Kim, Young O (1962- )

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    Young Kim of California Survives Her House Primary

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    Representative Young Kim of California, a Republican who is one of the first Korean American women in Congress, advanced to the general election in November after a hard-fought primary that became one of the most expensive races in the state.Ms. Kim was one of the top vote-getters in the June 7 House primary, according to The Associated Press. California’s primaries are open — all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters advance to the November general election.Ms. Kim will now face Asif Mahmood, a Democrat and a physician who is focusing on abortion access, in November in California’s 40th Congressional District, which encompasses parts of Orange and San Bernardino Counties.Ms. Kim currently represents another district, the 39th, where she captured her seat as a moderate Republican in 2020. The district was redrawn and now includes far more Republicans. Ms. Kim and other Republicans have been vying to reclaim Orange County, a decades-long Republican stronghold that shifted to the left during the Trump administration.In the final weeks of the campaign, Ms. Kim focused on her Republican opponent, Greg Raths, a councilman in Mission Viejo who is also a retired combat fighter pilot. Ms. Kim was backed by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with the Republican leadership, which had called her race a “must win” for November. The super PAC and Ms. Kim’s campaign spent about $1.2 million on Republican television ads attacking Mr. Raths.One ad from Ms. Kim’s campaign accused Mr. Raths of raising taxes and saying he is “just like Biden and the liberals.” Mr. Raths, for his part, frequently reminded Republican voters that Ms. Kim had voted to censure former President Donald J. Trump and remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, from congressional committees.Mr. Mahmood, the Democrat, released an ad portraying Mr. Raths as too conservative on abortion, a move that some thought could raise the Republican’s profile and, in the state’s open-primary system, edge Ms. Kim out of the general election. More

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      High California Gas Prices Rattle Democrats Ahead of Midterms

