Good morning, rulers. It's been a very sad week for all of us at Politico. A former top editor at Politico and a founding editor of Politico Magazine, Blake Hounshell, died this week at 44. I knew nothing about journalism when I started at the magazine under him almost nine years ago, and so much of what I know now is because of him. I will never forget how proud I made him with this photo gallery; all I was really doing was trying to channel him. RIP Blake. Donate to his family here if you can. Thanks to Sophie Gardner for helping to put this newsletter together! On Tuesday, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) announced her candidacy for Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) Senate seat in 2024. Feinstein has not yet announced her retirement, but the race is already looking highly competitive, with competition likely coming from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who, a day after Porter's announcement, signaled that she was going to jump in. And there's widespread speculation Reps. Adam Schiff and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) could also run. In such a potentially crowded field, Porter's early announcement seemed geared at getting out ahead of the competition. With a Senate bid, Porter, a former law student of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and a fast-rising progressive star, can expect more media attention — and she can expect to see some criticisms resurface with more strength, too. One criticism of Porter has been that she's allegedly a terrible — according to some accounts, abusive and racist — boss. In December, text messages surfaced in which Porter scolded a staffer for giving the congresswoman Covid. Dear White Staffers, a Twitter and Instagram account that shares anonymous first-person accounts and gossip from staffers on Capitol Hill, published that text exchange between Porter and the staffer, Sasha Georgiades, alleging that Porter had fired Georgiades due to the incident. In response, Porter's office released a statement saying Georgiades was a fellow with the office and that before she had "breached COVID protocol in July," she had agreed on an end date of August 22nd. In the leaked text messages, the statement said, "Congresswoman Porter was informing her that she would work from home for the remaining three weeks of her fellowship." After the initial text messages were published, others hopped onto the Dear White Staffers account to tweet their own anonymous complaints about Porter. Their stories have not been verified. One message said she was rage-prone and had a tendency to disparage staffers. Others suggested her expectations were wildly unrealistic. One message accused her of making racist comments. Some former staffers have disputed some of the messages that were sent to Dear White Staffers. One DMer had written that Porter's first Wounded Warrior fellow – the same program that Georgiades was a part of – had left under "acrimonious circumstances." That former fellow, Gage Sitzmann, disputed that characterization in an interview with National Review. In an email, Jordan Wong, Porter's communications director, said, "She has never been racist or abusive to staff" and referred Women Rule to a podcast where Porter talks about her treatment of staffers. "I regret if this employee feels disgruntled," Porter said when asked about these accusations in an interview with Pod Save America released Thursday. "I'm willing to expect people to work hard. I work hard, and I think that's what the American people should expect," she continued. One person in the Dear White Staffers DMs preemptively batted down a possible response. "[This] isn't a smear campaign or sexist criticism of a powerful woman," the DMer continued. This is likely a reference to a defense that Democrats and progressives have used in response to similar allegations against women in politics, such as Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). During the 2020 campaign, Klobuchar came under fire for the way she reportedly treated staff. In a New York Times article, former staffers of the Minnesota senator said she would often blame them for not having higher standing in Washington, sabotage their future job opportunities and once allegedly forced an aide to clean a comb so that she could use it to eat a salad on a flight — a salad that the aide had gotten for her but for which he had fumbled the utensils before boarding the plane. Some critics saw the reporting on her leadership as sexist attacks. "I, like others, doubt that a male candidate with similar staff complaints would have seen them become the lead narrative of his presidential announcement," Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, wrote in a Politico Magazine article about the news coverage of Klobuchar. The behavior of tough male bosses is presented differently in reporting, Palmieri argued — "as a badge of honor, not a mark of shame." "We too often embrace the notion that working for demanding men shows how tough we are. It shows we can handle life in the big leagues. It makes us cool," Palmieri continued. "Working for a difficult and demanding woman isn't seen as cool. Working for a difficult and demanding woman is seen as humiliating." Kelly Dittmar, director of research and scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, said that she thinks a politician's treatment of their staff is valid grounds for criticism. But, she said, that doesn't mean our perception of those facts can't also be biased. "There's an expectation that women are nice and empathetic. … But that means that if they violate those norms in any way, the backlash to them individually and more collectively, and the degree to which we are attentive to that violation, is often greater than it [would be] for men," Dittmar said. That reaction can be from the staffers or from the press, Dittmar said. There are some numbers to suggest women on Capitol Hill could be — or could be seen as — worse bosses. Four of Legistorm's 10 Senate offices with the highest turnover are women, including Klobuchar. Overall, women made up 24 percent of senators in 2021, the last year of the Legistorm survey, so they're over-represented on the Senate list. The same is true for the House; women make up six of the 10 House offices with the highest turnover. That's 60 percent, compared to the 28 percent women made up of House seats overall in 2021. (Porter is not on the House list.) It's unclear at this point how big of a factor the claims about Porter being a bad boss will be in the Senate race. The claims have certainly taken off in conservative media circles. Georgiades discussed her experience with Fox News, and many of the articles focusing on the allegations have been published in right-leaningpublications. But that partisan element of the coverage could also mean that the claims have less impact in progressive circles during Porter's campaign. The DMer that pre-emptively struck down the sexism claim in their message to Dear White Staffers observed this partisan dynamic at play already. "[M]assive bummer to see progressive folks online go out of their way to excuse this behavior just because it's been gaining traction in right winged [sic] media," this person wrote. Dittmar, for one, isn't sure yet how much the claims could affect Porter. "In any case of abuse, you are looking for a pattern of behavior to indicate the degree to which this was a distinct circumstance or a norm of the office, or a norm of her behavior and treatment of all staff," Dittmar said. "It's a little early in her case to analyze whether or not this is like Klobuchar where more and more staffers were coming forward in major publications."
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