As we covered on Super Tuesday evening, Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey are the winners of the California “jungle primary,” which sees the top two vote getters advance to the general election. Left out in a distant third place was Representative Katie Porter.

And oh boy, she was salty about losing out to Schiff and Garvey. And she never actually conceded the race – she just admitted that she didn’t get enough votes.

“While the votes are still coming in, we know that tonight we’ll come up short,” said Porter. “Our opponents threw everything – every trick, millions of dollars, every trick in the playbook – to knock us off our feet. But I’m still standing in high heels.”

In a quick but defiant address, she blamed special interest groups that spent oodles of money on the race that prevented her – and her message – from advancing to the November election. In her speech, she never gave a clear concession.

Porter didn’t miss an opportunity to criticize Schiff, a Burbank Democrat, for propping up Garvey, a former Dodger and San Diego Padres player, with ads ahead of the election – a move seen as an effort to squeeze her and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, out of the primary. She said Schiff spent more to boost Garvey than highlight his own campaign, drawing sympathetic boos from her supporters.

One woman interrupted Porter: “You scared them, Katie.”

“I think we scared them,” Porter responded.

Let’s be honest – Barbara Lee took herself out of the primary when she argued during a debate that the minimum wage should be $50 an hour. Adam Schiff didn’t have to lift a finger for that one. But let’s remember the reputation that Katie Porter has gained as a member of Congress. She barely won re-election to her House seat in 2022. She essentially fired a staffer for allegedly giving her COVID-19. Porter campaigned on being a single mom – but the allegations of abuse in her marraige apparently ran both ways. She then announced that she was going to run for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat – in January 2023, before Feinstein had formally announced anything. So she planned on primarying Feinstein before the senator announced that she wasn’t going to run for re-election in 2024 (or at least, her office announced it – Feinstein herself either didn’t know or forgot when asked about the announcement at the time). At the time, Katie Porter’s move was seen as tacky by fellow Democrats, even though they were triangulating how best to get into the race themselves. The conversation became moot when Feinstein died, of course. But battle lines had been drawn, and while Barbara Lee was pushing hard for Governor Gavin Newsom to name her to the Senate seat, he did not.

Meanwhile, Adam Schiff, who was Nancy Pelosi’s chosen candidate, announced his candidacy for the Senate just two weeks after Katie Porter (while claiming he had Feinstein’s blessing). This race was supposed to be a slugfest between Schiff and Porter – but then Steve Garvey entered the race in October 2023. His entrance into the race wasn’t supposed to make a difference – after all, he was running as a Republican in California. But Schiff decided to ignore Katie Porter and take on Garvey in ads instead.

Schiff’s TV ads ostensibly attacked Garvey for being a two-time Trump voter who could swing the Senate to GOP control. The ads also falsely implied that Republican Garvey — not Democrat Porter — was Schiff’s principal primary opponent. That disingenuous message was aimed at Democrats.

But the TV spots’ No. 1 goal was to promote Garvey’s conservative bona fides among Republican voters. Garvey couldn’t afford to promote himself. He didn’t spend a dime on TV. So, Schiff did it for him.

In fact, Garvey hardly did any campaigning at all. He survived off Schiff ads, name identification and the GOP brand that attracted Republican voters.

The end result was Katie Porter coming in a distant third place. And if you thought her election night speech was bitter, the sour grapes that she’s spewing all over Twitter are pretty wild.

Thank you to everyone who supported our campaign and voted to shake up the status quo in Washington. Because of you, we had the establishment running scared — withstanding 3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election. (1/)

— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) March 6, 2024

Special interests like politics as it is today because they control the politicians. As we’ve seen in this campaign, they spend millions to defeat someone who will dilute their influence and disrupt the status quo.

But take my word for it: I'll never stop fighting for you. (3/3)

— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) March 6, 2024

Her accusations of the election being rigged were so off-the-wall that Andrew Kaczynski (now at CNN) and George Conway were both stunned.

yeah not good

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 7, 2024

It’s okay for Katie Porter to be disappointed – after all, she is now out of a job come January 2025, as she couldn’t run for both the Senate and her Congressional seat (and now her Congressional seat has a fair chance of flipping to Republican control in November). But to claim that she was outspent? She had a campaign that raised $28 million – hardly chump change. She got outplayed by Adam Schiff. That’s politics.

Katie Porter will be out of the halls of power, but will probably get a sweet gig as an MSNBC contributor, like former Senator Claire McCaskill. That is, unless she continues the bitter pity party for herself and becomes too toxic for even the Democrats to keep around. You lost the primary fair and square, Congresswoman. Time to suck it up instead of being a sore loser.

UPDATE 9:45 am PT
Looks like getting called out caused some backtracking.

Please find a statement from me below. pic.twitter.com/as8H2cHWL8

— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) March 7, 2024

I guess it all depends on what your definition of “rigged” is, hmmmmm? Someone didn’t like getting called an “election denier,” hmmmm?

Featured image: Representative Katie Porter, official Congressional portrait, cropped, public domain