Katie Porter Is Going After Congressional Millionaires. Financial Disclosures Show She’s One Of Them.

Rep. Katie Porter (D., Calif.), a self-styled working-class champion who has criticized the number of millionaires in Congress, has up to nearly $3 million in assets, filings show.

According to her most recent financial disclosure report, Porter has between $1.2 million and $2.8 million in assets. Porter’s leadership PAC, Truth to Power, recently solicited donations with a statement decrying the fact that millionaires comprise “a shockingly large portion of our federal government.”

Porter, who entered Congress in 2019, uses her PAC to help elect other left-wing politicians. The PAC was launched in June 2020 and has raised just over a half-million dollars since. It has spent more than $200,000 funding other candidates, according to Federal Election Commission records. 

“Running for office is as expensive as it is time-consuming,” a fundraising email from Truth to Power states. “Ordinary folks who aren’t wealthy often don’t have the time—and more often, they just don’t have the resources—to quit their jobs to run a campaign, hire staff, and pay the bills.”

Porter has largely evaded questions on her wealth and frequently earns praise for being more “relatable” than most politicians. In early 2020, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of how her “empathy” stems from being a single mother of three school-age children “wrestling with the same questions other working parents face.”

But data also show that Porter is well above the salary threshold of the average single parent. According to the 2018 Census Bureau data, households led by single mothers took in a median $45,128 annually. Porter earns a $174,000 congressional salary—nearly four times more than what the average single mother takes in.

Porter has also falsely claimed to be the only single mother of young children in Congress.

Porter reports between $300,000 and $600,000 in mortgage liabilities, meaning her net worth at its minimum sits between $600,000 and $2.2 million. Figures in financial disclosures are reported in broad ranges rather than exact numbers. Her Truth to Power PAC did not respond to requests for comment.

Porter supports H.R. 1, a bill purported by Democrats to stymie the influence of outsized political spending, which Congress will vote on this week. Porter has said that it was her proudest vote in the last Congress and a top priority for this Congress. Republicans have attacked the bill which, among other things, funnels $5 million in public funding into reelection campaigns.

“It’s absolutely disgusting that while Americans are trying to survive a pandemic, House Democrats are working to funnel $5 million in public money to their own reelection campaigns,” Torunn Sinclair, National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman, said of the bill.

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