CA-GOV: How Katie Porter's strongest asset came to haunt her California governor run

Over the past three decades, Katie Porter hasn’t changed much. She was always a high achiever, as a protégé Harvard Law student studying under then-professor, now-Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and as a first-time congresswoman who flipped an Orange County seat blue in the House of Representatives. During that campaign and her other House campaigns, and when she launched a later bid for California senator, she always billed herself the same way: a single mother, a lawyer and professor, and unafraid to speak passionately on issues.

Porter, 52, is also now the only woman out of eight main candidates running for California governor, a defining characteristic that is being used against her.

She came to Congress as an experienced consumer advocacy lawyer and managed to flip a red district in 2018 as part of the blue midterm wave during the first Trump administration. She ran a campaign that specifically tested Donald Trump’s policies, calling out his weakening of health care protections and his tax cuts that largely benefited corporations. Once in Washington, she gained a reputation as a person with sharp elbows and an outspoken, but measured, approach. She would grill executives during hearings, her trusted accessory a white board she’d scribble across as she interrogated Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, about poverty-level wages at his company or pharmaceutical company bosses for putting profits ahead of patient care. She was willing to break away from fellow Democrats, including then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if it meant defending her beliefs.

“The white board moments were about doing oversight. They were about holding someone to account to try to get answers,” Porter told SFGATE in an exclusive interview just hours before the May 14 gubernatorial debate in San Francisco.






https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/katie-porter-california-governor-race-22264877.php