She’s famous for taking on CEOs. Can Katie Porter win the California senate race?

In 2018, a political newcomer named Katie Porter defeated a two-term incumbent Republican to represent California’s 45th district in the US House of Representatives, turning the famously conservative Orange county blue.

Porter, a 44-year-old law professor and Elizabeth Warren protege, had a refreshing message, vowing to stay laser-focused on addressing the ways America’s financial institutions prey on ordinary people.

Over six years as the representative of Nixon’s birthplace and Reagan’s political stronghold, Porter hasbuilt a national political profile with viral videos of her confronting bank CEOs and Republican appointees with basic financial calculations, illustrating her numbers on a quickly iconic whiteboard.

Now, she’s hoping her image as a fierce fighter, a savvy communicator and a champion of ordinary people against big corporations will propel her to the US Senate.

Porter is one of three prominent Democrats running to fill the seat of the late US senator Dianne Feinstein come November.

This time, Porter is not running as the most progressive candidate in the race. She is competingagainst Barbara Lee, a longtime Black congresswoman from Oakland whose sterling progressive record includes being the sole member of Congress to vote against authorizing George W Bush’s war in Afghanistan, and one of the first Democrats to call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza last year.

The campaign Porter wants to run for US Senate is one focused on her economic policy record, her willingness to break with the national Democratic establishment, and her comparative youth. At age 50, Porter is 13 years youngerthan the Democratic frontrunner in the race, Adam Schiff,and 27 years younger than Lee – a representative of a