UC Irvine law professor Katie Porter is challenging Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in Orange County's 45th District in 2018.
The 43-year-old Democrat is an expert on consumer-protection law and banking and was an early whistleblower about mortgage fraud by Wall Street banks ahead of the 2008 financial collapse.
“I’m really running to do what I’ve always done, which is to stand up to special interests,” Porter told The Times in an interview. “I want to take that fight to Washington.”
This is likely to be the biggest week of the year so far in Sacramento as Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders try to pull off one of the state Capitol's most difficult feats: A long-term, multibillion-dollar tax increase.
On this week's California Politics Podcast episode, we take a closer look at the plan to raise taxes for transportation repairs and improvements across the state. While the details were made clear last week, the plan's fate depends on political calculations of a handful of skeptical Democrats in the Legislature.
We also discuss the pressure President Trump's administration is putting on "sanctuary cities," even as the leader of the state Senate makes a major modification in his bill to extend those sanctuary efforts to all of California.
