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| Katie Porter (l.) and Allison Hill | |
"Thank you for all of the work you do," said Representative Katie Porter (D.-Irvine) during a keynote conversation at the California Independent Booksellers Alliance Fall Fest in Sacramento, Calif., Saturday morning. She was in conversation with American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill to discuss her background, her experience being a congresswoman as well as a single mother of three, and her upcoming book, I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan (Crown).
"In my job I get to see a lot of what makes our communities vibrant, and I think during the pandemic we saw a lot of that go away," she continued. "So I just want to thank you all for being part of the fabric of your communities. For being small business owners as well as people who are sharing education and literacy and culture with the communities you work in."
Porter recalled her viral "whiteboard moment" with Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, when she used a whiteboard to illustrate the financial challenges facing a single mom working full-time as a bank teller at a Chase branch in Irvine, Calif. When she asked Dimon what the woman should do--take out pay-day loans or even skip meals--he answered that he didn’t know and he'd "have to think about it."
As frustrating as those answers were, she said, much more upsetting were the responses of her congressional colleagues, who all said the same thing: How did you ever think to ask that? "And I thought, do you not see the person who sweeps the floor? Do you not see the person who works in the bank when you walk in there?"
Expanding on her time in Congress, Porter noted that when people talk about members of Congress, the general sentiment seems to be that they only work when they're in Washington and are on vacation at all other times. She disputed that, saying that the "most important" parts of her job all happen when she is at home in her congressional district. Her time in Washington, meanwhile, entails fielding 15-20 appointments each day while trying to stay on top of upcoming votes, which can be a frustrating and bewildering process. "So if it seems to people like we don't always know what we're doing, it's truly because we don't," she remarked.
Porter has never accepted corporate donations or lobbyist money, and said she’s tried to "pull back the curtain" on fundraising. She pointed out that there's a strange double standard with fundraising, where a congressperson is supposed to talk about it with every potential donor they meet, but they're "never supposed to talk about it with anyone else."
She added that she "actually likes campaigning" and even fundraising, because "every conversation is with somebody who cares about our democracy." The only reason voters should give money to her, "is if you think you're investing in a better democracy."
Porter suggested that booksellers reach out to their congresspeople and ask them to visit the store and speak to staff and customers. Booksellers could also host town halls with congresspeople at their stores.
Discussing her reading life, Porter said she reads a lot to her kids and briefly did a "boy book blog," featuring books that reflected "what my boys really are like." When it comes to personal reading, she mostly turns to romance, particularly romantic comedies like Beach Read by Emily Henry and The Unhoneymooners Christina Lauren.
"I need to be inspired that my meet cute is out there somewhere," she said. “Probably not in the halls of Congress, but out there somewhere." --Alex Mutter