The Ugliness Inside of Katie Porter

By Jeffrey Blehar

Wednesday, October 08, 2025

 

The 2026 California gubernatorial race is afoot, as Golden State Democrats vie to replace Gavin Newsom. (Newsom is technically vacating the position after 2026, but departed in spirit long ago for a presidential campaign.) Back when conventional wisdom held — erroneously, I suspect — that the position was Kamala Harris’s for the taking, former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter pipped the field by announcing her candidacy in March 2025.

 

That early start paid off for Porter, who currently leads a divided primary field also populated by former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, former Los Angeles Mayor Tony Villaraigosa, Fox News commentator Steve Hilton — a Republican — and six other guys you’ve never heard of. (California has used a “jungle primary” system since 2012, meaning that the top two vote-getters in June advance to the November ballot regardless of party.) Her lead is not commanding, however, and is due primarily to name recognition as a former congresswoman from the populous Los Angeles suburbs.

 

Well, Porter’s name recognition is about to spike even higher with California voters, but for reasons she would desperately not prefer. Near the end of September, Porter sat down with CBS News’s California-based correspondent Julie Watts for a candidate interview — part of a series of them CBS is conducting with all the contenders — and the video aired only last night. Now California voters know a lot more about Porter, because she melted down in spectacular fashion on camera and terminated the interview abruptly.

 

Settle in, readers — this one will take some time to properly appreciate.

 

The interview began with Watts querying Porter about the recent move by Gavin Newsom and state Democratic legislators to redistrict Republican congressmen out of their seats in retaliation for the redrawing of other red-state legislative maps. (An initiative to render California’s independent redistricting commission temporarily defunct is on the ballot this November.) Alas, Watts fatefully misspoke on her very first question, ensuring there would not be a second: “What do you say to the 40 percent of California voters — who you’ll need in order to win — who voted for Trump?”

 

Needless to say, it is tautologically false that you need the support of the losing party’s voters to win. But candidates aren’t supposed to say things like “Ha, we live in a one-party state, so it doesn’t matter what Trump voters think.” Watts was actually attempting to pose a simple challenge to the would-be governor (as she later made clear many times): What do you say to the 40 percent of Californians you are seeking to federally disenfranchise? Can you reassure non-Democratic voters that you will govern them with understanding and sympathy?

 

Any competent candidate has an answer for a question like this, because it’s so frequently asked — a variant on “we may not share the same party but we share the same basic human needs, and I will work for you on that most important of levels.” But Katie Porter is not a competent candidate and apparently has never sat through a remotely adversarial interview in her life.

 

Porter’s response must be seen to be properly appreciated. Her eyes narrow into reptilian slits, like a milk snake spotting a field mouse, and she leans forward with a frozen-smiled hiss: “How would I need them in order to win, ma’am?” The she turns to mug for the camera with a “can you believe this fool?” shrug.

 

What comes next is, objectively speaking, far too long to properly excerpt. But I spent 30 minutes lovingly transcribing every second of this three-minute interview — including Porter’s remarkable body language — and it makes for such an amazingly insane read that I believe America deserves the full transcript from a minute and 30 seconds onward to the end:

 

WATTS: And we’ve also asked the other candidates, do you think you need any of those 40 percent of California voters to win, and you’re saying no you don’t.

 

PORTER: No I’m saying I’m going to try to win every vote I can, and what I’m saying to you is that . . . [tails off into silence, shakes her head in disgust]

 

WATTS: Well to those voters, okay, so, so you—

 

PORTER: I don’t want to keep doing this. I’m going to call it. Thank you. [starts removing microphone]

 

WATTS: You’re not going to do the interview with us?

 

PORTER: Nope. Not like this I’m not. Not with seven follow-ups to every single question you ask.

 

WATTS: Every other candidate has answered without problems.

 

PORTER: [clapping her hands together sharply] I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to have a pleasant, positive conversation which [sic] you ask me about every question on this list. And if every question, you’re going to make up a follow-up question, then we’re never going to get there.

 

WATTS: [stunned, open-mouthed pause] Ms. Porter, I am an investigative reporter—

 

PORTER: And we’re just going to circle around. I have never had to do this before. Ever.

 

WATTS: You’ve never had a conversation with a reporter?

 

PORTER: To end an interview. To end an interview.

 

WATTS: Okay but every other candidate has done this.

 

PORTER: What part of — I’m me, I’m running for governor because I’m a leader. So I am going to make a—

 

WATTS: So you’re not going to answer questions from reporters? Okay, why don’t we go through — I will continue to ask follow-up questions because that’s my job as a journalist, but I will go through and ask these, and if you don’t want to answer you don’t want to answer. So nearly every legislative Democrat—

 

PORTER: I am — I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you. And I don’t want this all on camera.

 

WATTS: I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you, either. I would love to continue to ask these questions, so we can show our viewers what every candidate feels about every one of these issues that they care about. And redistricting is a massive issue, we’re going to do an entire story just on the responses to that question. And I’ve asked everybody the same follow-up questions.

 

Interview over! I hope you either read every word of that — it deserves to be savored like a juicy steak — or at least watched the clip, which is a cringe-inducing delight. The first thing that must be said about this implosion is that it is perfectly in keeping with everything else we know about Katie Porter, a woman who once poured scalding-hot mashed potatoes on her husband’s head in a fit of pique. (They are now divorced.) Porter was politically mentored by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, which is fitting — both carry themselves like Dolores Umbridge — as well as deeply ironic, given that Warren is well-liked by her staff and Porter was famously loathed by hers.

 

But beyond that, Porter’s petulance, lack of preparation, and sense of self-entitlement were staggering. She was genuinely offended to have to answer a mildly difficult question, one that (as Watts emphasized) every other candidate handled with ease. She acted like it was an insult not only to her intelligence but her personal dignity. I have seen celebrities walk out on interviews, but rarely political candidates, rarely for such unfathomable reasons, and never with the whine of a spoiled brat: “I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you! I don’t want this on camera!” (I was hoping for “I want it now!” to complete the trifecta, but alas it never came.)

 

Dealing with the press is a requirement for elected politics. Donald Trump famously hates the press — and is happy to talk with them constantly, taking any question flung at him and chewing the cud verbally for hours. If even Kamala Harris is willing to go out there and serve up bowls of word salad like the Swedish Chef, it certainly shouldn’t be beneath the likes of Katie Porter. Porter’s beastly reputation has long preceded her (you don’t become an inner-circle member of Washington’s informal “bad bosses” Hall of Fame any other way), but this interview is an amazing display of who she really is — the ugliness inside her heart — that voters will find impossible to ignore. I suspect Xavier Becerra had the best fundraising day of his campaign today.