -- left with a serious ance she has st a bit of traction, that was clear going in to this debate how do you think she did last night?

>>ba think she cally is a status quo situation people were going into the bait to see if she would have a repeat performance of the first debate were hee just crit. when cre went after joe biden on segregation she had a moment i was a star tuing one she went up and pulled in fundraising and in the second debate she sort of was on dethe nsive, shut some wobbly answers about her policies i think people al wanted to see which one will we see? she wasn't overtly attacking any of her rivals on the age of that she held heshound, and made a point of really repeatedly going after donald trump which i think, a lot of democrats nted to see. she certainly, emerged in this bait unscathed, but not the kind of rake out moment she did ck in june. ú>> it's a great po went after trump we didn't hear a whole lot about in this is a solid strategy for harris? >> pattern of the gets her anywhere, it seems like she was baiting the president to attack her on twitter and tellingly enough, by the time we recordedi

this he hasn't respded to her so maybe he feels, she is not worthy enough to marinate on úyou can have bump up 80% in be pollre i can attack you. but, i don't know if trgoing aftep wins you anything everybody on that stage, hates trump. ine you to gain by saying i hate trump more? you can porty yourself as best to take on trump on a debate stage, but that's so far down the road, you stilhave to getde cratic voters to like you and harris has not and not enough yet. >> as you said earlier to me, that strategy didn't work out great, for senator chris brjoe and t was no longer in the debate. >> she did lethe league but she is a u.s. senator. she's ouof the race she got no traction fromripping on trump. just doesn't get you anywhere. >> okay, let's talk about

andrew yang, here we are, he's gained quite a bit of traction, he was third from the right on the stage noand he ced last night he is giving away $1000 a month to 10 more recipients as part of his iversal basic income experiment. is that idea, starting to appeal to ntvoters? eslly it sounds like he is giving money away, i am not sure if that is legal? >> i spent a couple of on the trail with him, and he is a very interesting candidate. clearly i don't think anyone will think you will be the next president. but the policies he's talking about while they do sound really quirky, they have long roots. thomas paine talked ab t it back in the day and so did richard nin and mlk. so is not quite as kooky as it sounds, but sawith that it's not a very unusual strategy for campaign. there are a question of tythe legahe was giving money to one family from new hampshire thousah dollars a moas a demonstration of his ubi plan

but that was towards his personal funds i don't think there'a question about the legality but this new thing where he would give $1000 a month to 10 familieson hi campaign funds, that does raise a question about whether that violates campaign finance law but the one thing is, he's there's no one there t him really? >> andrew yang what is yo take onhim joe? is he at least helping redefine some of the discussion in this ebay? >> at the surface level it looks like opera, everyone gets a car. >> is ed mcmahon. >> yes a bimacheck at your house. but, he has done a great universal income to the point where we are discussing it. on shows like this and the medi and he is also addressing something that we do not talk about a lot and that is the future of work. and how so many workers widi be laced by ai, and such.

what we do with them? and couniversal basic giving them $1000 a month to flip them for a wild to help them cushion the blow atusis a important topic when he was intimate the skull, he said, biden came up to him and said hey i want to talk to you about some of th work thisfuture of work stuff. so, it is resonating within the party. >> okay last word goes to you and he stated last night change anything? >> bigoted. i think, the candidates basically needed to do, they came out of it having done what they needed to do, biden is still e front runner it's getting close. if anybody damaged themselves was castro but he was already doing so poorly i don't know if that really chtrges the ectory of the race that much. we will be meeting up again another four weeks in ohio somewhere so we will see. >>onell good luck the road

out ther. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >>this week, lawmakers in sacramento past 85, bill that sending shock waves through the tech industry, especially services like uber and lyft that dominate the gig economy it could be classified uber and lift drivers giand other workers as employees not contractors. eligible for benefits like health insurance, newburgh -- pbs and lyft vowed to spend tens of millions of dollars of a ballot measure to fight this as well as the firstime lawmakers passed a statewide rent control bill to help tenants as california grapples with the housing crisis and a spike in homelessness. joining me now to talk about these key bills that lawmakers tackled the session is ou correspondent marie saw. talk about lateng ver, let's tadevelopments on pg&e this morning we had the settlement

