California, I’m begging you: Don’t let this person anywhere near the governor’s office.

Let’s say the important part first: Former California Congresswoman Katie Porter should never get within spitting distance of the governor’s mansion. 

And let’s say the second most important part second: It has nothing to do with her sex.

After being exposed last year as ill-tempered and vicious in a pair of recently resurfaced videos, she has predictably leaned on the “I’m judged differently because I’m a woman” excuse. We’ll get to that presently. Today the Los Angeles Times, which dutifully carries the state Democrat Party’s water, ran a puff piece about her in which she sips chai in San Francisco (sigh) and attempts to wax eloquent about the “lessons” she’s learned. Spoiler: She hasn’t learned any, at least no convincing ones.

Let’s dispense with the whole gender double standard thing right away. Being a woman is no defense against anger management issues. Women are every bit as capable as men of being jerks. Female politicians express strong feelings all the time. It’s just that most of them are smart enough to do it in a controlled manner. Over the years, for example, Nancy Pelosi has thrown a hundred heavyweight bouts’ worth of haymakers at her adversaries, and sometimes at the media. But I’ve never seen her completely lose her composure the way Porter has, much less over the sorts of trifles that sent Porter ballistic. I don’t agree with Pelosi much on policy, and she often strikes me as arrogant. (I’m also on board with those who would like her to answer some questions about her and her husband’s history of investing in companies that had business before Congress). But I can’t fault her for throwing elbows when the moment calls for it.

No stranger to sharp elbows.

In contrast, there is simply no defense for screaming profanities at a young staffer for the sin of — Heaven help him — stepping into your Zoom shot, and doing it in real time in front of others. There’s no excuse for blusteringly refusing to answer a reporter’s basic questions, ones that every other candidate against whom you’re competing had already answered without complaint, then threatening to walk out of the interview. That’s just low class. It also reflects atrocious judgment. If she snaps over a twenty-something entering her frame during a meeting, how would she conduct herself during, say, high stakes state budget negotiations?

Nor were these isolated incidents. Numerous reports throughout her career have addressed her mistreatment of staff. A former staffer publicly described her as a “Jekyll and Hyde” type of personality who has a particular penchant for ripping into “quieter” staffers. That’s not a leader. That’s a bully. That’s low class trash with a Yale diploma.

Normal people can tell the difference between someone who loses their cool on a bad day and someone who is toxic. Watch the two videos of Porter and decide for yourself what kind of person you’re witnessing. I know what I see.

Oh, and then there’s her ex-husband’s allegation that she once flew into a rage, called him a “f*****g idiot,” and dumped steaming hot mashed potatoes on his head, causing burns. Based on the explosive temper on display in the videos, and the consistent reports about her anger and bullying, that allegation is all too easy to believe.

Yes, women face different standards in politics than men. They also have different advantages. Prominent men’s political careers have been destroyed by far more innocuous offenses that Porter’s out of control rage bombs. I offer the “Dean scream” as Exhibit A, Mike Dukakis in the Abrams tank as Exhibit B and John Kerry windsurfing off Martha’s Vineyard as Exhibit C. All three men effectively destroyed their own campaigns in a matter of seconds, based entirely on images and videos that reinforced existing negative perceptions. None were known for abusing their staffs or haranguing reporters.

Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis fired an armor piercing incendiary shell at his own campaign.

Rick Caruso was and is equally if not more qualified to be Mayor of Los Angeles than Karen Bass. Every day she’s been in office, Bass is proving that experience as a legislator doesn’t automatically prepare one for executive office. It just imbues the ego and arrogance to think it does. But Caruso just looks too slick by half. Bass gives off (totally fake) warm grandma vibes. Caruso looks like a guy who might shiv his own grandmother for an angle in a real estate deal.

Nobody puts Katie in a corner!

She also talks about herself in the third person. As part of her attempt at image rehabilitation in the L.A. Times, she told reporter Michael Barabak, “Anyone who thinks that you can just push over Katie Porter has never tried to do it.” Normal people, even normal ego bags, do not do this. Narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths do.

Also, I’m going to be delicate and not make the obvious observation as to why it might be difficult to push over Katie Porter, even though by God it’s tempting.

In a rational world, Porter would shuffle offstage and land at a consulting firm where she would do nothing in exchange for a six or seven figure salary, while leaving the rest of us alone. Of course, we do not live in a rational world, we live in California. This is a state in which soy boy Gavin Newsom has made a quarter century career off of acting tough. Whenever he opens his mouth and delivers a lecture in his contrived baritone, I half expect him at some point to say, “I’m Batman.”

Porter seems intent on leaning into the same tedious faux pugilist routine. While paying lip service to “learning from her mistakes,” she channeled her own inner Dark Knight. She told Barabak, “If you are never gonna hurt anyone’s feelings, you are never gonna take [JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive] Jamie Dimon to task for not thinking about how his workers can’t afford to make ends meet. If you want everyone to love you, you are never gonna say to a big pharma CEO, ‘You didn’t make this cancer drug anymore. You just got richer, right?’ That is a feistiness that I’m proud of.”

Yeah, because people like Jamie Dimon positively cower in the face of “feistiness.” With apologies to Pepe La Pew, “le sigh.” Incidentally, I doubt very seriously that there are many, if any, employees at the world’s largest investment bank who are struggling to pay the bills.

Porter is a product of a dying democracy

Porter is particularly odious, but she’s not unique. The current crop of candidates for California governor may be the most desultory in the state’s modern history, and that’s saying something. I guarantee that 95% of Californians cannot name more than one or two of the ten — ten! — current candidates. On the Democrats’ side it’s the usual collection of career political hacks who’ve never had real jobs, plus a Silicon Valley billionaire whose strategy is, of course, to buy the election. The two Republicans aren’t totally terrible, but they also have little more than a snowball’s chance in hell.

This is what happens in a state that’s controlled by a one-party machine. It’s darkly hilarious that the people who run the California Democrat Party fancy themselves the “resistance” to Donald Trump’s alleged assault on democracy. They’ve spent the last three decades throttling what was left of it in their own state. The likes of Katie Porter are what you get when you have no real options.

Porter is Newsom’s equal when it comes to the casual ease with which she tells obvious lies, as well as her tendency to speak in incoherent non sequiturs. She told Barabak, “When my children say ‘I don’t know if I want to go to college in California because we don’t have enough dorm housing,’ Trump has done plenty of horrible attacks on higher ed, But that’s a homegrown problem that we need to tackle.”

Huh? I defy anyone to make sense of what she’s trying to convey there. Also, I defy anyone to find a college applicant who comes from a family with the resources of a Yale University and Harvard Law educated former member of Congress who cites lack of dorm space as one of the factors in their decision. This is a woman who uses her own children as delivery mechanisms for her own (nonsensical) political points. That’s a special kind of narcissist.

Claims of a “rigged” election

After three terms in Congress she mounted a failed bid for the Senate, losing in a primary race in which she failed to carry a single county. She subsequently channeled her inner Trump by claiming, with zero evidence, that the election had been “rigged.”

Well, then.

Gavin Newsom will leave California with a bundle of messes, most of which were started by his predecessor, the equally execrable Jerry Brown. Based on her temperament and ego, Katie Porter would very likely manage the impossible: She’d be worse. 

Then again, when it comes to the California Democrat Party, she’s a perfect fit.