Katie Porter sits in Starbucks, sipping an iced coffee and discussing what might have been as a steady stream of customers dressed in seasonal uniforms (shorts, flip-flops) walk past.
This was not how she expected to spend her summer.
The Orange County congresswoman had gone from unknown to political celebrity virtually overnight, wielding a whiteboard and marker to skewer lobbyists, torment CEOs and harass various corporate heavyweights, to the absolute ecstasy of the Internet- and cable-TV-consuming wing of the Democratic Party.
Porter went from UC law professor to fundraising dynamo, progressive heroine and oft-reported candidate for higher office. But it all came crashing down when Porter lost, by a resounding margin, a hotly contested Senate primary to colleague Adam B. Schiff. Now he is the one heading toward election and a possible lifetime term in Washington, while Porter faces the end of her congressional career in just a few months.
Porter says he has no regrets.
Not for the way he ran his Senate campaign, or for reneging on the national political platform he built, or for giving up a House seat (which Republicans are very interested in) after three terms and six years in Washington, a time when many in his line of work are just getting started.
“What things in the universe would I like to see different?” Porter asked, before answering herself. “A lot. A lot.”
The war in Gaza, for example, sparked a peace movement in the Democratic Party and bolstered the candidacy of Rep. Barbara Lee, Porter's main rival for liberal support against the more centrist Schiff.
“Do I think I underestimated some factors and overestimated others? Sure. Do I think I did calculations and calculations? Yes,” Porter continued. “But when I look at that campaign, I don’t think there was… a particular moment or a particular decision that determined it one way or another.”
The morning rush had died down. An egg and spinach wrap sat before Porter, untouched.
He still smarts from the sting of millions of dollars in negative publicity poured into him by the cryptocurrency industry and Big Tech to help Schiff, but he says his support for his former rival is sincere and wholehearted.
“Adam, Barbara and I stayed very cordial throughout the race,” Porter said. “We saw each other every day at work. People forget that. We sat together in delegation meetings; we’re together on the plane. One of the first people I saw after I lost was Barbara Lee’s son, who said to me, ‘You ran a great race. ’ We understand that when you race, somebody wins and somebody loses.”
His only hope is for Schiff to use the fall campaign (such as it is against his hand-picked opponent, hapless Republican Steve Garvey) to talk about some of the many problems facing California.
“We need a real political debate in California,” Porter said. “We have a narrative about California as a state [Gov. Gavin Newsom’s] “There are those who dream of the golden dream of California, but there are also those who think, ‘This is a failed state; people are leaving,’ that whole narrative… This election was an opportunity to have a real political debate about our state, and I don’t think that happened.”
The blame lies with voters' short attention spans, scant coverage in the political press, a race that managed to captivate very few Californians, subtleties among Democrats who generally think like them, and the lack of a true Republican competition that would provoke deep and meaningful debate.
As Schiff heads into the election, Porter said, “I hope Adam goes back to some of the policies that were really important in the Senate race, whether it was housing, the environment, energy, taxes, and tries to have some of those conversations and comes to the Senate really willing to think about, ‘What does California need from Washington?’”
A customer approached Porter, wide-eyed, to offer well wishes. The 47th Congressional District, which stretches along the Orange County coast, is home to one of the most competitive House races in the country, a fight pitting Democrat Dave Min against Republican Scott Baugh to replace Porter in the Capitol.
She has few illusions about the institution she is leaving behind.
Congress is a clumsy, beastly place, deeply polarized and highly antagonistic, and Porter said there is little desire on the part of leaders of either major party to fix that.
“My colleagues want to talk — and you’ll hear them talk this fall, whether it’s Congressman Schiff, who’s running for Senate, a House candidate, or Vice President Harris — they want to talk nonstop about the crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” Porter said. “And what about the crisis of confidence in us, in Congress, and in who we work for and how effective we are? That’s a conversation worth having, too.”
(There's a reason Porter was not a favorite of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who used her considerable influence to support Schiff in the Senate primary.)
For now, Porter is looking forward to returning to the classroom in January (her face lit up when she was told she would be back in front of students) and resuming her old position at UC Irvine. She will teach a first-year law class and courses on business law and legislation.
She has a new Burmese kitten, Dino, and a basset hound puppy, Poppy. As a single mother of three, she's happy to forgo the arduous commute to Washington and back, and she's also looking forward to being there when her kids get home from school.
A sip of coffee. Another passerby, a woman in a neon green safety vest, wishes Porter a good morning.
Porter hasn’t ruled out a future run for statewide office — she could be a formidable candidate for attorney general or governor — but she’s in no rush to decide. (She was, however, the first to jump into the Senate race, even before the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein had signaled her intention to step aside.)
Porter rebuked nearly half a dozen gubernatorial candidates who have already launched their campaigns.
“In my opinion, between now and Election Day, no one should be running for governor,” Porter said. Democrats, rightly, insist that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to democracy and that the party must do everything it can to stop him.
“If you believe that,” Porter said, pumping his fist, “then that’s what we should all be working on right now. We’re not running in an election that’s more than two years away.
At 50, still in the flush of youth by today's silvery political standards, Porter has a long way to go.
She remains committed, she said, to public service of some kind.
“I'm not tired at all of being a candidate. I'm not tired of campaigning,” she said, finally turning her attention to her sloppy spinach wrap. “But I just don't know what that's going to look like and I'm not going to let myself be rushed.”
“I’m going to pursue whatever I feel is right, whether it’s elected office, I don’t know at what level, whether it’s in the administration, whether it’s some kind of civil service board position in California,” or possibly a role in Kamala Harris’ administration.
His brief, ascendant career in the House may be nearing its end, but, as Porter suggested, it's not over yet.