announced between the utility and insurers can you starby walking us through the nuts and bolts? >> this came as a surprise to a it got us all of the bed this morning. this is essentially be the insurance companies that have paid out billions of dollars in claims, to folks who are affected by both the 2017 n. they and mendocino fires in the 2018 campfire up in paradise, two yes ofdevastating wildfires that could cause billions of dollars in damages, this is the second settlement pg&e, has cometo with these folks that are impacted, the first one was with the government for $1 billion, thiso is $11 binot as high as the insurance had wanted which was 20 billion. so it's as low as it would be which is a in half-billion. most importantly what t is does address is the victims. individual victims. >> let's talk more about that, that is the third big group, wet

are looking the settlement in many ways ntafter the lens o what that means for the welfare survivors that are bringing their own individu against pg&e. >>yes before the utility rule for bacy, thousands of people had already filed suit, because this is not bankruptcy court and is under that cour there was a extension to refile those claims through october 21, i talkedwith one wildfire attorney this morning she says, she expects maybe 40,000 50,000 claims to be filed, so cothis d not this is probably not to be as big as those claims. she expects, t ey would between 30-$33 billion for vick comes based on susegregation nce claims, and how that , relates to how much victims gets. this is a big fight and had we haven't determined whether pg&e will be held at fault for the tubs fire. that the jury trial and i think there's a lot of moving parts. >> let's move on, thank you for reporting on the. let's moveongionto the ative session, 85 is a big one, this is a bill that uber and lyft fought tooth and nail, here is what uber top laer said to

reporters as the bill was mang it way to the governor's desk. >>drivers work in and outside of ubrv's business that ing as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces. >> so, what he's really saying there is i drivers arnot core to uber business shouldbe by that? >> it's a hard argument to make i think if tomorrow the if drivers up and left,uber would be making money. the drivers that might take you or i somewhere but folks delivering food, they expanded in allto all kinds of things this is the crux of the argument i think it will be tough onto make in court which is really where this might be headed at this point. if they are going to refuse to

comply. the labor department and maybe the stcould even sue. but as you mentioned, this is not, 85 is not the final say this vercomplicated issue. >> at the same time, uber says this is in changing anything for us but we are wipartnering llions of dollars into this ballot measure for next year, does this tell you something about how threatened theyartrul by 85? >> absolutely this cuts at the core of their surface if they wanted to come out become taxi companies they would've done that. they do not do that, 'sbecause thnot the business model. to them they feel likebeing forced to bring on these employees these folks as employees will really undercut their mode, and i think what we will see come january when the legislature comes back, is a attacked -- an attet for third classification. nontraditional employcas, but something special for cothese anies, i think that will be a hard sell if they won't pony o up a more money to make you know what a lot of people say is an expletive ssbusiodel work they have until june, to

see if they will go forward with about measure so i would look 6- 9 months baby we will have to weigh on this as voters but we will see. >>and how do you think governor newsom will react? >>unhe said uivocally he will sign it. i do think, there are other avenues with these companies that they will espursue it sound like in the meantime, uber will not comply. this will notake effect until january 1 so they do have some time before it takes effect, i would expect even if uber doesn't comply it will take time for regulations in the cour to tch up and really hold their feet to the fire.e >> thank you let's move on to rent control,vernor newsom has another bill on his desk that hiuld rent increases how that work exactly? >> this is rent control limet get ing the governor promised he would do at the beginning of the year we thought it was dead but it came

