Everywhere she goes, Representative Katie Porter leaves chaos in her wake. From her home to her office to her local police department, the California congresswoman leaves no one unscarred.
The protégé of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who went as far as to name one of her children “Elizabeth” after the senator, is currently rolling out a new book, titled I Swear: Politics is Messier Than My Minivan, and aiming for an open US Senate seat.
But her long-rumored divorce filings are getting Congresswoman Porter the wrong sort of publicity. They contain accusations from her ex-husband that she would scream “get out of my face and leave me alone!” to her children and would take a “ceramic bowl of steaming hot potatoes and dump[] it on [her husband’s] head, burning [his] scalp.”
If her minivan is anywhere near as messy as her kitchen, Cockburn suspects it contains mashed potatoes, glass shards from a coffee pot she slammed on a table and Jell-O that she purportedly said her husband is too “fucking stupid” to be able to make.
While divorce records are often messy, Porter has a long, public track record of melting down and lashing out at others. The Spectator previously reported that Porter reportedly fired a veteran who was on her congressional office staff over specious allegations that she gave Porter Covid-19. At another juncture the congresswoman called the Irvine police a “disgrace” and threatened the city’s Democratic mayor, telling him “you can lecture me on professionalism. And see what happens.”
Naturally, online figures on the right have been having a field day with the allegations:
It’s unclear how the explosive allegations of being an abusive mom and wife will impact Porter politically. For years, Cockburn has heard rumors that her divorce file was spicy and messy — and the filings definitely deliver. But in order to secure her Senate victory, Porter will have to vanquish liberal stalwarts like Representative Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee.
If the Senate race gets too messy for Porter, it’s always possible that she can follow the time-honored tradition of backing out and running for reelection to Congress instead. In an interesting turn of events, former representative Harley Rouda, who was running to succeed Porter in her soon-to-be open House seat, just announced that he will bow out of the race due to a brain injury he suffered in a fall. It is unclear to Cockburn whether coffee pots or potatoes played a role in said fall.
