Gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter speaks at the 2026 California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco on Feb. 21. She is seeking to connect with voters after PR gaffes raised issues about her temperament.

When former Vice President Kamala Harris announced last summer that she would not run for governor in California, Katie Porter seemed like a shoo-in for the job.

The progressive former U.S. House member who represented Orange County for three terms first gained statewide name recognition from her whiteboard interrogations of corporate witnesses testifying before Congress. 

And while her bitter 2024 loss to Adam Schiff in California’s Democratic Senate primary was a setback, the hard-fought campaign helped build her donor base and saw her campaigning across the state. 

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But just weeks after Harris announced she wouldn’t pursue a glide path to the governor’s mansion, Porter ran into self-inflicted turbulence. During a television interview with CBS Sacramento, she engaged in a testy back-and-forth with a reporter that began with a softball question about whether she needed to court Donald Trump voters to win the gubernatorial race.

“Look, I think it is really important that I continue to demonstrate how I would lead,” Porter told me over coffee last week in the state Capitol. “Sure. I think everyone knows that I am tough and I’m a fighter. I was not going to come up with an answer on how I would pander to Trump voters. And so I couldn’t give the answer that that reporter was seeking.”

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