Democratic former congresswoman Katie Porter enters race for California governorship

The former Democratic House member Katie Porter announced on Tuesday that she is entering California’s 2026 gubernatorial contest, joining a crowded field of candidates that could be upended if former vice-president Kamala Harris joins the race.

Porter, who became a social media celebrity by brandishing a whiteboard at congressional hearings while grilling CEOs, promised in a campaign launch video to be an aggressive counterweight to Donald Trump’s administration at a time when the heavily Democratic state has clashed with the White House over issues from water management to immigrant rights.

“In Congress, I held the Trump administration’s feet to the fire when they hurt Americans. As governor, I won’t ever back down when Trump hurts Californians – whether he’s holding up disaster relief, attacking our rights or our communities, or screwing over working families to benefit himself and his cronies,” Porter said.

The contest to replace the term-limited incumbent Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has already lured a large scrum of announced and likely candidates.

Harris, a former state attorney general and US senator, has not ruled out seeking the governorship since she left Washington in January after a failed presidential bid. Porter is friendly with Harris and has indicated she would step aside if the former vice-president joins the race. In 2012, Harris, then California’s attorney general, appointed Porter to be the state’s independent bank monitor in a multibillion-dollar nationwide mortgage settlement.

If Harris enters the race, “there are very few politicians who would want to take her on”, said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political scientist. “She’d be likely to win the Democratic nomination and Democrats are likely to win the governorship.”

Porter, who made an unsuccessful run for US Senate last year and also is known for her small-dollar fundraising prowess, becomes one of the best-known candidates, joining the former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the current lieutenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis, among others, on the Democratic side.

Democrats are expected to easily hold the governor’s mansion in a state where they outnumber registered Republicans by nearly two to one. Republicans have not won a statewide election in California in nearly two decades.

On the GOP side, the Riverside county sheriff, Chad Bianco, last month became the first major Republican to announce a bid to replace Newsom, whose term runs through early January 2027. He blamed Democrats for the ongoing homeless crisis and runaway housing prices.

Even if Harris gets in the race, the state’s open primary system can be unpredictable – all candidates appear on a single ballot, regardless of party, and only the top two vote-getters advance to the November general election. Trump-aligned candidates could enter on the GOP side, generating conservative interest, or a wealthy candidate could emerge with the funds to rattle the expected order.

“These open primaries are hard to handicap,” said the Democratic consultant Andrew Acosta. “It just makes it harder to predict.”

Porter, a progressive favorite, created an online backlash after losing the 2024 Senate race, when she faulted “billionaires spending millions to rig this election”. She finished third in the primary – behind Democrat and eventual winner Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey – and did not advance to the November election.

Some likened her words to Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in 2020. Porter later clarified her initial statement to say she didn’t believe the California vote count or election process had been compromised but she didn’t recant her earlier remarks. Rigged, she said in a follow-up, “means manipulated by dishonest means”.

She has been an active fundraiser since leaving her southern California House district in January and returned to teaching at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law.

A consumer protection attorney before her election to the House, Porter became known in Congress for her unsparing interrogations of business leaders and other committee witnesses, often using her whiteboard to break down complex figures while using plainspoken language to assail corporate greed.

First elected to Congress in 2018, Porter said in her video that “I first ran for office to hold Trump accountable. I feel that same call to serve now to stop him from hurting Californians.”