I readily admit that I do not know much about California politics. What I do know comes largely from my knowledge of the operations that both Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi have been running to work their way up their respective ladders and keep themselves in power all these years.
So, prior to a series of stories about how awful a person Congresswoman Katie Porter is, I really had little information about her. But once those stories started cropping up, it was clear that California was not sending their best. The more cynical among us might suggest they rarely do – at least, as far as Democrats are concerned.
But Porter was and is a unique kind of awful.
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When she jumped into the race for the late Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, vacating a future bid for her current seat in Congress, it seemed too good to be true. No matter what happened in this race, America would win – either Porter would win, dealing a blow to the absolutely insufferable Adam Schiff and his benefactor, Pelosi, OR Porter would lose and we would be rid of her and her absolutely unhinged behavior in Congress.
What’s more, she abandoned her seat (which is seen as a swing seat) in a year when Republicans could be over-competitive in swing states and swing districts.
The results are now in: Porter fell short of her goal, and Schiff heads to a run-off against Republican Steve Garvey. What’s amazing is how she just seems to have given up in the final weeks of the race.
Via POLITICO:
Porter, from a swing district in Orange County and a protege of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, had kept the race close until the final six weeks. But she opted not to directly confront Schiff on the airwaves, where her message of promising to shake up the Senate and crusade against corporations was drowned out by Schiff’s anti-Trump profile and the money he raised as a result.
[…]
Porter, meanwhile, responded to the TV ads by continuing to promote the central pillars of her campaign. She tried to remind voters of her fighter persona in Congress, where she toted a little whiteboard and went viral with her regular grillings of CEOs and corporate leaders.
But as Garvey rose in public and private polls, her support remained relatively stagnant. In addition to the millions spent by Schiff’s campaign, money also poured in from his super PAC. And late in the contest, another super PAC funded by cryptocurrency billionaire investors spent upward of $10 million to slam Porter.
The bad news is that we will have to deal with Schiff being a smug and overconfident little man in the Senate, but he won’t have the power he had in the House. There, he was protected and elevated by Pelosi. Chuck Schumer has his own agenda and his own allies, and with the Senate map looking like it does, Schiff could very well end up in the minority party by the time we get to 2025.
But Porter? She gave up her seat in the halls of Congress to run against, essentially, the California and national Democratic Establishment. Pelosi very much wanted her protege to win, and made sure he did so. Porter, an outspoken super progressive who has a nasty habit of mistreating her staff and being generally disliked by people in Washington D.C., never stood a chance. But her leaving means Republicans have a chance to pick up a swing seat in California.
Keep in mind, victories in largely Democratic states like California and New York, rather than in the Deep South and Midwest, were what gave House Republicans a slim majority. With public polling looking like it is right now, there’s every possibility that more California Democrats will be disappointed come November.
But the important thing to note is this: Katie Porter lost and she is going to be out of a job in D.C. I… don’t think we have to hear from her in that capacity anymore.
America prevails.
