Throughout two phrases in Congress, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) has proved to be an efficient shopper advocate with a knack for grilling company executives and authorities officers — and an uncommon technique of conveying info.
The viral movies of Porter tapping her professorial abilities to query highly effective folks whereas scribbling figures on a whiteboard have grow to be a twenty first century style of accountability. Porter has, amongst different issues, taken a pharmaceutical firm govt to job for climbing the worth of most cancers medicine and pressed a federal official to make COVID-19 assessments free. Oversight is a important obligation of Congress, and Porter has a present for doing it in a method that’s clear and compelling.
She’s additionally been a dependable vote in favor of defending Individuals’ freedoms which might be below assault by a right-wing Supreme Court docket. She voted for the Ladies’s Well being Safety Act, which might have enshrined in federal legislation the nationwide proper to abortion misplaced when the court docket overturned Roe vs. Wade. She voted for payments to guard same-sex marriage and the best to entry contraception after Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion arguing that the court docket ought to contemplate overturning the choices making certain these freedoms. (All three of those payments handed the Democratic-controlled Home however stalled within the evenly divided Senate.)
However Porter, who represents an Orange County swing district, isn’t afraid to point out political independence. She wrote laws to ban lawmakers from buying and selling shares whereas in workplace, citing the potential for corruption and the necessity for Congress to construct belief with the general public. She stated Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) “was fallacious” to oppose such a invoice, a place Pelosi finally reversed.
Porter additionally challenged leaders of her personal get together about inner Home guidelines associated to utilizing props (after a Democratic committee chair blocked her from displaying a poster board) and procedures for assigning members to committees. Her brash fashion most likely received her booted from the Home Monetary Companies Committee, the place a Washington Submit columnist affectionately described her as “a bull in a china store” — despised by monetary trade insiders however adored by extraordinary Individuals who see her standing as much as Wall Road.
Porter’s opponent within the Nov. 8 election is Republican Scott Baugh, a former assemblyman who led the Orange County Republican Occasion for a number of years. He seems to be taking a web page from Donald Trump’s marketing campaign playbook, showing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox Information present in June to stoke fears about migrants.
“Some are gang members and a few are human traffickers and a few are drug runners,” Baugh stated of unidentified folks arriving by boat in Orange County.
Baugh informed NBC that he opposes same-sex marriage and abortion, and would have voted towards the laws Porter supported to enshrine these rights in federal legislation. He didn’t reply to a number of invites from The Occasions editorial board to satisfy for an endorsement interview, so now we have many unanswered questions. However it seems that if he’s elected, Baugh will be a part of the ranks of extremist GOP lawmakers working to remove Individuals’ rights and freedoms and sow hatred towards immigrants. The nation doesn’t want extra of that.
Baugh is attacking Porter over a profit she enjoys as a college member of the UC Irvine Legislation Faculty. She has been on unpaid depart since she was elected to Congress in 2018, however nonetheless owns a residence within the College Hills growth that she purchased when she started instructing on the faculty in 2011. The group was created to assist UC Irvine workers purchase properties at below-market costs within the costly area. Owners pay a reduced value to purchase a home and don’t personal the land it sits on. They have to additionally promote it at a reduction after they depart, so their capability to revenue is proscribed.
Porter stated college insurance policies enable school to take unpaid depart to serve in authorities, and lots of different professors have maintained campus properties whereas on depart. Her household has continued to stay within the residence whereas she’s in Washington, and Porter stated that if she had been to lose reelection she would return to instructing at UC Irvine. Porter stated she’ll resolve whether or not to ask for continued depart after the election is over.
This race for the forty seventh Congressional District — which incorporates Irvine, Costa Mesa, Newport Seaside and Huntington Seaside — is amongst a handful of extremely aggressive races in Orange County that can decide which get together controls the U.S. Home of Representatives for the following two years. Porter has proved her mettle as a robust consultant throughout a tumultuous time within the nation’s historical past. Voters ought to really feel proud to reelect her.
