KATIE PORTER REMARKS ON ELECTION NIGHT RESULTS

Katie Porter tonight released the following remarks thanking her supporters and the hundreds of thousands of Californians that backed her historic campaign for governor. She was the only major candidate for California governor to refuse corporate donations, just as she has done her entire career. 

Watch her remarks HERE or read the transcript below.

Transcript:

Hi, it’s Katie Porter. Tonight is election night. The votes are still being counted and it may take a few days here in California to have final numbers, but we know tonight that we will not advance to the general election in November. 

But as I look back on this race, I am so incredibly proud of the campaign that we built together. Together, we talked about the issues that were important to California, particularly affordability and bringing down costs, including making housing the top issue in our campaign because it’s the top expense for most California families. Talking about taking on Donald Trump, abolishing ICE, standing up for the rights of every single Californian. That’s what this campaign was about. 

It was a corporate-free campaign. A campaign that took not one penny from corporations. It’s the only campaign that we can say that about in this race. That’s something to be really proud of, and it was only possible because so many of you believed in me, chipped in, helped us fund our campaign, helped me build an amazing team. 

I want to say thank you to everyone on my team. Some of these folks have worked with me now for nine, almost ten years, some of them are new and have worked with me for ten weeks, but they’ve all been part of my life, they’ve been part of my journey. They are people that have made my experience in politics so much better, and so I just want to say I’m so grateful to all of my staff in this race and in past races. Thank you for what you do. I can’t wait to cheer you on in your future political endeavors, to watch you as you grow professionally, as you start families. I’m looking forward to continuing to be in touch with all of you. 

I also want to say thank you to Californians who opened up their homes for me to come talk to their friends and neighbors about this campaign, to businesses who let me tour, learn more about their industry, talk to their employees, to nonprofits who shared the challenges that they face and the way that they’re solving problems. And I want to say thank you to the other candidates for running spirited races, for having good debates about important issues. That’s really what democracy is about. 

Running a race like this isn’t easy, and coming up short is hard, but democracy is worth doing hard things for. Stay in the fight, stay in touch, and thank you for believing in me.

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