Former Rep. Katie Porter announces run for California governor
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- Katie Porter, a former congresswoman from Orange County, announced Tuesday that she is running for governor next year.
- The UC Irvine law school professor was a prodigious fundraiser when she was a member of Congress and unsuccessfully ran for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat in 2024.
Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter announced Tuesday morning that she is running for governor, potentially altering the dynamic in an already crowded field of prominent Democrats seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom next year because of her national profile and fundraising prowess.
Highlighting a theme expected to be dominant in next year’s gubernatorial contest, Porter expressed her desire to protect California from President Trump’s policies, including his threats to hold up disaster relief, attacks on the rights of state residents and cheating “working families to benefit himself and his cronies.”
“With Trump in the White House, California needs a fighter, a governor who’s going to stand up to him and protect us from the damage he is doing every single day,” Porter said in an interview.
The looming question over California’s 2026 race for governor is whether former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris jumps in the race. Her decision is expected by the end of the summer. Given Harris’ name recognition and fundraising prowess, she would probably prompt some Democrats to drop out of the race.
Describing herself as “a big supporter” of Harris, Porter did not say she would definitely drop out of the race if the former vice president decides to run.
“If she chooses to run, everyone including me would need to make a decision,” Porter said. “I would have to seriously contemplate what that means for me.”
She did appear to scold Harris for the delay in announcing her plans.
“No one should be waiting to lead. I think we need to make a case right now,” Porter said, noting that Californians are struggling with healthcare needs, the price of groceries and the cost of housing. “There’s an incredible urgency on the ground that I think stretches across California and across the political spectrum.”
Other announced candidates include Democrats Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Controller Betty Yee, state schools chief Tony Thurmond, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and businessman Stephen Cloobeck, as well as Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
Dan Schnur, a politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, said Porter’s decision to enter the race is meaningless until Harris announces her plans.
“If Harris doesn’t run, Porter becomes an early front-runner, primarily based on name recognition,” he said. “And if Harris does run, then that’s the end of the Porter for governor campaign.”
He added that donors are likely to sit on the sidelines until Harris makes a decision.
The wide-open race to succeed Gavin Newsom as California governor has already attracted a large and diverse field of candidates.
Porter, 51, is an Iowa native who went to law school at Harvard, where she was taught by now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Warren became her mentor — a relationship so significant that one of Porter’s children is named after her — and she was a fiery Warren supporter in the 2020 presidential race.
After the Great Recession, Porter was appointed by Harris, then California’s attorney general, to oversee a $25-billion mortgage settlement with the nation’s top banks. Porter was elected to Congress in 2018 in a longtime GOP stronghold in Orange County, and was among the most prodigious fundraisers in Congress.
Porter’s national prominence grew when, during congressional hearings, she grilled Trump administration officials and corporate chieftains using her whiteboard to make esoteric policy understandable. Videos of those performances went viral, cheered by Democrats and disaffected voters.
With her sometimes brusque demeanor, Porter also alienated prominent Democrats along the way, notably former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) whom she clashed with in 2021 over committee assignments, and later over Porter’s support to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks.
But she was also embraced by constituents who viewed her as approachable, driving around her congressional district in a forest green Toyota Sienna with personalized license plates that read “OVRSITE,” and being candid about the struggles of juggling her career and being a single mother of three children. She has little patience for political niceties, as she explained in an interview with Samantha Bee on TBS.
“If you’re full of b—, I’m coming for you,” she told Bee in 2020. “I just don’t have time. I’m a single mom. The dinner’s burning. I’m late to something. I have 4,000 emails. My hair is frizzy. I haven’t shaved my legs in a week.”
Porter served in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms, but did not seek reelection in 2024 because she opted to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
She angered some prominent Democrats by announcing her run before Feinstein, aging and ailing, announced she would not seek reelection. Democratic Party leaders lined up behind then-Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, who eventually won the Senate seat. Porter finished in a distant third place in the March primary behind Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey.
After her loss, she further angered Democrats by arguing that the race was “rigged.” Porter’s language irked Democrats because it echoed Trump’s false claims about why he lost the 2020 election. She later said she regretted her choice of words.
On Tuesday, Porter argued that the gubernatorial contest is different than the Senate race because Trump is once again president. She said Trump’s 2016 victory is what motivated her to run for office the first time, and she had a proven track record of standing up to his administration.
“I have experience with Trump in office,” she said. “I think this race is very different in terms of the environment with Trump.”
During Porter’s 2022 congressional reelection bid, GOP rivals raised the purchase of her Irvine home through a program established to create affordable housing for professorial recruits by state leaders. (She abided by state and university rules.)
Rep. Katie Porter bought a home on UC Irvine’s campus in 2011. Now she’s facing criticism for living there while on leave from her faculty post.
After losing the 2024 Senate race, Porter returned to teaching at UC Irvine’s law school. But her vocal political activism strongly hinted that she would once again run for office, notably her “Truth to Power” political action committee, which raised more than $1 million in the two-year period that ended on Dec. 31, according to the Federal Election Commission. Last week, she held a Zoom town hall with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach).
“Katie has been a force in Congress, and she’ll be a force in the future, and all the things that she will do for us in our state and in our country,” Garcia said on Feb. 27. “The first thing I told myself, and this is the honest to God truth ... I want to be Katie Porter when I grow up on the Oversight Committee. And I want to take that same kind of energy and passion and really fearlessness in oversight.”
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