Katie Hill Bio, Wiki
Katie Hill is an American politician and social services administrator from Santa Clarita, California. Hill is serving as the U.S. Representative for California’s 25th congressional district.
Hill is a member of the Democratic Party and defeated incumbent Republican Steve Knight, who had held the office since 2014, in the November 6, 2018, general election. She is the former Executive Director of People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), a statewide non-profit organization working to end homelessness throughout California.
On October 27, 2019, after days of media reports of alleged sexual indiscretions with staffers, Katie announced her impending resignation from Congress.
Katie Hill Earlier Career
Katie Hill began her career as a policy advocate at People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), a non-profit organization developing affordable and supportive services for the homeless in California.
She later became the Executive Director for PATH, and raised the organization from a local force in Los Angeles County to one of the largest non-profit providers of homes for the homeless in California.
She helped pass a ballot initiative, Measure H, during spring of 2017 to help alleviate homelessness by providing $1.2 billion in funds for homeless services in Los Angeles County.
Katie Hill Elections
On March 8, 2017, Katie Hill announced her candidacy for the United States House of Representatives for California’s 25th congressional district, her home district, challenging incumbent Steve Knight, a Republican who had held the office since 2014. Knight won re-election in 2016, despite Hillary Clinton carrying the district by 7%.
Hill received the second most votes in the 2018 California state primary election, advancing her to the November 6, 2018, general election, where she faced incumbent Republican Representative Steve Knight. The congressional race was listed as a “competitive race” by The Washington Post and a “toss up” by The Cook Political Report.
Katie Hill was the subject of a documentary-style series of episodes that have been airing on the HBO show Vice News Tonight.The series has documented the Hill campaign as the “most millennial campaign ever” for Congress.
Vice News Tonight reportedly planned on doing a follow-up episode regarding her advancement to the general election. In the weeks leading up to the midterm election, Hill was endorsed by former president Barack Obama, who also attended a campaign event in Southern California leading up to the election.
Katie Hill Tenure
Before the start of the 116th Congress, Katie Hill and Colorado freshman U.S. Representative Joe Neguse were chosen as the freshman class representatives for the Democratic Caucus.
Katie Hill Political positions
Hill has stated that her top issues in the race are addressing healthcare, rebuilding the middle class with policies that address income inequality and affordable housing, and getting big money out of politics.
She reportedly ran a “grassroots” campaign that didn’t accept money from corporate political action committees. In the first quarter of 2018, she raised over $400,000, bringing her total to $1,092,025 raised, with more than 9,800 individual contributions and more than 5,100 individual donors.
She supports comprehensive immigration reform while working towards greater funding and security along the southern border to counter primarily illegal drug trafficking and other various crimes. She also supports some form of physical barrier along certain areas of the southern border.
Katie Hill Education
Hill attended public schools in the Santa Clarita Valley before attending California State University, Northridge, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master of Public Administration.
Katie Hill Age | How Old Is Katie Hill?
Hill was born Katherine Lauren Hill on August 25, 1987 in Abilene, Texas, United States (she is 32 years old as of 2019.) She celebrates her birthday on 25th August every year.
Katie Hill Height
Hill stands at height of 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall and has a weight of 70 Kg.
Katie Hill Family
Hill was born in Abilene, Texas and grew up in the Saugus section of Santa Clarita, California. She is the daughter of Rachel Hill and Mike Hill. Her mother is a local registered nurse and her father is a police lieutenant.
Katie Hill Husband
Hill got married to Kenny Heslep, an artist in July 2010. The couple reside in Agua Dulce, California, on their farm where they foster rescue animals. She also rents an apartment in Washington D.C. with fellow freshman representative Lauren Underwood.
Katie Hill Divorce
In 2019, Heslep filed for divorce. Hill and Heslep, who were married for 9 years, have been embroiled in divorce proceedings since last June. Hill claimed that Kenny was “abusive” toward her and blamed him for the naked photograph showing her brushing the hair of a campaign staffer that was released to RedState in October, 2019.
On October 25, 2019 Hill’s husband claims he got jobs at non-profit where she worked because of her ‘influence’. He also said Hill “told me that she wanted me to stay at home and care for our household. [Hill] told me that she did not like to do household chores and duties and wanted me to stay at home and do those things while she worked,” the complaint states.
Katie Hill Bisexual
Katie Hill is bisexual. She came out as bisexual after high school. Hill is California’s first openly bisexual person to be elected to Congress.
Katie Hill Net Worth
Katie’s net worth is still under review and will be updated soon. Though her net worth has not yet been revealed, there is no she is living a luxurious lifestyle from her earnings.
Katie Hill Affair
In October 2019 the right wing website RedState published allegations that Katie Hill was involved in an extramarital affair with her campaign finance manager. Katie denied the allegations, saying that her estranged husband, whom she described as “abusive”, was doing everything he could to humiliate her, and that her political opponents were exploiting a private matter for political gain.
