{"id":375996,"date":"2026-06-26T16:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/375996\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T16:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:32:13","slug":"whats-next-for-katie-porter-after-california-governor-loss-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/375996\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s next for Katie Porter after California governor loss? \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re talking about the short term, Katie Porter<\/a> has a plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her race for California governor now over<\/a>, Porter will continue teaching at UC Irvine School of Law<\/a> \u2014 she will instruct a bankruptcy course in the fall \u2014 and parenting a soon-to-be high school senior who won\u2019t have to uproot to Sacramento in the midst of his final year.<\/p>\n

But long term? How \u2014 or even will \u2014 Porter continue in California politics?\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s TBD.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to think a little bit,\u201d Porter said in a wide-ranging interview this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After all, it\u2019s only been about three weeks since she conceded the race for governor, sitting solidly in fifth place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s been some 3,000 days, give or take a few, since she first started campaigning in Orange County, kicking off what has been a progressive and high-profile \u2014 and at times, snarky<\/a> \u2014 mark on California politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade of politics \u2014 six years representing an Orange County district in the U.S. House; three years mounting a pair of unsuccessful statewide campaigns \u2014 has reinforced Porter\u2019s interest in actual policymaking, she said. And that\u2019s something that often happens outside of elected office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis race, my campaign, was about policies. I put forth real plans on taxes, real plans on education, real plans on housing, real plans on childcare,\u201d Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"KatieKatie Porter, who beat Mimi Walters for the state congressional seat in the 45th district, speaks to supporters at the University of California, Irvine on Tuesday, October 30, 2018. Porter was voting early at a portable poll location at the university. (File Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that work. And I think there are a lot of opportunities to still do that forward policy work,\u201d she added. \u201cI\u2019m excited to be in my position as a law professor, where my job is to generate good ideas. I think this campaign was a real reminder of how much I like doing that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Porter didn\u2019t shy away from acknowledging this could be an era of reset for her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really, really excited about having some time with my family,\u201d the mom of three said. \u201cI think it is good and healthy to have change and good and healthy for people like me to have a chance to rest and to reenergize and to think a little bit \u2014 not to be on autopilot, which can come if you\u2019re 25 or 30 years in office.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with her middle child starting his senior year in the fall, not winning the governor race solved a \u201cmom problem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a problem solved as a mom not to figure out what to do with a kid who is a spring semester senior while you have to move to Sacramento to be governor,\u201d she said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

A campaign motivated by policy or fear?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a striking shift in politics \u2014 what\u2019s motivating people, how people consume information \u2014 from when she first launched a campaign in April 2018, Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"KatieKatie Porter hugs her son Luke after he introduced her to supporters on election night at the Hilton Irvine in Irvine on Nov. 6, 2018. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\n

Porter felt voters, particularly Democrats, were \u201cactivated\u201d in 2018 to oppose President Donald Trump, then in his first term. They organized the Women\u2019s March, for example, she said, one of the largest single-day demonstrations<\/a> in history and a tangible way to express opposition to the Republican president.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s fear now that permeates politics, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fear of Trump. Fear of a woman leading California for the first time. Fear of the status quo. Fear of shaking things up too much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I hear is fear when people say, \u2018We can\u2019t afford this or that. We can\u2019t afford a progressive candidate. We can\u2019t afford to run people of color, women for president next cycle. We can\u2019t afford to have a Republican in the top two\u2019 (in California\u2019s gubernatorial primary). I don\u2019t think in a healthy democracy you have that expression,\u201d Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is understandable anxiety about what\u2019s happening in our country. Every day we read in the newspaper about the war, about the reflecting pool, you name it,\u201d Porter said. \u201cThat did not put people in a long-term mindset.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had budget problems in California for decades. Our housing has been unaffordable for decades. Climate change is a multi-decade fight. By the time we got to the home stretch, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what people were focusing on. In an election about affordability, supposedly, I don\u2019t think the candidates who had done the most thinking and talking about affordability, I don\u2019t think that was seen as a criterion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of being about policy, this race was about fear. And fear manifested itself in lots and lots of different ways,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"KatieKatie Porter on the debate state Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)<\/p>\n

