What’s next for Katie Porter’s California governor campaign after the viral videos?

Former Rep. Katie Porter said she “fell short” after videos of her interactions with a journalist and a staffer went viral, promising “to do better.”

Whether that acknowledgment, that small bit of public damage control, is enough to keep her campaign for California governor afloat, remains to be seen.

The pair of videos — one recent, one from 2021 — was certainly damaging to Porter’s campaign and largely de facto status at the front of the Democratic pack for California governor.

On the one hand, the former member of Congress had been leading in recent polls, conducted before the videos dominated headlines and social media trending lists. But those leads were far from substantial, and political experts generally refrained from calling Porter the frontrunner. That means there isn’t much