Things had been looking up for Katie Porter’s bid to become the next governor of California.
In July, Kamala Harris decided not to run in next year’s contest, opening the door for candidates with less name recognition. And Ms. Porter, a former congresswoman known for her sharp tongue on Capitol Hill, has been the top-polling Democrat in a large field hoping to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom of California when he leaves office.
But late Tuesday, Ms. Porter went viral for the wrong reasons after a video of her exchange with a local television journalist became a must-see clip for the political set. In the three-minute video, she dismissively rejected a question that suggested she needed to reach out to Republicans and threatened to abandon the interview after she was frustrated with several follow-ups.
Rivals from both parties seized on the interview to mix it up in what’s been, until now, a very sleepy race.
Fellow Democratic candidates said Ms. Porter “thinks she’s already won,” “can’t answer basic questions” and that the governor’s race is “no place for temper tantrums.” One opponent called on her to drop out of the race.
Megyn Kelly, the conservative commentator, called it “the most entertaining, unifying thing since tiger king!”
By Wednesday afternoon, a video of the exchange posted by an Axios reporter had racked up two million views on X, far more than the original segment probably would have attracted.
It all started when Julie Watts, a CBS News reporter in Sacramento, asked Ms. Porter about Mr. Newsom’s plan to gerrymander congressional districts to help Democrats flip House seats and thwart President Trump in the second half of his term. Ms. Porter said she supported the measure.
Ms. Watts then asked what Ms. Porter would say to the “40 percent of California voters, who you’ll need in order to win, who voted for Trump?”
“How would I need them in order to win, ma’am?” Ms. Porter said, leaning forward and furrowing her brow. She then turned her head, seeming to look at someone off camera, and laughed dismissively.
The two went back and forth over whether she needed to appeal to Republicans, and Ms. Porter said, “I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative. What is your question?”
After another 40 seconds of sparring, Ms. Porter said she wanted to end the interview because Ms. Watts was asking too many follow-up questions.
She gestured as if she was going to remove her microphone, but did not, telling Ms. Watts, “I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you, and I don’t want this all on camera.”
The exchange amounted to a self-inflicted wound — and perhaps some comeuppance — for a candidate known for her own tough questioning of executives on Capitol Hill. In those cases, Ms. Porter often went viral on social media for making her witnesses squirm.
Her campaign spokesman, Nathan Click, pointed out that Ms. Porter answered questions from Ms. Watts for another 20 minutes after the viral exchange. A CBS spokesperson said on Wednesday that Ms. Porter stayed for the full interview.
On Wednesday, Politico published a video from 2021 in which Ms. Porter used an expletive as she yelled at a staff member who stepped into her shot as she recorded an interview with a Biden administration official. The aide was trying to correct something that Ms. Porter had said.
After the video surfaced, Ms. Porter issued a statement suggesting that the exchange was an example of how she has held herself and her staff to a high standard.
“That was especially true as a member of Congress,” the statement said. “I have sought to be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work.”
The 2026 California governor’s race, so far, has been defined more by what has not happened than what has. For months, the biggest question was whether Ms. Harris would run for the state’s top office after she lost the presidential election to Mr. Trump last year.
Two experienced Democrats — Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor, and Toni Atkins, a former legislative leader — dropped out of the race after polling in the single digits for nearly a year.
With few candidates gaining traction, supporters of Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, have begun a whisper campaign urging him to run.
“I am weighing it,” Mr. Padilla recently told The New York Times in a conversation for The Interview podcast.
Meanwhile, candidates running against Ms. Porter saw an opportunity to make the most of her gaffe.
Betty Yee, a former state controller, called on Ms. Porter to drop out of the race.
Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles, released a three-minute television ad on Wednesday afternoon that consisted almost entirely of Ms. Porter’s exchange with Ms. Watts. Mr. Villaraigosa’s campaign said the ad would air on Sacramento television stations starting on Thursday.
In the final seconds of the commercial, he says, “I approve this ad because we need leaders who will solve hard problems and answer simple questions.”
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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