Former Rep. Katie Porter’s spokesperson says she’ll bow out if the former vice president jumps into the race
Former Rep. Katie Porter certainly didn’t wait for former Vice President Kamala Harris to decide whether she, too, wants to run for California governor in 2026.
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But Porter, in recently declaring her candidacy to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, has put a bit of an asterisk next to her campaign.
Should Harris decide to enter the race, Porter would bow out, her spokesperson has said.
Porter is laying out her cards.
“If Kamala comes into this race — especially if she comes in tomorrow, she comes in now — it’s going to have a near field-clearing effect,” Porter said on a recent episode of the “Pod Save America” podcast.
It would be “disrespectful,” Porter said when pressed on why she’s willing to defer to Harris rather than run a campaign regardless, not to acknowledge that the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee “would be an incredibly strong candidate.”
Meanwhile, other candidates are ignoring the Harris-of-it-all shadow cast on the already-crowded field for governor.
Former Assembly Speaker and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for instance, said a theoretical Harris entry doesn’t matter. He’s in it to win it, he said during a recent event at the UC Student and Policy Center in Sacramento.
So what’s the better campaign strategy for the field of Democrats, a group that, as of now, includes legislative leaders, members of the state’s executive branch and a former congressional representative?
Defer to the person who led your party in the recent presential election?
Or fight for pole position, convince voters that no matter who else runs, you’re the best one for the job?
It’s politics, so predicting just which approach is the most politically savvy strategy may be a fool’s errand this early in the race.
Still, it could prove to be a defining moment for Democrats, said Matt Lesenyie, who teaches political science at Cal State Long Beach, with a focus on political psychology and messaging.
Likening it to an actual horse race, Lesenyie said the Democratic Party — and to some extent, Republicans, too — have struggled because they have not had their top candidates really go toe-to-toe with one another.
“Their thoroughbreds haven’t actually had to run a race until it was too late,” he said. “(Former President) Joe Biden is a quality candidate but probably should have had another runner-up against him in the primary to show he still has it or he doesn’t.”
But certainly when you have a race oversaturated with quality candidates, most of them are going to take a foreseeable loss, Lesenyie said.
Laugh, if they defer to salad quotes Harris they are worse off then I thought.
If they allow Biden now that the books and comments about his permanent intellectual decline, there is no hope for this state.
HUH??? “But certainly when you have a race oversaturated with quality candidates, ….” This certainly does not describe the Democrat Party past or present.
It was a nice laughable read.
If Republicans are “lucky,” we will have a Republican in the top two following the primary. Then we will spend the campaign acting like there’s a chance the Republican candidate can actually win the election. It will be the same depressing scenario as Schiff vs Garvey in the 2024 senate race. As a reminder, the senate race was soooo close that the Associated Press called it for Schiff SECONDS after the polls closed. And this is in California where they count ballots for ONE MONTH post-Election Day.
Unfortunately, a Democrat will win the gubernatorial race. Whoever is the Democrat candidate will win. The depressing result will have more Republicans moving out of California.
Republicans can have a chance if President Trump and the Republican Congress make Voter ID the law. We need paper ballots and one-day voting (except military). Moreover, we need California to stop mailing ballots unless someone has requested it or is in the military. Until we have election integrity in Kalifornia, our communist-like elections will continue to elect communist-like Democrats.
If Kamala Harris runs for governor, she will win. Why, you ask? Her gender is female, and she is black. So, why not in Kalifornia. Regardless of her ‘salad’ quotes, answers, and speeches, people will vote for her. People of all genders/self-proclaimed genders, people of color, illegals, and those who want free handouts will vote for her. You can’t fix stupid people in Kalifornia.
Ha ha ha – she ain’t BLACK. I think people of Indian descent would chafe at that statement.
Her father was black and her mother was from India