‘I am closing the door’: Katie Porter to leave politics, become a book influencer
Former Rep. Katie Porter said Friday it’s unlikely she’ll run for public office again after winning less than 5% of the vote in the June primary for governor.
“I am closing the door on being a candidate,” Porter said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee. “I cannot foresee that path back.”
In a post on her personal Instagram account Thursday, the Democrat said she’ll use one of her two social media accounts to discuss a different passion: books.
The newly rebranded account, Katie Porter Turns the Page, will focus on discussions and recommendations of books. The attorney said she began her current bout of heavy reading, mostly fiction, during the COVID-19 pandemic and started a book group in Irvine. Porter is also a professor at the University of California, Irvine’s law school.
A protégé and former student of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, Warren flipped a Republican-held Orange County congressional seat in 2018. In Congress, she developed a name for herself grilling executives using her trademark whiteboard in exchanges that sometimes went viral.
Porter said Friday those moments would be a key part of her political legacy.
“I think we’ve seen a higher level of preparation and engagement in hearings since I was in Congress, and that makes me proud because that is an example of government working,” Porter said.
In 2024, Porter opted to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, who later announced her retirement. Porter finished a distant third in the primary, an outcome she partially attributed at the time to heavy spending from a pro-crypto group.
An ‘unusual’ governor’s race
The Democrat announced her campaign for governor the following year, and held a narrow lead in some polls very early in the race. Porter characterized herself as a minivan driving single mom who would work to take on special interests and refuse to take corporate cash.
But she was dogged by news stories about her temperament, including a 2021 video surfaced by Politico that showed her yelling at a staffer — reportedly leaked by another former aide who’d gone on to work for rival Tom Steyer, according to the Los Angeles Times — and a fall 2025 exchange where Porter nearly walked out of an interview with a CBS California reporter.
At a panel last month, Democratic strategist and Porter consultant Erica Kwiatkowski Nielsen said those moments came up repeatedly in focus groups with voters and proved tough to shake. Porter said Friday there was little doubt in her mind that gender shaped how voters perceived the incidents. She repeatedly apologized for the exchange with a staffer, who’d continued to work with Porter for years after.
“I don’t know what I could have said or done other than be a man,” Porter said. “We’ve also seen it is not hard to come up with female candidates for whom the term temperament has been used. I challenge you to come up with a male candidate.”
But Porter said there wasn’t a single reason her campaign didn’t succeed in an “unusual election” with a broad field of candidates. She said voters seemed to be heavily influenced by fears of a Democratic lockout in California’s top two primary system. And aided by polls and prediction markets, voters wanted to pick a perceived winner. And the Democrat noted that while other states seemed interested in younger candidates who might be perceived as outsiders, California Democrats backed a veteran politician in Xavier Becerra.
The attorney said she’s not done with public service, likely through engaging in specific policy debates and providing general education about how government works.
“We’ve actually lost some of that teaching, learning, figuring out what is actually going on, and then leaving it to people to form their own opinion,” Porter said.
This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 12:08 PM with the headline "‘I am closing the door’: Katie Porter to leave politics, become a book influencer."