She reached out to the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to deny the allegations. Redstate also published Hill’s nude photos as part of the story. Hill said that the U.S. Capitol Police opened an investigation in to who may have leaked the photos.
On October 23, 2019, the House Ethics Committee announced that it would conduct an investigation into the allegations against Hill. On that same day, Katie Hill sent an email to constituents in which she admitted to an “inappropriate relationship” with a campaign staffer before becoming a congresswoman (hence out of scope of the Congressional investigation) and promised to cooperate with the Congressional ethics investigation regarding allegations of wrongdoing as a Member of Congress.
On October 27, 2019, she announced via Twitter that she would resign from Congress. Hill stated “this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community and our country.”
Katie Hill Resign from Congress amid ethics investigation
Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., announced her resignation Sunday after a string of reports shining a negative light on her personal life, including a reported affair with her legislative director that sparked a House Ethics Committee investigation.
Hill tweeted on Sunday evening, “It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country.” She is expected to step down by the end of this week.
The congresswoman last week had fought back against reports of an affair with the congressional staffer, as well as reports she was in a so-called “throuple” relationship with husband Kenny Heslep and a campaign staffer.
It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country.
See my official statement below. https://t.co/RO8B0znc6C
— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) October 27, 2019
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement saying, “Congresswoman Katie Hill came to Congress with a powerful commitment to her community and a bright vision for the future, and has made a great contribution as a leader of the Freshman class.”
“She has acknowledged errors in judgment that made her continued service as a member untenable,” Pelosi wrote. “We must ensure a climate of integrity and dignity in Congress, and in all workplaces.”
This past Thursday, the political fallout for Hill escalated as more compromising photos of the freshman lawmaker surfaced. The Daily Mail published one photo of what appeared to be Hill undressed and holding a bong, and another of her kissing the campaign staffer.
The photos emerged shortly after the conservative website RedState.org posted screenshots of several text messages between Hill and the staffer detailing the reported end of their three-person relationship earlier this year and reported on intimate pictures including a nude photo of Hill brushing the staffer’s hair.
According to the texts that were shown, Hill wanted to focus on her work and suggested that “political risk” was a factor.
Hill, in the letter announcing her resignation, wrote: “This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation.”
She continued, “Having private photos of personal moments weaponized against me has been an appalling invasion of my privacy. It’s also illegal, and we are currently pursuing all of our available legal options.”
Hill, an openly bisexual congresswoman and the vice chairwoman of the powerful House Oversight Committee, admitted Wednesday she had an “inappropriate” relationship with the female campaign staffer.
In a letter sent to constituents on Wednesday and obtained by Fox News, Hill acknowledged that in the final years of what she called an “abusive marriage,” she began a relationship with the unnamed campaign staffer.
Heslep filed for divorce from Hill earlier this year.
“I am going through a divorce from an abusive husband who seems determined to try to humiliate me,” Hill said in her statement last week. “I am disgusted that my opponents would seek to exploit such a private matter for political gain. This coordinated effort to try to destroy me and the people close to me is despicable and will not succeed. I, like many women who have faced attacks like this before, am stronger than those who want me to be afraid.”
RedState also reported earlier this month that Hill had an extramarital affair with Graham Kelly, her legislative director and former campaign finance director, for at least a year. Heslep was said to have shared his own screenshot of a text exchange he had with a friend who had heard about the affair; it was later deleted from his Facebook account.
The reported affair with a congressional staffer prompted the House Ethics Committee investigation.
Source: foxnews.com
Katie Hill Twitter
Katie Hill Interview
Interviewer: How do you introduce yourself to voters?
Katie Hill: I spent my whole life in this community; I dedicated my career to serving most vulnerable people here. I’ll tell people what elementary school I went to, what high school. Something like that connects. People care about whether they can like you and trust you.
Interviewer: What’s your advice to other Democrats trying to appeal to millennials?
Katie Hill: If you’re trying to appeal to my generation you’ve got to be honest. You can’t put on this face mask that is so typical for politicians. Millennials smell the B.S. If you want young people to actually be excited, to feel like there’s any reason to show up to vote, you have to truly have something for them to connect with. That’s easier for me than for a lot of candidates because I am young. I know what it’s like to be faced with student loans, to have rent so high you don’t know if you’re ever going to be able to save up and buy a home. The issues the people of my generation are going through are natural for me because I’ve lived them, my friends are living them.
For young voters, it’s truly about: Why should they bother? I think it’s a matter of having people who actually get it. Who actually are going to fight for you. That means showing vulnerabilities, showing your flaws. I think that some people were afraid of that — typical campaign advisers and so on — about some of the things we’ve done, the videos we’ve done. The fact that Vice News has been following us around. I’ve opened myself up to exposure in a way that is risky because it’s the real me.
Interviewer: In the age of Trump, if you open yourself up fully, there’s little that can actually take you down. But if you’re trying to preserve the facade, the smallest crack will be the end of you.
