Overview:
Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter is the most recent politician becoming a member of the aggressive 2026 race for California governor. All eyes are on former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Katie Porter, the previous Democratic congress member from Orange County who grew to become a progressive star along with her vigorous interrogations throughout committee hearings, is working for governor of California.
After months of hinting that she would run, Porter formally launched her 2026 gubernatorial marketing campaign in the present day with a video posted to social media wherein she touts her independence from company pursuits and lambastes President Donald Trump.
“I first ran for office to hold Trump accountable. I feel that same call to serve now to stop him from hurting Californians,” Porter stated within the video. “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.”
Her announcement follows only a yr after her unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate. That race ended acrimoniously when Porter, who completed a distant third within the major, known as the election “rigged by billionaires,” for which she acquired huge criticism.
However the nationwide publicity has helped make her an instantaneous frontrunner to switch the termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
A number of impartial polls since final fall present Porter with a transparent lead over different introduced and anticipated gubernatorial candidates. She additionally begins with greater than $1.4 million left over from her Senate marketing campaign — although the race for governor might finally require tens of tens of millions of {dollars} in fundraising.
Porter, who flipped a Republican seat in 2018, left Congress in January after three phrases and returned to instructing on the UC Irvine College of Regulation.
Porter goals to guard Californians from Trump
Although she’s touting “fresh blood and new ideas,” her platform is up to now mild on specifics. In her marketing campaign launch video, Porter mentions defending abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and immigrant communities and by no means letting “big banks, Big Pharma or Big Oil screw people over.”
“I’ve only ever been motivated by one thing: Making Californians’ lives better,” she stated. “And I’ll go toe-to-toe with anyone who tries to hurt Californians. Because that’s what it means to have the courage to solve our toughest problems.”
Her concentrate on the continuing ideological and political clashes between California and the federal authorities might place Porter because the state’s main anti-Trump voice as Newsom as an alternative tries to curry favor with the president to safe federal catastrophe assist for the devastating January fires in Los Angeles. Fewer than a 3rd of adults approve of Trump in closely Democratic California.
That may bolster Porter in a crowded race the place the main Democratic candidates — Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Senate President Professional Tem Toni Atkins, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Controller Betty Yee — have up to now principally leaned into their private biographies and messaging about affordability.
Legal professional Common Rob Bonta, who has already sued the brand new Trump administration greater than a half dozen occasions, just lately introduced that he would forgo a run for governor and search re-election.
Candidates watch for Harris choice
However the risk that former Vice President Kamala Harris, who misplaced to Trump in November, might nonetheless enter the sector looms giant. Politico reported final week that Harris plans to resolve by this summer time whether or not she’s going to run for governor — a call that might probably pressure different candidates out of the race due to her benefits in fundraising and title ID.
The June 2026 gubernatorial major is an open election from which the highest two candidates will advance to a runoff, no matter their celebration affiliation. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, and average Democrat Stephen Cloobeck, the founding father of a timeshare firm, are among the many different introduced candidates.
