After outburst, Katie Porter's support in the California governor's race slips, new poll shows

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SACRAMENTO — A new poll shows that former Orange County Rep.Katie Porter’s support in the 2026 governor’s race dropped after she tangled with a television reporter during a heated interview in October, an incident that rival candidates used to question her temperament.

Porter was the clear front-runner over the summer, but by late October she dropped behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, according to a poll released Friday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.Still, nearly half of the registered voters surveyed remain undecided, evidence that few Californians are paying attention to a race that remains wide open and was eclipsed in recent months by the costly and successful congressional redistricting battle that became a referendum on President Trump.Porter remains the most favored Democratic candidate, which is significant in a state that has not elected a Republican governor since 2006.“She’s the leading Democrat among the various ones that are in there right now,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll.

“But it’s because nobody really on the Democratic side has really jumped out of the pack.It’s kind of a political vacuum at the moment.”The governor’s race was frozen in stasis for most of the year, first as Californians waited for former Vice President Kamala Harris to decide whether she was going to jump into the race.

It wasn’t until late July that Harris announced, no, she was not running.Then, weeks later, Californians became captivated by a special election to reconfigure the state’s congressional districts — which set off a furious, expensive and high-stakes political battle that could help decide which party controls the U.S.

House of Representatives.Now that the special election is over, gubernatorial candidates can “rev up the public to pay attention,” Di...