Katie Porter’s wage rhetoric evolves as she aims for an edge in governor race
In April 2019, then-Rep. Katie Porter uncorked a marker, propped up a white board and laid out a dire budget for a hypothetical teller at a bank owned by JPMorgan Chase. The company’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, struggled to answer Porter’s questions about how the single mother could afford to survive on the $16.50-an-hour wage.
The viral exhange was one of the defining moments of Porter’s career, one that she continues to reference on social media. But as she’s campaigned for governor over the past year, the Democrat has at points questioned the need for future minimum wage increases and a law requiring overtime pay for farmworkers.
The shifts highlight Porter’s balancing act as she tries to win over backing from both labor and business interests in a crowded, chaotic race. A California Democratic Party poll released Monday found Porter had the support of 10% of likely voters, trailing two Republicans — Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco — as well as Democrats Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra, with none of the candidates polling above the mid teens.
Porter has won endorsements from labor groups like the Teamsters California and the National Union of Healthcare Workers. She’s also ocassionally taken stances supported by moderate Democrats and major state business interests, like overhauling the California Environmental Quality Act.
During her 2024 Senate campaign, Porter supported a California minimum wage of $25 an hour, indexed to inflation. At a California Chamber of Commerce dinner the following year, she struck a different note.
“We keep trying to give people more in wages rather than bringing down some of the core costs,” Porter told guests at the June 2025 event, responding to a question about a push in Los Angeles to raise the city’s wage.
“We can’t keep endlessly raising wages,” she said later in the panel. “And by the way, workers and labor are figuring this out —that their bigger problems are structural, and they need structural solutions to bring down costs.”
At an April 1 Fresno forum focused on agriculture, Porter said a law that required farmworkers be paid overtime had failed to increase their earnings, referencing a 2023 UC Berkeley study on the topic.
“So that’s a regulation that, however well intentioned it may or may not have been, does not work,” Porter said.
In both cases, Porter later qualified her earlier comments.
In January, after Steyer and former Rep. Eric Swalwell entered the race, Porter told the audience at a San Francisco town hall that if a minimum wage increase proposal reached her desk as governor, she would sign it.
“People who work hard here at one job, give their all to the California economy, ought to be able to make end’s meet here in California society — period, full stop,” Porter said, before reiterating her desire to address increased cost of living expenses.
In an April 11 post on X, Porter said California’s labor movement “won an 8-hour work day as a core labor right for all workers” and said she backed their effort to preserve that right.
Porter’s campaign spokesperson, Peter Opitz, said the former Orange County Congressional representative had been consistent about her desire to lower costs for Californians.
“Katie knows we need to look at both ends of the equation — costs and wages — when families are struggling to get by,” Opitz said. “She would both sign a wage increase into law and take immediate action to bring down the cost of child care, housing, health care, and more so that Californians can make ends meet.”
Porter’s critique of farmworker overtime caught the eye of Lorena Gonzales, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, who wrote in an April 14 post on X that “rolling back the 8 hour day for any worker is unacceptable.” Gonzales said that both Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who echoed Porter’s remarks, had “clarified” their position on the issue. Both candidates have been endorsed by the Federation’s 1,300 member unions, alongside Steyer.
