At the third California governor’s debate on Tuesday, Katie Porter was asked to defend giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants.
She didn’t dodge. She didn’t pivot. She explained her reasoning in plain English.
“These are Californians,” she said. “They contribute to our economy, they pay taxes, and they’re one of the only ways that our state has been growing in recent years.”
Read that last clause one more time: one of the only ways that our state has been growing.
A candidate for governor of California just acknowledged, that American citizens are leaving her state in such high numbers that the only demographic keeping the state’s population numbers from collapsing is people who aren’t legally supposed to be there. And her policy response to that diagnosis isn’t to ask why people are leaving. It’s to make sure the replacements get free doctor visits.
This is like the captain of the Titanic saying don’t worry about the passengers jumping overboard — we’re taking on plenty of water to replace them.
Let’s briefly visit the question Porter doesn’t seem interested in: why are people leaving California?
The median home price is over $800,000. State income tax tops out above 13%. Gas runs near $5 a gallon on a good day. Rolling blackouts are a feature, not a bug. Homelessness has turned downtown Los Angeles into something that would make a third-world city wince. Public schools are some of the worst in the entire nation. California lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census — the first time in the state’s history — because productive Americans are moving to Texas, Florida, Tennessee and anywhere that doesn’t treat them like an ATM with legs.
Those aren’t talking points. Those are the reasons people pack the U-Haul. (The ones heading east are always sold out, by the way.)
Porter’s answer to all of this isn’t to fix any of it. It’s to replace the people who left with a population that will — conveniently — depend on the same government that created the problem.
She wasn’t cornered into saying this. She volunteered it. “One of the only ways our state has been growing” was her argument for her policy. She said it as a selling point.
Republican candidate Chad Bianco responded that illegal immigrants “shouldn’t be here” in the first place. Which is a reasonable thing to say when someone tells you the state’s population strategy depends on their presence.
One more detail worth noting. Katie Porter is currently polling at 8% in this race. Fifth place on a six-person debate stage. Xavier Becerra (Democrat) and Steve Hilton (Republican) are tied at 18%. Chad Bianco (Republican) is at 14%. Tom Steyer (Democrat) is at 12%. Porter (Democrat, obviously) is at 8%. The primary is June 2.
The candidate who just delivered the most quotable line of the entire debate cycle — the one that will live in opposition research files for the next decade — is a candidate who desperately needed a breakthrough moment. This was not that.
Democrats in California have spent years insisting they don’t support open borders, just “comprehensive reform.” Porter just explained in one sentence what the actual policy produces and why she’s for it. The state needs the bodies. The citizenry is leaving. The numbers have to come from somewhere.
She said it. She meant it. And everyone who has been trying to explain California to the rest of the country for years couldn’t have written it better themselves.