Katie Hill: It’s one of the reasons I started talking about some of the things that I knew could be controversial. If you come out now, you just own them. What are people going to say?
Interviewer: You’re the daughter of a cop. You own a gun. Is that a bit of a disconnect for your L.A. fans?
Katie Hill: We have the highest number of law enforcement officials of any district my country. And we have the second-highest number of veterans of any district in the country. On top of that, a quarter of our district is rural. So people do own guns. That’s how my husband and I both grew up. Forty percent of our district owns a gun or lives in a household with a gun.
Interviewer: I can’t recall writing about someone so challenging to thumbnail. Is it a lot to carry — embodying those contradictions under the scrutiny of a congressional campaign?
Katie Hill: What makes people stay on your side is that believability, that authenticity. I think the reason that we can kind of quote-unquote “get away with it” — being a higher-profile campaign — is because we came into the race as a grassroots underdog, and then people started paying attention.
Interviewer: How did you move from homeless advocacy into politics?
Katie Hill: PATH is the largest homeless organization California. While I was there we grew from about a $5-million-a-year, local L.A. Basin group, to, by the time I left, a $50-million-a-year group with over 400 staff and dozens of locations across the state. We literally helped thousands of people move off the streets and into permanent homes while I was there.
On the policy side, I was working with elected officials, making sure that PATH was seen as the go-to agency. On the public affairs side, it was getting communities to embrace the service we were providing, to work with us as neighbors, mobilizing all kinds of communities.
Interviewer: Does that experience inform your campaigning?
Katie Hill: I’m someone who believes that all political campaigns need to be grassroots-driven. Commercials can only get you so far. Mail can only get you far. You need to have people on the ground talking about you and why they care. When we started we were a longshot campaign. I knew it was going to have to capitalize on the energy that people felt coming out of the Trump election.
Our field program won us the primary. To win an election by two to three points, it comes down to how many doors you knock. We knocked on 94,000 doors in the primary because of literally hundreds and hundreds of volunteers. And that number has skyrocketed even since.
Interviewer: You’ve had luck tapping activists from outside the district. Does that create challenges — people from Santa Monica or students from USC knocking on doors in Santa Clarita?
Katie Hill: It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. If you’re passionate enough about a campaign to spend your Saturday knocking doors, that’s the thing about it that matters. A lot of people come up from Los Angeles. People care about the same things: health care, housing, real representation and what our government looks like and what our values are. We know that this is a district that has been held by Republican for 40 out of last 50 years. I’m going to need all the help that we can get to turn out voters to switch this thing around.
Interviewer: How are you activating young people specifically?
Katie Hill: Our campaign is run by young people — that’s who’s driving the energy behind this. These are overwhelmingly people have never been involved in politics, and I think hopefully there’s some lessons here for other campaigns. You don’t need to talk about the policy details as much as you should give people a reason to trust you. That’s listening to what they care about. I think a lot of politicians want to focus on the things that make them qualified for the job; the truth is no one’s ready for the job of member of Congress until you’re there. What makes me qualified as a representative of my community is that I am this community.
Interviewer: How’s your relationship with the party — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee?
Katie Hill: They stayed out of the primary. We were able to develop credibility, so they didn’t feel the need to swoop in and try to take over. They’ve been great partners. We know that we have to have a large investment in the field to win this race and they are helping us. I think that’s different than the experience a lot of people had historically with the D Triple C. We’re having a positive experience with them.
Interviewer: The Republican answer to grassroots enthusiasm this cycle seems to be leaning on a Super PAC — the Congressional Leadership Fund. It hasfield offices open across the state, they’re phone banking, trying to activate voters. Have you noticed an impact?
Katie Hill: They’re doing their own organizing to make sure that Republicans are paying attention, I guess. The move to get the gas tax repeal on the ballot is one of the biggest challenges that all of us Democrats face. Otherwise, the enthusiasm is completely on the side of Democrats. We’re going to have more Republicans turn out to vote [because of it]. The gas tax hits people in our district harder than it does in places like at West L.A. We have people driving an hour-and-a-half each way and they can’t afford Teslas or electric cars.
Interviewer: Your opponent, unlike some Republicans, actually shows up in the district. He’s not a cartoonish villain like Dana Rohrabacher or Duncan Hunter.
Katie Hill: He’s a local. He served in the Army. I’m not challenging his public service in any way. But he votes — time and time again — on the party line, what the party leadership tells him to do, and what his big donors, corporations, etcetera, tell him to do. And not for us. Taxes are something that comes up all the time, especially with the Republican tax plan that hurts our community. He voted to get rid of the tax deduction for wildfire victims.
I’m not taking corporate money. I’m doing this because I care about my friends and family members and neighbors. Those are the people I’m going to be accountable to. We need to be thinking about how can we have a democracy that allows people like me — regular people who want to be champions for the community — how can we have a political system that allows that to happen.
Source: www.rollingstone.com