Katie Porter’s Senate bid is over — but her fundraising push is not

Rep. Katie Porter’s Senate campaign folded last month after a third-place primary finish, but her fundraising operation is still very much alive.

The Southern California Democrat came up short in the race to succeed the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate, losing out to Democrat Adam Schiff and his GOP opponent, ex-baseball star Steve Garvey. But she has continued to send several email missives each week, soliciting campaign cash for like-minded members of her party.

Porter told POLITICO her “Truth to Power” leadership PAC is a way to ensure her crusade against corporate influence in politics continues — even when she no longer holds elected office.

So far, Porter has emailed pitching candidates both homegrown (California Rep. Josh Harder and Will Rollins, who is challenging GOP Congressmember Ken Calvert) and far-flung (New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, who is running for Senate, as well as the Biden-Harris presidential campaign).

The unifying theme among these contenders is an aversion to corporate money, a trait that Porter said “is still not the norm in the Democratic party.”

The criteria for picking candidates to support, Porter said, boils down to two questions, which hearken back to her dominant campaign theme: “Will you refuse corporate PAC money? And, will you support a ban on congressional stock trading?”

That message failed to get Porter into the general election. But, she said, it was a key part of the 2018 wave that propelled her to Congress and she continues to see it as crucial for Democrats’ fortunes in the fall, as the party struggles to engage younger, diverse, more independent voters who largely didn’t show up in the primary.

“A threat of Trump, while very real and salient to those voters, is not the entirety of what motivates them. It may be necessary, but not sufficient to get to them to turn out,” Porter said. “How do we get people more confidence in Washington? How do we address the disillusionment about our political system?”

Revving up her email list — which Porter put on the market in a last-ditch bid to raise money in the waning days of her Senate race — to lift up other candidates could appear to some as a fence-mending exercise, particularly after she irked fellow Democrats by calling her loss “rigged.”

Porter dismissed that idea, pointing out that her leadership PAC has been active since 2020 and gave more than $250,000 to candidates last cycle, per OpenSecrets’ campaign finance tracker.

“It’s all very, very consistent … I'm not writing checks to the powers that be. I'm trying to shape our democracy to be the strongest, best version of itself,” she said.

Schiff has also used his email list to direct cash to other Democrats. His pleas have primarily focused on bolstering Democrats in battleground Senate seats, pledging to split funds between their campaigns and his own.

For now, Porter plans to return to teaching at the University of California, Irvine once her congressional term ends next January, potentially adding a class on the legislative and regulatory process to her traditional course load focused on bankruptcy law.

She brushed off whether her continued presence on the fundraising front offers any tea leaves about future plans. But she flatly ruled out one well-trodden path for former members of Congress.

“The majority — maybe even the vast majority — of former members become lobbyists for corporate America,” Porter said. “Since I will not be doing that, I would say it's actually been challenging to find people” to model herself after.

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