I felt like there was a real opportunity to help people understand that if you're concerned about what's happening in Washington, then you have voice. And that voice is your vote.
Katie Porter
I thought running for Congress paled in comparison to being a parent and being a mom - especially a single mom of three kids.
Yeah, I was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa. My parents lived in a little town called Eagle Grove. My mom taught high school and my dad was an instructor at the community college.
We asked voters who'd never voted before... who don't believe that their vote makes a difference, to turn out in races like mine, and they did. What they deserve back is a leader who puts democracy first.
Congress wasn't built for members like me. For those of us who have young children, which is a minority, there's definitely the built-in assumption of a two-parent model... There is no template for how to do this in my situation as a single mom.
We moved to South Central Iowa to the farm where my dad had grown up, where my grandfather had grown up. The house was actually, it was a tiny little house. It was about 600 square feet and it was built by my great-grandfather. And that's the house I spent time in as a child.
I just offer you proof that you can win on the policies that you believe in, and that are authentic to you and your experience and that speak to your community, anywhere in the country.
I try to ask a question rather than give a speech.
Orange County is a place where you can ask people if that's their real hair color; you can ask them if that diamond is real; you can ask if that car is a lease. But you cannot ask if someone is a Democrat.
I kept working during my campaign because I needed to feed my family. As a single mom of three kids, I have a lot of child care that I needed to juggle, and I was a first-time candidate.
I won, we won, because we grew the base of voters who share our values - not because we tried to talk Republicans into embracing us just long enough to cast a ballot.
When I went to law school, I took a bankruptcy class with then-professor, now-Senator Elizabeth Warren. And I'll never forget that first day of class, hearing her talk about the importance of the bankruptcy system.
The financial instability and sometimes insecurity that families feel, deeply motivates how they respond politically.
I happen to love financial services.
I became a professor myself, teaching bankruptcy and consumer protection. I conducted a national study of mortgage companies in bankruptcy. And what I found was that big banks routinely broke the law.
What I did as a professor is not that different than what I do in hearings.
It is my preference that the Democratic Party leads us forward in a way that is about standing up to special interests, in a way that advances campaign finance reform, in a way that fights for meaningful prescription drug reform.
Yeah, my parents really valued education; they were both educators. But it was definitely true that I grew up in an area where a lot people didn't go to college. A lot of people did two years, a kind of terminal two years at community college.
I'm not being asked to conform to some prior expectation of what a Congress member is, but I'm just getting to be me.
