gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
—
The California governor’s race isn’t waiting for former Vice President Kamala Harris to make up her mind whether she’s going to run. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who represented Orange County in the US House for three terms, announced Tuesday she’s entering the race to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is term-limited from running again.
Porter enters a field that already includes Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Senate Leader Toni Atkins and former state Controller Betty Yee. Last year, Porter finished a distant third in the state’s top primary for an open US Senate seat that was ultimately won by Adam Schiff.
Porter, a former law student and protégé of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, often went viral for using calculations on a white board in congressional committee hearings—and she has a white board as part of the background of her video announcement.
The thrust of Porter’s announcement video is focused on national politics, featuring shots of President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Both her script and the imagery behind it reference a more open approach to immigration while fighting corruption, climate change and high costs.
“What California needs now is a little bit of hope and a whole lot of grit,” Porter says. “As governor, I won’t ever back down when Trump’s hurting Californians.”
With the long recovery and rebuilding ahead after the Los Angeles wildfires, Porter makes a specific reference to pushing for increased firefighter pay while in Congress. In a mark of a race that will likely be decided by which Democrat gets the most support, she also says she’s committed to “abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights,” while saying she’s against “Big Oil, Big Banks or Big Pharma screwing people over.”
None of that may matter, though, if Harris decides to run – which people close to her have said would need to happen by the summer, so she could have time to make a full-fledged case for why she might want the job and not be seen as just going for a consolation prize after her presidential loss last year. Advisers and friends remain divided over whether they want her to try for the job in Sacramento next year or attempt another presidential run in 2028.
Porter said in December that Harris entering would likely have a “field-clearing effect,” and she is sticking by that even as she launches her run, which is why the former vice president and California senator isn’t included in the numbers that her campaign is trying to tout. And though says she has a poll that has her in the best shape of “likely” Democratic candidates – her campaign’s count of likely candidates notably doesn’t include Harris.
“She wouldn’t run against Kamala,” a Porter adviser told CNN, “and likely none of the others will either.”
