Democratic star Katie Porter fights against a conservative resurgence in O.C.
Reporter John Antczak contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Katie Porter is the last holdout against a conservative resurgence sweeping Southern California.
Porter is standing her ground in an increasingly conservative district on the west side of Los Angeles, a battleground that President Trump won by 16 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016. The same district, in a different year, was a battleground for Hillary Clinton’s Senate candidacy against Marco Rubio.
“The last 30 days in the media have been about how dangerous Trump is,” said Porter, one of two incumbent Republicans running for reelection in a district Hillary Clinton won by more than 20 points. “The media have told us how disastrous the Republican Party is. Well, we’re here to tell them how we are the party of Donald Trump.”
The district voted for Trump by 16 points in 2016, and Porter and her five opponents have all sought to appeal to his base with their positions against immigration, climate change, the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court and, in most cases, abortion rights.
To conservatives who are hoping to oust a Republican incumbent and retake the House seat in the 2018 midterm elections, Porter, 45, is one of just six House members who have voted with Trump. The others are Reps. Mark Amodei, R-Okla., Joe Barton, R-Texas, Tom Rooney, R-Fla., Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and John Culberson, R-Texas.
The two GOP challengers — Porter and Darryl Glenn, the wealthy, former county assessor — have nearly identical approval ratings in the district, with the incumbent at 39 percent approval and Glenn at 38 percent.
Porter has tried to position herself as a working-class, anti-Trump progressive, a strategy that has worked in the past for the other GOP challengers in the district, including her predecessor, Tony Strickland, who lost in the 2014 redistricting. She says she’s more moderate than Strickland.
“The Democrats think that in California they can win by playing to the left,” Porter