Rep. Katie Porter never planned for a career in politics, she says, that is, until Donald Trump became president in 2016.
But Tuesday night, the political career that she’s built since she won her first congressional race in 2019 — one where she’s gone toe-to-toe with corporate CEOs and established her prowess as a Democratic fundraiser — hit a bit of a snag. Not too long after election returns had begun to come in, both the Associated Press and the New York Times had called the primary for California’s U.S. Senate race for Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and former Dodgers star Steve Garvey.
“While the votes are still coming in, we know that tonight we’ll come up short,” Porter told supporters at a Long Beach election night watch party not much later.
The Senate loss is surely a disappointment to Porter and her supporters, but it may not be the end of her political rope, experts say.
Despite spending a whopping $23.2 million in the Senate race — a paltry sum compared to Schiff’s $40 million, but significant nonetheless — she still has $4.8 million banked in her war chest.
See the latest election results.
The race for the seat in California’s 47th congressional district, which she still represents, is a tight and crowded contest with Republican Scott Baugh and Democratic state Sen. Dave Min with narrow leads.
Baugh, a former GOP Assembly leader, ran for the seat in 2022 as well, only narrowly losing to Porter by a few percentage points. Should he advance to the general election and win in November, that would open a path for Porter to vie for the seat again in two years, said Dan Schnur, a former campaign consultant who teaches political messaging at USC and UC Berkeley.
Of course, if a Democrat wins the race, that would prove to be more difficult.
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