The morning after an unflattering video showed Katie Porter belittling a television reporter, she raced to shore up her campaign to become California’s next governor.
Ms. Porter, the leading Democrat in next year’s contest, called her top campaign aides to apologize. She exchanged text messages with union leaders who had endorsed her.
By the end of the day, however, a second video surfaced, showing Ms. Porter cursing at a staff member in 2021. And California political strategists seized on the moment to try to scramble the race to lead the nation’s most populous state.
The two viral clips have given momentum to powerful insiders who have been trying to draft Senator Alex Padilla to run for governor because they have been dissatisfied with the field. Two billionaires may sense a juicy opportunity to jump into the race. And other candidates wasted no time in attacking Ms. Porter.
The videos offered fresh evidence of fears expressed behind closed doors by power brokers in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles: Can a politician who appears so volatile run the state of California?
“What I’m hearing is: ‘How many more stories are there? How many more videos are coming?’” said Christine Pelosi, a California member of the Democratic National Convention who helped Ms. Porter win a competitive House seat in 2018 but has not endorsed any of the current candidates in the governor’s race.
“If it’s going to be a cavalcade of stories, then that’s not something that you necessarily want to have to constantly deal with as far as our standard-bearer,” added Ms. Pelosi, a daughter of Representative Nancy Pelosi.
The videos have sharpened the contours of the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run again because of term limits. While some Democrats have warned that her temperament makes her unfit for office, Ms. Porter and her allies have used the moment to present her as an independent outsider who doesn’t follow political norms.
It is early enough that the videos could well be forgotten by the spring, when the campaign will reach full tilt ahead of the June primary. Voters have become more accustomed to rude, brash behavior by politicians in the past decade since Donald J. Trump first ran for the White House.
And plenty of candidates have survived setbacks that seemed more disqualifying, such as Mr. Newsom’s admitting in 2007 to having an affair with his campaign manager’s wife and Mr. Trump’s boasting about grabbing women and being convicted of 34 felonies.
Ms. Porter’s reputation as a maverick has left her somewhat isolated from California’s political establishment. Still, a handful of allies who had endorsed Ms. Porter rallied to her defense this week and issued statements praising her as a gutsy leader.
“In this critical moment in our country, we don’t need to be polite, go along to get along, establishment politicians that keep getting run over by the opposition,” said Peter Finn and Chris Griswold, the co-chairs of Teamsters California, in a statement.
Sal Rosselli, president emeritus of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, said that his union’s endorsement of Ms. Porter would not change. “She made a mistake and I’m confident she can get past it,” Mr. Rosselli said, calling Ms. Porter “courageous.”
Many others accused her critics of sexism in lodging complaints against Ms. Porter that they said would never be raised against a male politician who acted in the same manner.
“When it comes to women in politics, the issues get overblown,” said Florice Hoffman, chair of the Democratic Party in Orange County, where Ms. Porter lives.
During Ms. Porter’s three terms in Congress, she developed a large following of fans who were enamored with her take-no-prisoners approach to confronting witnesses before the House Oversight Committee. She is banking on the same appeal as she runs for governor, in an era when voters have rewarded politicians who go off script.
The question is how far an outsider campaign can take her in a statewide race. Ms. Porter ran for California’s open Senate seat last year and finished a distant third in the primary to Adam Schiff, the Democrat who eventually won.
In the House, Ms. Porter alienated colleagues who chafed at her habit of railing against the very institution she had joined. She broke from the speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi, by calling for a rule to prohibit lawmakers from trading stock. She publicly criticized her peers for seeking money for their districts through so-called earmarks.
When Ms. Porter ran for Senate last year, only one of California’s 52 representatives endorsed her. And Nancy Pelosi, who particularly disliked Ms. Porter when they served together in Congress, threw her political might behind Mr. Schiff.
Ms. Porter also had high staff turnover while serving in Washington. An analysis of churn in congressional offices between 2019 and 2024, the years Ms. Porter was in office, found that her staff members left at a higher rate than the historical norm in the House. She was known for having a short temper.
“It’s a dam-breaking moment because this is the worst kept nonsecret in California politics,” said Brad Elkins, a political consultant who worked on Mr. Schiff’s 2024 Senate campaign.
In the sphere of influence encompassing several blocks around the State Capitol in Sacramento, Ms. Porter feels risky enough that power brokers have been searching for someone else to lead the state. Unlike the last two governors, Mr. Newsom and Jerry Brown, Ms. Porter is running for chief executive without having served in state office and without a deep political network in California.
Several prominent interest groups are now in talks about commissioning a poll to gauge how Mr. Padilla would fare if he ran.
Mr. Padilla served eight years in the state legislature and six years as secretary of state. During his tenure in Sacramento, Mr. Padilla developed a reputation as a business-friendly Democrat with an even-keeled demeanor. An engineer by training, he was at ease drilling into the intricacies of legislation to ban plastic bags and permit driverless cars.
It is not entirely clear why Mr. Padilla, who has a safe Senate seat in a Democratic state and has moved his family to Washington, would run for governor. But he may see it as an opportunity to have a greater impact on policy than serving in the minority caucus in a gridlocked Congress, where he ranks 77th in Senate seniority.
Mr. Padilla has said that he is considering the race, but will not make any decisions until after the California special election in November.
Several other Democrats are already running, including Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles and former Assembly speaker, and Xavier Becerra, who was President Biden’s health secretary. Two prominent Republicans have entered the race: Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County.
But it’s clear that the field remains in flux after former Vice President Kamala Harris chose this summer not to run for the office. Many voters are undecided, according to recent polls, so the door remains open.
Rick Caruso, the wealthy shopping mall developer in Los Angeles, has been traveling the state exploring a possible run. And this week, Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund manager who flirted with running for governor in 2018 and ran for president in 2020, announced that he had spent $12 million on ads backing Mr. Newsom’s redistricting ballot measure — a move that many political insiders interpreted as a flex showing that he could jump into the messy governor’s race at any time.
But friends and supporters of Ms. Porter see this week’s videos as a mere blip in a long campaign.
Ann O’Leary, a former chief of staff to Mr. Newsom, said she reached out to Ms. Porter in recent days to support a longtime friend who was having a rough week. She had confidence that Ms. Porter would bounce back and has skills that make her “very effective at this very high stakes game of politics.”
On Wednesday, the day after Ms. Porter’s testy interview with CBS News went viral, Ms. Porter was on a Zoom call with half a dozen members of a political action committee that backs female candidates. They peppered her with questions about politics and how to get more women to run for office, never asking about the video.
“I don’t think too many people were shocked that she got visibly frustrated — not to say that it’s OK, and that all of us shouldn’t work to be better — but I just don’t see it impacting her support,” said Gerald Singleton, a lawyer in San Diego who is a friend and longtime supporter of Ms. Porter’s, and was on the Zoom meeting. “Katie is a fighter and that’s what people love about her.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
Benjamin Oreskes is a reporter covering New York State politics and government for The Times.
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