After she lost the California Senate primary, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) was accused of adopting Trumpian rhetoric when she claimed the race had been "rigged" in a post to X. Now she's saying she regrets using the word.
After her initial post to X, Porter received a wave of criticism. But instead of backtracking, she doubled down on the claim in a follow-up statement and used the word again.
"'Rigged’ means manipulated by dishonest means. A few billionaires spent $10 million+ on attack ads against me, including an ad rated ‘false’ by an independent fact-checker,” Porter wrote on X earlier this month. “That is dishonest means to manipulate an outcome.”
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“I said ‘rigged by billionaires’ and our politics are—in fact—manipulated by big dark money,” she continued. “Defending democracy means calling that out. At no time have I ever undermined the vote count and election process in CA, which are beyond reproach.”
Porter was likely referring to the millions of dollars spent by Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) campaign and his super PACs in the race. Schiff even ran ads boosting the candidacy of Republican and former pro baseball player Steve Garvey, who finished in second place ahead of Porter.
Now, in a recent appearance on the podcast Pod Save America, Porter is acknowledging that using the word was a mistake.
"I wish I had chosen a different word. Because what happened with the controversy was it took away from two really important truths -- one, our California election officials do a really terrific job," she said, adding that she never meant to suggest that there was anything sinister going on behind the scenes in the election process.
"The second truth that is really important that got lost in all of that is that big money does influence our elections," she said. "Outcomes are manipulated and distorted when you have people coming in spending millions and millions of dollars at the last minute and that money is not disclosed until after the election so people don't know about it. ... These are people who are not necessarily interested in making sure Democrats have the majority."
