Katie Porter Flipped a Red District, Thanks in Part to Her Mentors Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren
Historically, women have needed to be convinced to enter politics. But within weeks of the 2016 presidential election, thousands of women announced they planned to run. And we want them to win. So we're giving them a monthly example of a woman who has run. The point: You can, too.
Katie Porter's story is the kind you hope to see in a groundbreaking midterm season. A first-time Democratic candidate runs in a historically red district. She refuses to take money from corporate PACs, and she's supported by her mentors, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Kamala Harris. EMILY's List picks her as the first congressional candidate they endorse that year. And then she does it-she wins. Porter, who's a law professor at U.C. Irvine and a consumer protection attorney, was responsible for flipping her Orange County, California district to blue, securing her seat in Congress and helping Democrats take back the House. Ahead, Porter, who ran her campaign while also working and raising three kids, explains why she took on the challenge in the first place.
I grew up in Iowa, on a farm, during the 1980s farm crisis and watched as my neighborhood bank closed. Everyone in the town felt a real sense of panic and loss. Farmers were being foreclosed on and losing farms that had been in their family for generations. There were suicides and the kind of social pain and personal pain that comes with economic downturn. And the bank eventually reopened, but the way of life that people had built and the kind of local economy never really bounced back.
When I went to law school, I took a bankruptcy class with then-professor, now-Senator Elizabeth Warren. And I'll never forget that first day of class, hearing her talk about the importance of the bankruptcy system. And that capitalism is so good at incentivizing risk-taking and rewarding those who are successful. And that the flip side of this great capitalist economy we have in America is that we have some people who are not going to be winners. And some businesses that are not going to be successful. And that bankruptcy is really about what is our, not just legal, but economic and kind of moral response to those who suffer downturns or fall on hard times or fail.
I began to then work with Elizabeth. I traveled around the country and interviewed families who were in bankruptcy and collected information about them. I became a professor myself, teaching bankruptcy and consumer protection. I conducted a national study of mortgage companies in bankruptcy. And what I found was that big banks routinely broke the law. My work was featured on the front page of The New York Times. When I [moved to California], our then-Attorney General Kamala Harris asked me to be California's watchdog over the five largest banks that had just signed a record-breaking mortgage settlement. They had promised to help families who could keep their homes keep them. And they had promised to help families who couldn't keep their homes have better transitions out. The result of that program was that we were able to, right here in Orange County, help 11,000 families stay in their homes.
These families, a lot of them had been asking and calling and writing to government and asking their bank and researching options for years at that point. And they were still not able to get answers and information.
So a lot of my campaign was about having seen the way that Washington doesn't always work for ordinary people, having seen the ways special interests have kind of an outside influence on government policy. As a single mom of three kids, I drive a minivan, my kids are in public school, we have to live within a budget. I think I have a really good perspective on what it’s like to be of a middle class family trying to save for retirement, thinking about paying for college. That's the perspective that I really wanted to take to Congress.
For me it was really that night of the [2016] election, watching all of these people lament Donald Trump and [be] very concerned about what that would mean for some of the things that we value. But none of them were talking about our congresswoman and the fact that her voting record was consistent with Trump's. I felt like there was a real opportunity to help people understand that if you're concerned about what's happening in Washington, then you have voice. And that voice is your vote.
Obviously it was a big challenge, it was a hard race. I kept working during my campaign because I needed to feed my family. As a single mom of three kids, I have a lot of child care that I needed to juggle, and I was a first-time candidate.
I have the amazing opportunity to learn from and work with both Senator Warren and Senator Harris. I remember having breakfast with Elizabeth and telling her that I was thinking about running, and I remember that she said, "You will learn something every day. You'll learn something about an issue you didn't know about. You'll learn something about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses." And she said, then and there, "I will be with you every step of the way." And she was. I had her endorsement and Senator Harris's endorsement on day one of my campaign. I very much want to be that kind of mentor and that kind of champion for others who are thinking about running, particularly young women, women of color, women who don't come from wealth, who are working or middle class people.
Congress [needs to help] all mothers who are working in this country. We shouldn't be asking private companies to do things that we're not able or willing to do for our own members and staff. I would love to see the House have an after-school program. The challenges of daycare don't end when your kids get into elementary school. They continue. I can't tell you how many times in my professional life that I've been frantically trying to get to a childcare provider before 6 P.M. because it's $5 a minute if you're late. We talk about the problems of parents saving for college. How can I even think about saving for college when I'm trying to pay for daycare and that costs even more than college?
When I launched my campaign, I set out to win. I knew it would be a tough race, but as a consumer protection advocate, I'd taken on tough things before, like standing up to the big banks and calling them out for cheating people. I heard early on, and even through election day, that my opponent would be impossible to beat or that it was "nice" of me to try such a difficult task. But for me, those comments only made me want to prove it could be done.
Winning with so many other amazing women is special, as was the mentorship from women who were elected in previous cycles. Having a community of women-and mothers-will make serving my country in Congress so much more rewarding.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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