Katie Porter continues to claim billionaires ‘rigged’ California Senate primary

Billionaires rigged and manipulated Tuesday’s Senate election, a furious Rep. Katie Porter charged Wednesday — and again on Thursday.

Porter is running a distant third to Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey in the California U.S. Senate race. The top two finishers move on to the November general election.

Porter brought up the “rigged” charge on X Wednesday, and after a social media outcry, issued a statement elaborating.

“‘Rigged’ means manipulating by dishonest means. A few billionaires spent $10 million plus on attack ads against me, including an ad rated ‘false’ by an independent fact checker,” she said.

The Bee rated the ads “mostly false.” They were funded by Fairshake, a crypto industry-backed political action committee.

Porter called the ad effort a “dishonest (sic) means to manipulate an outcome. I said ‘rigged by billionaires’ and in fact our politics are in fact manipulated by big dark money.”

There has been no evidence that Tuesday’s primary was rigged. Votes are still being counted., and the California Secretary of State will formally certify the results April 12.

“The California primary election was not stolen. Rep. Katie Porter’s walk-back on her previously saying the election was rigged shows it was not the right thing to do,” said Christian Groce, academic director of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute. He was referring to her Thursday statement, which was somewhat more explanatory but still accused billionaires of trying to manipulate the election.

He said that while rigged and stolen have different meanings, Porter’s claim is “irresponsible.”

“Katie Porter came in third, fair and square, which means she lost the election,” Groce said, calling the language “a little Trumpian.”

In addition to the Fairshake ads, Schiff and his supporters blanketed television with millions of dollars in ads trying to boost Garvey into a second-place finish.

That worked, pushing Porter to third. A Berkeley-IGS poll Feb. 22-27 showed the wisdom of Schiff’s strategy: A Schiff-Porter race in November came in at a statistical tie, but showed Schiff beating Garvey by 15 percentage points.

Fairshake is a SuperPAC, meaning it’s not affiliated with candidates and cannot coordinate with them. There are no limits on how much a SuperPAC can raise and they are popular with corporations and wealthy donors.

Fairshake spent $10 million on ads targeting Porter, according to Federal Election Commission data Thursday. The ads incorrectly suggested that Porter was eager to take corporate money.

Standing Strong, a California-based SuperPAC, spent $9.1 million on ads promoting Garvey.

Porter is livid

Porter, a third-term member of Congress who built a strong reputation as an outspoken consumer advocate, fired back Wednesday and again Thursday.

After thanking supporters, she wrote Wednesday on X, “Because of you, we had the establishment running scared — withstanding 3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.”

She elaborated: “Special interests like politics as it is today because they control the politicians. As we’ve seen in this campaign, they spend millions to defeat someone who will dilute their influence and disrupt the status quo.”

In a statement responding to critics Thursday, Porter did not relent.

She issued a statement explaining “‘Rigged’ means manipulating by dishonest means.”

Fairshake had said in its ad of Porter, “She claims not to take corporate PAC money. No. Instead, Katie Porter takes her campaign cash directly from Big Pharma, Big Oil and the Big Bank executives. More than $100,000,” the ad says.

Donors to the PAC included AH Capital Management, Coinbase, Ripple and Jump Crypto. It has raised more than $85 million this election cycle, according to the website OpenSecrets.

The Bee’s Andrew Sheeler rated the ad “mostly false,” The ad says Spectrum Pharmaceuticals is involved in “Big Pharma,” Wood Oil Company is part of “Big Oil” and Royal Business Bank qualifies as a “Big Bank.”

None of those, though, are part of either a trade group or official designation used for Big Pharma, Big Oil or Big Bank.