Democrat Rep. Katie Porter, who currently represents California’s 47th Congressional District, announced Tuesday that she is entering the Golden State’s 2024 Senate race
The announcement comes before Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has represented California in the Senate since 1992, has made any announcement about whether she will seek re-election in 2024 when her current term expires. Feinstein, 89, is the oldest serving senator.
In a clip shared to social media, Porter, who won re-election to her House seat in the November midterm elections, said: “We’re living through a time of extraordinary change. I’m Katie Porter. Change can be electrifying and exhilarating, but change can also be disruptive — like the constant assault on our democracy and the dangerous imbalance in our economy.”
“The threat from so-called leaders like Mitch McConnell has to often made the United States Senate the place where rights get revoked, special interests get rewarded, and our democracy gets rigged, especially in times like these,” she added.
Pointing to herself as a voice for residents in California, Porter said California “needs a warrior in Washington.”
“I don’t do Congress the way others often do,” she claimed in the video message. “I use whatever power I have to speak hard truths to the powers that be – to not just challenge the status quo, but call it out, name names, and demand justice.”
Porter, a former law professor who was paid more than $285,000 one year during her time at the University of California, Irvine, is also vowing to take on “Wall Street and the big banks, big oil, and Big Pharma.”
First elected to Congress in 2018, Porter also noted in the clip that she refuses to “accept corporate PAC and lobbyist campaign money.”
“I don’t want it,” she said. “And I’m leading the fight to ban congressional stock trading because it’s just wrong.”