As the men around her shout and bicker in debate after debate, Katie Porter finds herself the only one accused of being angry. 

And she was really, really angry during a recent debate featuring top candidates for California governor, when Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, implied in a back-and-forth over sanctuary state policies that Porter (opens in new tab)“might” need lessons in how to be a mother (opens in new tab).

The progressive Democrat was visibly shocked by his statement, her eyes widening, her forehead creasing, as she took roughly five seconds to weigh how she wanted to respond, versus how she should.

“All you have done this evening is shout past me and not given me a chance to respond,” Porter said, exercising restraint.

What she didn’t say is more important than what she did.

Porter, 52, rose to national prominence by flipping an Orange County congressional seat in 2018. She became a liberal icon, using her famed whiteboard to grill corporate executives on C-SPAN. Now she is running for governor of a state that has never elected a woman to the office — and with three weeks until the June 2 primary, she is running out of time to make history. Polling at roughly 10%, Porter faces a reckoning that has little to do with policy and everything to do with a question that has dogged women in politics for generations: Can you be tough enough to lead without being punished for it?

She remains stuck in the polls, which are led by a Republican, Steve Hilton, with 23%. The leading Democrat, Xavier Becerra, is close behind at 22%, and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer is at 15%, according to the latest David Binder Research poll (opens in new tab). In California’s top-two primary, any two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the November election — meaning Porter is battling a crowded field of both Republicans and Democrats for one of the slots.

For years she had faced allegations that she is an abusive boss and hard to work with. Viral videos of Porter arguing with a local reporter and (opens in new tab)yelling at a staffer (opens in new tab) have amplified those concerns during the campaign.

Porter has (opens in new tab)apologized for her mistakes (opens in new tab). But she sees a double standard in how she is punished for behavior that her male competitors routinely display with no consequence.

“We see this again and again, being ‘likable.’ Generally, it is hard to be likable when you are, for example, interrupting, shouting,” she said. “How can I really expose that I can’t get into the fray without facing those gendered stereotypes, but I’m also tough enough to get into the fray?”

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions — which endorsed three candidates: Porter, Steyer, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — said Porter, on one hand, has been treated like a serious competitor throughout the race.

“On the other hand, there are things that come out about her … temperament,” Gonzalez said. “If you would replace that with a male candidate’s name, would that make sense? And if it doesn’t, why are we even using those descriptors? Why are we talking about it?”

A negative perception of Porter’s personality isn’t her only disadvantage. Steyer has poured more than $100 million of his fortune into his campaign (opens in new tab); Sacramento insiders have boosted (opens in new tab) Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary; and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has benefitted from support from Silicon Valley’s ultra rich (opens in new tab).

But Porter’s greatest asset may be the one thing men can’t compete with: being a mom.

“I’m not like most people who run for governor. I actually get what you’re going through,” Porter, a single mother of three, says in (opens in new tab)one ad (opens in new tab) featuring cameos from her kids. “I know what it’s like to push the shopping cart. My minivan has almost 200,000 miles. I have a grown kid who may soon be living on my couch.”

Porter’s policy platform reflects her experience. She is the only top candidate who has made free childcare an explicit, standalone proposal, which she argues is both a “women’s issue” and an economic one that will help all California families. Porter has proposed a tuition-free college program and has pledged to ramp up housing production so kids like hers can afford to stay in California. 

“So few of our electeds are moms. We are missing really critical lived experience,” said Liuba Grechen Shirley, founder and chief executive of Vote Mama, a progressive political action committee that endorsed Porter.

Too often, Grechen Shirley added, women candidates are told to forget gender and “focus on the bread-and-butter issues.”

“There are no more basic bread-and-butter issues than childcare and paid family leave,” she said.

Porter’s balancing act stretches back nearly 15 years, to the foreclosure crisis, when then-Attorney General Kamala Harris tapped her to oversee (opens in new tab)$18 billion in relief the state secured (opens in new tab) from the nation’s biggest banks for homeowners. Porter, at the time a UC Irvine law professor, was nursing her daughter and would pump in the Amtrak bathroom on her way to meetings with Harris in Los Angeles.

“I was like, I don’t know what else to do but make this work,” she said. “What did I deliver? Twice as much as the banks promised.”

During her years in Congress, Porter would prepare a crockpot dinner for her kids several hours before her regular 7 a.m. flight to Washington, where she spent the bulk of her week probing corporate executives or squeezing Trump officials during televised hearings. She still makes it home to cook dinner for the kids during breaks in the campaign — a more challenging task after they recently declared themselves vegetarians. (“I’ve got a freezer full of bacon!” she moaned.)

But Porter’s suburban-mom appeal has failed to captivate her own voting bloc. 

In an Emerson College poll (opens in new tab) conducted in April, after sexual assault allegations against East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell tanked his campaign, only 13% of women said they supported Porter. 

Porter said she understands why some voters have been looking for a sense of status quo from candidates in the political earthquake.

“Sometimes we react to that fear by trying to make ourselves feel safe,” she said. “And safety sometimes for people looks like the past. California has never seen a woman governor.”

The criticism landed harder coming from Betty Yee, the only other top woman candidate in the race until she dropped out in April and endorsed Steyer.

“I had stated early on that I thought temperament was a really big attribute for the next governor. And I didn’t feel like she had the right temperament for that,” Yee said, adding that she is also concerned with Porter’s lack of statewide experience. 

Yee’s criticism reflects the general idea that Porter’s problem isn’t that she’s a mom — it’s that she doesn’t make you feel the way a mom should.  

Traits like “temperament” and “likability” are not neutral in politics; they are shaped by expectations that differ for men and women. The same prosecutorial style that made Porter a star in Congress now comes across to many as unattractive for a woman on a stage full of men.

“That’s not how a mom is supposed to be,” said Amanda Clayton, a UC Berkeley political science professor who focuses on gender inequality. “I think she hasn’t emerged as the woman’s woman. Which is in itself so gendered — that a woman has to be perfect.”

Clayton said Porter faces the impossible task of appearing both assertive, a trait often associated with men, and collaborative, a stereotypically feminine approach. And while voters “like the idea of a mom in politics,” it often contradicts their idea of who an executive leader should be, she added.

There are currently only 14 governors who are women (opens in new tab), the vast majority of them Democrats. California is in the minority of states that have never had a woman governor.

“While we’ve spent hundreds of years voting for imperfect men, I feel like the bar to be the first is kind of impossibly high,” said Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat whose district overlaps with areas Porter represented in Congress. “If it’s not in 2026, what is it going to take for us to eventually break this glass ceiling in California?”

It doesn’t help any candidate, let alone a woman, that California is one of the most expensive and geographically challenging states in which to run a campaign, said Jessica Mackler, president of Emily’s List, another political action group that endorsed Porter. Women just have the added challenge of gender to overcome.

“Running for governor in California is an extraordinarily difficult task,” Mackler said. “Ninety-nine percent of the people who run for governor and lose are men.”