Exclusive Interview: Down in the O.C., Katie Porter is Running to Flip CA-45 Blue

UCI Law Professor and consumer protections advocate Katie Porter has had her brushes with politics. She has helped fight predatory lending practices and tackle corrupt Wall Street banks with the likes of Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and President Barack Obama. In an exclusive interview with the Resist Report, Porter says that it wasn’t until election night 2016 while watching the neighborhood children violently devour the remains of a life-size Hillary Clinton sheet cake at a viewing party, that she decided she would run for Congress herself.

A year ago, no one would have expected a close race for the U.S. House in California’s 45th congressional district, which covers a large portion of what has come to be known by most Americans as “the O.C.” But the race has become one of the most hotly watched in the country, with Porter running neck and neck, and in some polls even leading, over her Republican rival.

I finally found something that Mimi Walters and I agree on. She recently told a crowd of people during a speech that she thought it was a good idea for Donald Trump to come campaign for her. I agree completely. — Katie Porter

Still, and make no mistake, Porter is the underdog in this race, and has faced a massive uphill battle from the get-go. For one, she had decided to run against Walters, a Trump supporter who has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Big Oil, and she was going to do it while accepting no corporate PAC money in a district that is among the more affluent in the state.

Porter understands this district in ways that Walters never could, and she believes this will give her the advantage necessary to wrestle this crucial seat away from the GOP. For one, Walters doesn’t live in this district and never has.

“She doesn’t live here, wasn’t raised here, didn’t raise her kids here,” Porter said.

This district also went to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, unexpectedly, and Porter expects that this is because the people of Irvine simply care about families, community, and education, in a way that Trump does not. (“No one moves to Irvine for the nightlife,” Porter jokes.)

When Walters aligns herself with Trump, and takes money from the DeVos family, she is acting in ways that fundamentally irk the people here. And Porter, a working mom, who has accepted no PAC money is the perfect person to seize on these failures.

If elected, Porter will become the first Democrat ever to be elected to the U.S. House in this district. But she has been fighting for people and families her entire life and is primed and ready to hit the ground running. Check out our exclusive interview to hear her tackle student loans, the Trump tax scam, Mimi Walters, Donald Trump, and detractors of the Robert Mueller investigation.