Katie Porter Announces Run for US Senate - The New York Times

Politics|Katie Porter, California Congresswoman, Is Running for Senate

WASHINGTON — Representative Katie Porter, a third-term California Democrat who studied nether Elizabeth Warren astatine Harvard University and became a societal media darling of wide Democrats, said Tuesday that she would tally successful 2024 for the Senate spot held by Dianne Feinstein.

Ms. Porter, 49, is the archetypal announced challenger to Ms. Feinstein, 89, who has not declared her intentions astir 2024 but is wide expected to not question re-election amid Democratic worries astir her property and quality to serve. Last year, Ms. Feinstein declined to service arsenic president pro tem of the Senate and earlier relinquished her post arsenic the apical Democrat connected the Senate Judiciary Committee nether immense unit aft the Supreme Court confirmation proceeding of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

“It’s clip for caller enactment successful the U.S. Senate,” Ms. Porter said successful a video announcing her campaign.

Ms. Feinstein, successful a connection released by her office, said she would “make an announcement concerning my plans for 2024 astatine the due time.” She said she was focused connected addressing the deadly storms battering California.

Ms. Porter’s aboriginal run announcement — which carries echoes of Ms. Warren’s entranceway to the 2020 statesmanlike contest, erstwhile she was the archetypal large Democrat to embark connected a bid — jump-starts a contention that is definite to beryllium among the astir costly intraparty contests successful the country. A vaunted fund-raiser, Ms. Porter became wide known for her combative attraction of witnesses from the fiscal assemblage and Trump medication officials who appeared earlier her connected the House Oversight Committee.

The Iowa-born Ms. Porter was a starring surrogate for Ms. Warren’s 2020 run and often hosted tiny events promoting her mentor. She worked arsenic a instrumentality prof astatine the University of California, Irvine, and successful 2012 was appointed by Kamala Harris, past the California lawyer general, to oversee a $9 cardinal colony aft the owe crisis. She was elected to Congress successful 2018.

Other California Democrats believed to beryllium considering bids for Ms. Feinstein’s Senate spot see Representative Adam Schiff, who has already hired unit members successful mentation for a statewide campaign, and Representative Barbara Lee, who has told donors of her plans to run. Neither has formally announced a campaign.

“It’s going to beryllium a precise breathtaking contention with fabulous radical — respective person already talked to me,” said erstwhile Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who served for 4 presumption alongside Ms. Feinstein earlier retiring successful 2016. “The information that Katie Porter has announced, I think, is going to unfastened the doorway for a batch of aboriginal announcements.”

California, the nation’s astir populous authorities with astir 40 cardinal residents, has not hosted a highly competitory contention for an unfastened Senate spot since 1992, erstwhile Ms. Feinstein and Ms. Boxer were some elected for the archetypal time.