Local TV News Does Good

On Monday, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento posted a thirty-minute video to its YouTube page that, on its face, seemed likely to be a slog to watch. Investigative reporter Julie Watts had spent much of September sitting down with each of the state’s many candidates for governor, to ask them the same four questions about the upcoming election and the current governor’s redistricting proposals.

But a three-minute clip of Watts pressing former US representative Katie Porter, thought to be one of the race’s front-runners, broke through. “What do you say to the forty percent of California voters, who you’ll need in order to win, who voted for Trump?” Watts asked, reciting a question she’d put to several other candidates. California’s election structure means that the top two vote recipients in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of party, meaning it could end up a race between two Democrats. Porter nevertheless rejected the premise. “How would I need them in order to win, ma’am?”

Watts coolly pressed on, until Porter finally held both her hands up in frustration: “I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative. What is your question?” Finally, Porter started to fumble with the mic clipped to her shirt. “I don’t want to keep doing this, I’m going to call it,” she said. “Thank you.”

The clip went viral, and social media was soon awash with unnamed reports that Porter was known in DC to have a short fuse. On Thursday, another video emerged—raw footage of a recorded statement during which Porter snaps at an aide to “get out of my fucking shot.” As Politico (which unearthed the second video) reported, Porter’s campaign was spiraling.