back a big win for newsom. surprisingly it got itthrough t legislature fairly easily. there's a question mark around that. essentially this is if you live in a jurisdicnoon that does have a rent control and you live in an apartment building or a older building, your rent p can be at 5% plus cpi so around 8% increase a year which is pretty big increase more it will prevent supporters do save rent gouging. >> this is huge in the bay area what is your sense whether this will have an actionable impact on people here? >>there's two things to note on we do have some of the strongest rental laws in cities like berkeley and n francisco those rent laws will stay the same, the economy is softening, when some of those rent gouging huge spikes resolve 50% rent increasealovernight have ady started to tell off. this will protect against it's only a 10 year sunset clause but if we do see the econy rolling back and really the reti estate market tening

again, this could help people stay in their homes, it's a key issue for the governor and be local leaderuse part of the problem we are seeing in california is, a lot ofpeople that are homeless or have housing and security had housing and then lost it. so the abilitto keep people on the home severity have, is a really important quiver in their ability to fight these things because otherwise, your kind of dealing with it on bo sides who are already on the the streets. eople >> what are republican thing about this >> there was pushback from the real estate community, we saw that reflected in the sort of partylinvote as you know, democrats have a super majority doesn't ento so always matter these days with republican lawmakers day. >> i'm glad you brought that up, how did that go they really had the run of the place this year. haa democrat ? did it beme more complicated than they thought? >> i think nine months into this it went better than we might'ar expected in ja i think we have seen this rent control thing was a big win for

newsom and he started to get a huge deal around charte schools, 85 got out, i don't take the democrat did as much úrepublicans would like to see but the big question is newsom comp, that they didn't lot ino engage in some issues or mind about around 85 in ve controversial vaccination bill, i think that relationship between lawmakers and the governor of the same party, is still kind of shaping up. this is the first year of his term, he is a very different leader than jerry brown and he wants to have the on and a lot of fires and i can be challenging. >>okay never a dull moment for you. es>> our political corrpondent is so good to have you here. >> the berkeley theater was founded inr 1968 and is the eas bay's ever professional theater

and since opening its 50doors over0 million people have enjoyed nearly 500 ow including 80 world premieres, this week, the theater kicked off its 51st season with a new artistic director -- director joanna felt sure sh joins me now. ha >> welcome. >> you. >> you are hired a full year ago it is so hard to believe it's been that long but fiyour t show the great wave is taking this page and it previewed yesterday. tell us ab>>t that. was hired a year ago but i only arrived here, a week or two ago. just in timeto get rehearsals for the great wave underway so yes we had our first performance for an audience last night the great ve is a really beautiful, ambitious, sweeping, opted epic play it take place between japan and north korea, stis a y of a family, caught in the sort of great title wave of political turmoil. >> yes, another show you are presenting iarwhite noi wondering what is the through

with the showyou selected for this year? >> i'm always looking for things that are really ambitious. and theater that can mean a lot of things that can be stylistically ambitious, they can be contained really elevated language, i think witha the great and white noise are complicated plays they ask us to think deeply as who we are as individuals what our political beliefs are, and an amazing opportunity for people to come to thereain a r which is a amazing, crucible to bring people in and wrestle with some of those questions. >> is oustparticular ar statement you are trying to make with this ew of selections? >> i think peter's a great place to consider who you are, community but also to be wildly entertained and i hope the season will do that as well. >> for people who do not know, you are a very radical rttwo ringing hamilton, eryone knows about that to the stage. what did working onamilton

teach you about reachingennewer aus? >> i wish i could say i was a critical part of that. i played a very small role hai the great privilege, of watching that extraordinary group of artists, began their work together in a really deep n way. i with hamilton, they've doneey generations of people wh might' thought, theater in general and specifically maybe large-scale broadway theater was not a place they will see their own stories told, i think something it is told now, we feel a greater responsibility for. i think hamion really helped focus oualattentions on that. >> i know you just made the move from new york, to the bay a area. i to ask you first, what is your read onwhat it will be t like to do theater here. because you're no longer in the epicenter of the theater world as we think of it. what you think it will be like? working here? is fairly new for you. >>u know what i know about the bay area and its audience, it's a community of people who are, really intelligent, who are really literate and have great expectations of

