Katie Porter regrets calling primary election rigged. ‘I wish I had chosen a different word’

Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

PORTER REGRETS ‘RIGGED’ COMMENT IN PODCAST INTERVIEW

Via David Lightman...

Rep. Katie Porter said Tuesday “I wish I had chosen a different word” recently when she said the California Senate primary was “rigged.”

Porter, D-Irvine, finished a distant third in the March 5 race, where the top two finishers moved on to the November election.

In posts on X, she had blamed her loss partly on spending by Fairshake, a SuperPAC with ties to the crypto industry. SuperPACs can raise and spend campaign money in unlimited amounts.

Porter offered her regret on “Pod Save America,” a Democratic podcast.

“So, obviously, I wish I had chosen a different word, because what happened with the controversy was it took away from two really important truths,” she said.

One truth was that “our California election officials do a terrific job.” She said they “should be the model for a lot of the country in my opinion.”

The other takeaway, which Porter said “got lost in all of that,” is that “big money does influence our elections.”

“Outcomes are manipulated and distorted when you have people coming in and spending millions and millions of dollars at the last minute, and that money is not disclosed until after the election so people don’t know about it,” she added.

If they did, Porter maintained, voters would “take it into account when they vote.”

Porter said after the primary that “‘rigged’ means manipulating by dishonest means. A few billionaires spent $10 million plus on attack ads against me, including an ad rated ‘false’ by an independent fact checker.”

The Bee found the ads “mostly false.”

Fairshake spent more than $10 million in an effort to defeat Porter, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending.

Fairshake’s SuperPAC has no connection to the campaign of Democrat Adam Schiff, but its strategy was similar to Schiff’s–go negative on Porter in an effort to boost Republican Steve Garvey.

Schiff and Garvey were in a virtual tie in primary results reported Tuesday, each at 31.7%. Porter was a distant third at 15.3%.

The Schiff campaign sees Garvey as easier to beat in November. Polls show Schiff well ahead of Garvey, but in a virtual tie with Porter.

LAWMAKER LOOKS TO END CHILD MARRIAGE IN CALIFORNIA

Child marriage remains legal in California, one of the few states where there is no minimum age for a child to marry, provided they have permission from their legal guardian and a judge.

One state lawmaker is looking to change that.

Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, has introduced AB 2924 to repeal the provisions of the law, which her office called an “alarming loophole” in a statement.

“The U.S. considers marriage under the age of 18 to be a human rights abuse, yet, right here in the great state of California, children are still victims of forced child marriage,” she said. “It is absolutely shocking, it is horrifying, and it is time we finally end this outrageous practice.”

Petrie-Norris appeared alongside several child marriage survivors at a Capitol demonstration last year and vowed to introduce legislation to change the law. It won’t be the first attempt to do so.

Then-Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, had introduced a bill in 2017 that would have banned all marriage under 18. The bill met with pushback, primarily from the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that it “unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental rights of marriage without sufficient cause.”

In 2021 alone, according to Petrie-Norris’ office, more than 8,700 children in California were married. Between 2000 and 2018, more than 23,500 minors were married in the state, according to Unchained At Last, a sponsor of AB 2924. As Petrie-Norris noted, child marriage also is a legal defense against a statutory rape charge.

“I have witnessed firsthand the long-term devastation that child marriage causes. Children are subjected to an endless cycle of mental, physical and sexual abuse, all sanctioned by the state,” said Unchained At Last founder and Executive Director Fraidy Reiss, herself a survivor of child marriage.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We’re again seeing the millennia-old narrative about ‘good Jews’ & ‘bad Jews’ — long used to demonize Jews. Trump said it again yesterday: Only Jews who vote for him are good Jews. And we see it at times on the left: Only Jews with a certain position on the war or who oppose Israel’s existence are good Jews. It’s all condescending & antisemitic.”

- Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, via Threads.

Best of The Bee:

• Flojaune Cofer’s rise to the top of the pack of Sacramento mayoral hopefuls was fueled partly by the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods, a Sacramento Bee analysis found, via Theresa Clift and Phillip Reese.

• California consumers will have to wait longer to see interest rates come down. And when they do, they probably won’t be coming down very much. There was hope last year that the Federal Reserve would start lowering its key rate at it’s upcoming meeting Wednesday. That’s now regarded as highly unlikely, via David Lightman.