The political establishment in California saw their moment and pounced.View this email in your browser [link removed]

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****OCTOBER 13, 2025****

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****Dayen on TAP****

**What’s Behind the Viral Katie Porter Attack**

**The political establishment in California saw their moment and pounced.**

The surprisingly wide-open race [link removed] for governor of the nation’s most populous state emerged from its slumber last week when a three-minute clip of former California Rep. Katie Porter, who has been leading Democrats in all polls, went viral [link removed] on the internet. It reinforced persistent rumors and evidence that Porter comes off as combative and angry. (Incidentally, have you seen the president of the United States lately?)

In the clip, a CBS Sacramento reporter asks Porter what she’d say to the 40 percent of California voters who voted for Trump, “who you’ll need in order to win” the governorship, about backing the redistricting ballot measure intended to counter Trump’s gerrymandering scheme. (That ballot measure is almost certainly going to win [link removed], by the way.) “How would I need them in order to win, ma’am?” Porter replied, questioning the premise.

That’s pretty much correct; a Democrat is going to win the governor’s race in California next year, without needing Trump voters. It’s true that in a state with a primary system where the top two vote-getters advance regardless of party, Porter could find herself facing a fellow Democrat, with Trump voters as the swing. But every Democrat in the race is

**also** backing the redistricting measure, and the makeup of the race, which has a half-dozen Democrats and only two prominent Republicans, makes it overwhelmingly likely that it will be a traditional Democratic-Republican general election.

Of course, this wasn’t why the clip went viral. It’s because Porter got angry about follow-up questions and threatened to walk out of the interview. (“Threatened” is the operative word; she stayed and answered questions for 20 minutes [link removed] after that clip.) It played into an impression that Porter was a hothead without the proper temperament to be governor.

Porter’s opponents were obviously waiting to pounce on this, because a bunch of other hit pieces flew out almost immediately. One involved Porter yelling at a staffer on a Zoom call [link removed] to get out of her “fucking shot,” and another was a series of text messages to the mayor of Irvine that had already been public for years. This was followed by the obligatory “campaign in disarray” Politico piece [link removed].

There is no doubt that Porter has a bad reputation as a manager, something that has been long whispered about. We should be honest that people berating their staff really stinks. But we can also be honest about what’s going on in this gubernatorial race.

Porter is disliked by the Sacramento establishment, not because of her interpersonal skills but because she’s more populist than they’d like and more willing to challenge the corporate interests that rule California politics. Her 2024 Senate election was derailed by millions of dollars from the crypto industry. (There’s actually a crypto cutout in this race now named Ian Calderon [link removed], who wants to “make California the undisputed leader on Bitcoin.”)

When Kamala Harris passed on the race and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis dropped out, the establishment was left without a candidate. Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former state Controller Betty Yee, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and rich guy Stephen Cloobeck have done little for voters. So the establishment has been desperately trying to get Sen. Alex Padilla to jump in [link removed], seeing him as someone they “can work with.” The viral Porter video provided an opening to knock down the frontrunner and signal to Padilla that it is a race he can win.

It won’t be so simple. Porter got the EMILYs List endorsement [link removed] last week, and Teamsters California and other supporters [link removed] haven’t abandoned her amid this firestorm. We’ll see what the polls say, but her momentum doesn’t seem to have been reversed, and the plan by California’s establishment to dictate who controls the state isn’t quite locked in.

**–DAVID DAYEN**

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Chicago Strikes Back, With an Assist from Republican Governors [link removed]

A federal judge calls out the Trump administration’s “simply unreliable” portrait of the city, while a group of former governors deconstructs the constitutional threats.

**BY GABRIELLE GURLEY** [link removed]

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Still No Kings: Millions to Protest Trump On Saturday [link removed]

A coalition of civil rights groups expects the turnout on Oct. 18 will be even bigger than the first ones held in June, which by some counts were the largest in U.S. history.

**BY WHITNEY CURRY WIMBISH ** [link removed]

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The Ad Campaign for Capitalism [link removed]

In the 1970s, corporate America struck back at the forces attempting to rein it in. One of their tactics was a public service announcement.

**BY DAVID SIROTA, J** [link removed]

**ARED JACANG MAHER**

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