storytelling and all the different ways they can even thatand engage dallas. i think it will be a very compellingconversation i can have with this audience over a period of time. >> what about the weal and equality issue that spurs pervasive. i have to ask you, some impact it can have on emerging arartis who working with an outlet. >> yes i feel acutely coming from new york to the bay area were w lking about you make a living as an artist and -- in two of the most expensive cies in thworld and i really felt that when i worked at mct you're gonna trainees artists you want them to maintain a relationship to the they a part of. community beth it is hard here i think it's po real unity for those of us who are running different cultural organizations to come we can colle, to create a how sustainable environment for people to continue to make a living as artists. >>let's talk about theater, in

today's entertainment ecosystem. what's your sales pitch? if i can put it bluntly. you have to make a pitch to people to get up, put on their close go to the theater leave their mes, when thhave netflix, amazon prime, and all these other options a home they can stream, rear in the golden age of television how do you approach it? >>we arin the golden age of writing, what's interesting to me so many of those stories that are being told on amazon and netflix and julio, are being created by playwright so i think have to remember that the theater is a great generator not just to specific stories but artists, it's given so many people, a nse of craft, and tradition but think, it speaks to a moment that people are increasingly isolated. we can all stay home and sit on our couch, and have it told to us in the individualistic way but peter, what i think it can

do that nothing can in theater you are going to t in th dark with a group of people, some of whom you may know, some are strangers in your to be told the story by a group of artists who are flesh and blood, in front of you in tirea , i think that has the capacity to be transformative for people in a way that nothing else can. >> talked to about the challenge, of filling the shoes of someone who proceeded you had been there, for more than 30 years. this is a place with a prvery tigious reputation as you know. had you plan to build on that reputation or change the reputation that berkeley rep has ? >> i hope i don't do anything to destroy tony's legacy. because, he built a theater that was already, such a strong institution. he had 30 great al years of making work very specifically in bringing so i hopeto continue that. i

know there are people here that have already found a home at berkeley rethat i belook forward to you create a home r them, but i know there are people that i have been working with over the next couple redecades that i'm ly excited to introduce to these audience. >> what attracted you to this job? >> i think it's one of the crown jewels in e american theater. there aren that many places, that would persuade me to leave new york and i would say, this is the the one, and it's also my family's home. so it's an opportunity not just run one eat theater but also to tocome back place that's really meaningful to me. >> and it happens to be your hometown how is a homecoming u? been to ng >> it's amazing, you know i was first day of office but the staff that used to be you know the day camp or afr they ran into friends who you know is driving my son up to toindian

rock go rock climbing the other day and i was pointing out where my old babysitter lived and elit does like a really amazing opportunity to rediscover community, but one that is really meaningful to me. >> very cool, before we let you go, i wantto ask you how do you think this season for those avid theatergoers, which there are many, how will the season different than previous ones? >> you can compare it to previous seasons. i am proud that the season is st full of ies, there are two world premieres, brand-new plays from sarah rule, a new musil as well. it features the music of the avett brothers. there are two plays that have only been seen in london, i think it's an opportunity to really celebrate an incredibly wide range of storytelling. joanna, artistic director at weekly rep, thank you for coming in. >> thank you for having me. >> you can buy tickets for the great wave up now playing and

other upcoming shows that berkeley rep by elsiting be rep.org. as always you can find more of our coverage at kqed.org/newsroom. thank you for joining us. for snuk -- bert: democrce off, but

are they ready to face president trump? i'm robert costa. welcome to "washington week." democrats debate, with joe biden still at centerstage. and in a standoff over healthcare. >> medicare for all will save the average american substantial sums of money >> what this is about is making sure that we have the most effient way possible to pay for healthcare for everyonveth n country. >> i know that the senator says 'me's for bernie. well for barack. i think the obamacare worked.be : other contenders tried to break out. >> hell yes, we're going to take your ar-15, your ak-47. bert: and challenge president