Former Congresswoman Katie Porter once spent six years patronizing a massage parlor in Sherman Oaks before writing a scorching Yelp review warning the public away. She timed a pizza delivery down to the minute, cataloged every failed callback from a cab company at dawn, and, when a reporter finally asked about all of it, offered five words: "The Yelp reviews are what they are."
That line landed Thursday morning, after the New York Post reported on a batch of Yelp reviews attributed to some of California's most prominent political figures. The reviews, originally surfaced by the online publication LA Material, span more than a decade and include posts linked to Porter, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, and former LAUSD chief Alberto Carvalho.
Most of the reviews are unremarkable. Bass left two five-star ratings. Raman praised a tea cafe. Siebel Newsom and Pratt each dropped simple five-star marks with no written commentary. But Porter's entries, three detailed, time-stamped complaints aimed at small businesses, read less like casual consumer feedback and more like depositions.
Porter's most elaborate review targeted Massage Heights in Sherman Oaks, posted in 2017. She claimed more than six years of membership before turning against the business. Her review warned potential customers away in language that could pass for a regulatory complaint:
"If you want consistent good service, and want to patronize a place that treats employees with respect, I would never recommend this."
She added that she could not "continue in good conscience to be a patron, even though it is a very convenient location and a nice facility." Then she went further, flagging what she described as a pattern hidden in the review data itself:
"Note that almost 1/3 of reviews written are 'not recommended.' Management is hiding a serious problem. I was a member here for over six years, so consider my depth of experience with this place in how you judge this review."
Massage Heights declined to comment when contacted by the Post. The other businesses Porter reviewed did not respond.
Her July 2013 review of Tony Pepperoni Pizzeria earned the shop two stars. Porter documented the delivery timeline with the precision of someone building a legal brief. She ordered at 4:39 p.m., called at the 40-minute mark, called again at 5:31, fifty-two minutes after placing the order, and was told the driver would call her back. He never did.
"I have 20 angry hungry kids! Pizza was decent when it arrived. But allow ample ample time."
The cab review may be the most vivid. Porter described booking an Irvine Yellow Cab the night before a 7:15 a.m. flight out of SNA, John Wayne Airport in Orange County. The cab never showed. She called at 6:03, 6:11, and 6:15, getting a different excuse each time. By 6:28, she had reinstalled three car seats, loaded luggage, and started driving herself. At 6:35, the driver called to say he was a few blocks from her house.
"Ludicrous! I would have missed my flight but for it being delayed. I will never use this company again."
She gave Irvine Yellow Cab one star. The company has since permanently closed.
Senator Alex Padilla's contribution to the Yelp record is a single review of a Great Clips location in Northridge, posted in September 2018. At the time, Padilla was serving as California's 32nd Secretary of State, not yet a U.S. senator, but a statewide officeholder nonetheless.
Padilla described himself as a repeat customer who was "usually happy with the results." But this visit was different. He singled out a stylist by her first name, in all caps, and offered a public performance review that most HR departments would flag:
"JESSICA, the stylist my son was assigned to, had a very bad attitude, was impatient with my son, who is a pretty easy child, and she clearly does not know how to cut hair. I do not recommend you let Jessica cut your hair or your child's hair. And I hope she gets more training."
There is something worth sitting with here. A man who held one of the most powerful offices in California state government, overseeing elections, business filings, and state archives, took the time to write a named, public complaint about a hairstylist at a budget chain salon. That is not illegal. It is not scandalous. But it tells you something about the instincts of the people who run California.
California's political class has faced broader questions about whether its leaders are in touch with the voters they represent. Betty Yee's recent exit from the governor's race, driven by poor polling and internal party pressure, offered one data point. The Yelp reviews offer another, smaller, stranger, but no less revealing.
Not every review was a complaint. Mayor Karen Bass, who left her reviews while serving as the U.S. representative for California's 37th Congressional District, gave five stars to both UCLA Dental Practice and Amy's Angels Cleaning. No written commentary from those reviews was published.
Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is set to face Bass in a November Los Angeles mayoral runoff, left a five-star review for a cafe called Tea Drops. Jennifer Siebel Newsom and Spencer Pratt each left five-star ratings with no elaboration.
Former LAUSD chief Alberto Carvalho also had online posts surface this week, though no details about the content or targets of his reviews were reported.
The contrast is hard to miss. Bass, Raman, Siebel Newsom, and Pratt left the kind of reviews most people leave, quick, positive, forgettable. Porter and Padilla left the kind of reviews that make a small-business owner lose sleep.
None of this rises to the level of scandal. No laws were broken. No ethics rules were bent. But the reviews offer a rare, unguarded window into how California's political leaders interact with the world when they are not performing for cameras or drafting legislation.
Porter, in particular, has built her political brand on consumer protection and corporate accountability. Her Yelp reviews are entirely consistent with that brand, perhaps uncomfortably so. The same instinct that made her a viral questioner in congressional hearings also produced a 2017 review that reads like a whistleblower complaint about a massage franchise.
The question is whether voters find that relatable or exhausting. Porter lost her bid for governor. Democrats' own internal assessments have acknowledged that the party's messaging often fails to connect with ordinary voters. A politician who times pizza deliveries to the second and writes 200-word cab complaints may be thorough. She may also be the reason people roll their eyes at Sacramento.
Padilla's review raises a different but related point. A statewide officeholder publicly naming a service worker by name and calling for her retraining is not the power move he may have imagined. It is a man with institutional authority punching down at a hairstylist making hourly wages at a strip-mall salon. The review has been public on Yelp for years. Only now has anyone noticed who wrote it.
California's political landscape has been shifting in ways that would have seemed impossible a few years ago. Republican ballot returns have tripled in early primary data, a sign that the state's one-party grip may not be as firm as its leaders assume.
Meanwhile, national Democrats have been consumed by internal finger-pointing over strategic failures that have nothing to do with Yelp but everything to do with a political class that seems more comfortable managing its own grievances than solving the problems voters actually care about.
Porter's response to the Post, "The Yelp reviews are what they are", is the most honest thing any politician has said this week. She is right. They are what they are. They are a former congresswoman documenting every minute of a failed cab ride with the rigor of a federal investigator. They are a sitting secretary of state calling out a Great Clips stylist by name. They are a collection of small moments that, taken together, sketch a portrait of a political class that treats every inconvenience as an institutional failure requiring public correction.
These are the people who govern the fifth-largest economy on Earth. They cannot get a pizza delivered on time, and they want you to know about it.
California's Democratic leaders have a habit of dodging hard questions on policy while finding plenty of time for the small ones. The Yelp reviews did not reveal corruption or scandal. They revealed something quieter and, in its own way, more damning: a governing class that mistakes its own irritation for public service.
If these are the people who think they know how to run your life, maybe check their star ratings first.
