CA-45: Katie Porter Survived Domestic Abuse, Only To Have It Used Against Her In Her Campaign
WASHINGTON ― Four years before law professor Katie Porter launched her campaign for Congress, the single mother of three was flossing her teeth in the bathroom of her home in Irvine, California, when her then-husband barged in.
Matthew Hoffman grabbed his wife’s hands, ripped the floss out of them and threw it away, and then punched the wall so hard that he shattered the faceplate on the light switch and knocked the lights out. He would later tell a judge he was angry because his wife had been brushing her teeth too slowly.
That was in April 2013. Porter and Hoffman had separated the previous month but continued to live together while they figured out what to do. Porter said Hoffman became abusive and unhinged over those weeks in a desperate effort to stop her from divorcing him.
He pushed her into a wall, threw things at her, called her a “dumb bitch” in front of their three young children and would bang so loudly on her bedroom door at night that she had to prop a chair against it to keep him at bay. She said he shoved their 1-year-old daughter across the kitchen in her high chair, threatened to kill himself and once held the door of Porter’s car open to stop her from driving to a school meeting.
Porter cried as she told me these stories in the basement conference room of a Marriott in Washington, D.C. It was mid-April 2018, and in a few hours, female Democratic senators and celebrities would descend on the hotel for the annual EMILY’s List gala. Porter was also being celebrated that night as part of the post-election wave of women candidates vying for office. A 44-year-old Harvard-educated consumer advocate, she was the first congressional candidate EMILY’s List endorsed for the 2018 cycle and has since landed the endorsements of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Porter knew that millions of women would be able to relate to her story ― 1 in 3 American women are physically abused by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence ― but she also had little choice about coming forward. Her divorce and the protective order she obtained against her husband have become the subject of a whisper campaign in the competitive Democratic primary for California’s 45th Congressional District. Several delegates to the Orange County Democratic Party told Porter they’d heard rumors from a rival campaign that something in her divorce records might disqualify her in the general election.
The last straw for Porter was when a man in Denver named Kevin Matthews whom she’d never met referred to her as “Katie ‘Restraining Order’ Porter” on Twitter.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, a Kevin Matthews in Denver has donated $2,000 to the campaign of Dave Min, Porter’s leading primary opponent. He is also friends with Min’s wife on Facebook. Matthews did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/candidate-survived-domestic-abuse_us_5af47e3ce4b0859d11d15299