Even after the election dust has settled a bit, Porter remains confident that she was the candidate who offered the most expertise to California voters in this race, pointing to her policy ideas and political relationships.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cElectorates change and what they\u2019re looking for changes,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that led to former Biden Cabinet official Xavier Becerra<\/a> and Republican commentator Steve Hilton<\/a> advancing from the primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia has really big problems on housing. And I don\u2019t think we elected somebody who\u2019s really very focused on housing,\u201d Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Porter said she often disagreed with fellow Democrats Tom Steyer<\/a> and Matt Mahan<\/a> in the race when it came to revenue plans, as she did with Hilton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe disagreed on revenue, but what is Becerra\u2019s revenue plan? There\u2019s a lot of uncertainty,\u201d Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, she has endorsed Becerra in the race. \u201cWe cannot have a governor who will cooperate with the president, who is hell-bent on punishing our state,\u201d she said of Hilton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CaliforniaCalifornia gubernatorial candidates Katie Porter, right, speaks with Steve Hilton, left, and Xavier Becerra during a 2026 California gubernatorial debate in Bridges Auditorium at Pomona College in Claremont on Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News\/ SCNG)<\/p>\n

Porter sees part of the problem \u2014 voters\u2019 fear in this race \u2014 stems, in part, from the sheer amount and influence of money in politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s race was the most expensive race for governor in history,\u00a0and the fifth-most expensive non-presidential race, with $315.8 million in ad spending and reservations, according to an analysis by AdImpact<\/a>, which tracks and analyzes advertising.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In comparison, the entire 2022 California governor\u2019s race saw $14.7 million in ad spending. The 2021 effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom clocked in at $61 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who came in third place, spent more than $201 million, which accounted for 64% of every dollar spent in this race, according to AdImpact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Porter said it is also a symptom of how people are consuming information these days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing I\u2019ve noticed is we went from a lack of information, just people not knowing, to a lot of active misinformation,\u201d Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, it\u2019s just actively wrong things, and I think the degree of certainty of people, even though they are wrong, is really something to see,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Social media \u2014 and more broadly, political discourse in general \u2014 isn\u2019t being used as a way to get information, she said, but rather a tool to reinforce biases or beliefs, even if the facts are wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Porter pointed to the idea, just a few months before Election Day, that two Democrats could advance<\/a> to the general election. (California\u2019s jungle primary system<\/a> means the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, win the primary and move onto the November election.)<\/p>\n

That was either going to be a very, very terrible outcome, or the best outcome ever \u2014 and people were certain in their belief either way, Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They were sure it would be horrific for Democrats to have two of their own tearing each other down, she said, or they were confident it would repress Republican turnout for down-ballot races in the fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, I can make the argument either way,\u201d said Porter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CaliforniaCalifornia gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter speaks to the media after the 2026 California gubernatorial debate in Bridges Auditorium at Pomona College in Claremont on Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News\/ SCNG)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a shift, Porter said, from more engaged political activism to pontificating online.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow there\u2019s a handful of very aggressively certain people on the internet \u2014 which is a pretty far cry from the \u2018let\u2019s build a democracy, if we don\u2019t like our representative, let\u2019s figure out what to do,\u2019\u201d types of attitude, Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s next for Porter, politically speaking? She\u2019s still figuring that out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But she\u2019s certainly not going to shy away from offering her opinions on the state of politics along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really proud and honored to have the chance (to be an elected official), and I was really proud to see Orange County become a place where people felt politically empowered,\u201d Porter said. \u201cI\u2019m not as sure the state felt that way in this election.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re talking about the short term, Katie Porter has a plan.\u00a0 Her race for California governor now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,400,1752,204,92191,146,100,611,11976,13,136],"class_list":["post-375996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-politics","tag-congress","tag-election","tag-governor-race","tag-katie-porter","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-politics","tag-politics","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}