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      SANTA ANA, Calif. — Orange County, Calif., symbolized Republican struggles in America’s diverse and highly educated suburbs during Donald J. Trump’s presidency, as a backlash to Mr. Trump transformed center-right strongholds into increasingly Democratic territory.But at a Chevron station in Santa Ana near John Wayne Airport on Friday afternoon, the anger was aimed at President Biden and his party, as Californians grappled with gas prices registering that day at $6.59 a gallon.“I’m really unhappy,” Carmen Vega, 47, of Anaheim, said, adding that she voted for Mr. Biden but was now considering backing Republicans in the midterm elections. “The economy sucks right now, everything’s too expensive.”And as Simona Sabo, 38, of Irvine, waxed nostalgic for Mr. Trump while filling up her S.U.V. — “What I liked was that gas prices weren’t this high” — another woman poked her head around the pump and offered a silent thumbs up before driving away.Five months before the midterm elections, Democrats are straining to defend their narrow House majority in a brutal political environment shaped by high inflation, Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings and a strong sense among many Americans that the country is on the wrong track. But they have held out hope that a handful of California congressional contests will emerge as bright spots, thanks to the redistricting process that made some seats more hospitable to Democrats, and the importance of issues including abortion rights and gun control to many coastal voters.A station in Los Angeles last week with even higher prices.Zeng Hui/Xinhua via Getty ImagesYet in California, home to the highest average price for regular gasoline in the nation — $6.326 on Sunday, according to the motor club AAA, compared with the nation’s average of $4.848 — anger over the cost of living is threatening Democrats’ ambitions. (California gas prices are typically the highest in the nation, owing in part to state taxes and regulations on emissions that require a more expensive blend of gasoline, but recent numbers have been eye-popping.)On the cusp of Tuesday’s primary elections that will determine California’s general election matchups, there are signs that the cost of living is overshadowing virtually every other issue in some of the state’s battleground areas, according to elected officials, party strategists and polling.“They’re beyond furious — it’s called desperation,” said Representative Lou Correa, a Democrat from Santa Ana, whose district is considered safely Democratic but neighbors more competitive Orange County seats. “I don’t hear anything about the other national issues we’re focusing on in Washington. The thing I hear about is gasoline. What are you going to do to bring down the gas prices?”An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found that most Americans called the economy, inflation and rising gas prices the most important issues in determining their midterm votes. Just 28 percent of those surveyed approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of inflation, and 27 percent approved of his handling of gas prices.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.“The problem for the Democrats here will be that all of the contributing economic factors, particularly inflation, that’s hurting them nationally is on steroids in California,” said Rob Stutzman, a veteran California Republican strategist who is assisting some independent statewide candidates this year. “Seats that, when the maps got drawn, that they didn’t think would be competitive very well could be,” he added.The contours of those House races will come into clearer focus after Tuesday’s primaries, which have so far appeared to be low-turnout affairs. In California primaries, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, then move on to the general election.The races against Representatives David Valadao and Mike Garcia, two Republicans, are expected to be highly competitive in general elections, given the Democratic tilt of both their new districts.Mr. Valadao, of the Central Valley, is one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and he also faces primary challenges.Mr. Garcia, of Santa Clarita, who won his last election by just 333 votes, voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election. Democrats are locked in a primary to challenge him.There are also primary contests for a newly redrawn open seat in California’s 13th Congressional District near Fresno, which leans Democratic, according to the Cook Political Report, though the race may well be highly competitive.Several Republican primary contests may determine how close a number of Southern California seats become. National Republicans see a chance to defeat Representative Mike Levin, a Democrat, but there is also a competitive primary to challenge him.There has also been something of a Republican rescue mission for Representative Young Kim. Her primary contest this year grew unexpectedly competitive, and her newly redrawn district would become far more tightly contested in November should she lose.Two other high-profile House races are unfolding in Orange County, a place once strongly associated with Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, staunchly conservative former presidents, but now a prominent political battleground. Representative Michelle Steel, who like Ms. Kim is a Korean American Republican who flipped a seat in 2020, is running in a new, heavily Asian American district in what is expected to be a close race against Jay Chen, a small-business owner and lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve. The newly drawn district somewhat favors Democrats.Representative Katie Porter speaking at an event against gun violence on Saturday in Seal Beach, Calif.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAnd Representative Katie Porter, a Democrat with a national platform and a huge war chest, is running in a redrawn seat that is roughly evenly politically divided.She and many other Democrats argue that their party is trying to bring down gas prices — which have spiked for reasons including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — while charging that Republicans embrace the issue as a political cudgel. And certainly, there is still time for gas prices and other costs to come down before the midterms, amid other positive economic indicators, and for the political environment to improve for Democrats in competitive races.“My minivan is almost out of gas today and I thought, you know what, I’m not in the mood to fill it up today. Right? It’s frustrating,” Ms. Porter said, arguing that Democrats grasp voters’ pain on this issue. “There is a solution to this, and it starts by being willing to stand up to corporate abuse.”Representative Michelle Steel with Irene Schweitzer, 99, of Anaheim, on Saturday at a campaign event in Buena Park, Calif.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesRepublicans argue that Democrats have pursued a range of inflationary measures, and some are pushing for practices like more drilling.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Young Kim and Republicans Aim to Fend Off Rival to Her Right in California House Race

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      After Representative Young Kim, a Republican, flipped an Orange County House seat in 2020, she was hailed as one of the new faces of the Republican Party: a 58-year-old Korean American politician who was able to win a seat even as Joe Biden carried the district at the top of the ticket.After redistricting, the seat was drawn even more in her favor in 2022. Instead of having a Democratic tilt, analysts say, it now favors Republicans — and seemingly Kim.And yet an expensive rescue mission on Kim’s behalf has been not so quietly underway in recent weeks ahead of California’s June 7 primary, which was supposed to have been a cakewalk for the incumbent Republican.Why?Because those favorable redrawn district lines, with nearly 80 percent of voters in the district new to Kim, mean that lots of voters know little about her — and a Trump-style Republican is running to her right. The result has been about $1 million in Republican television ads during what was supposed to be a sleepy primary.Now, California has an unusual primary system. There aren’t separate ballots for the Republican and Democratic primaries. Instead, every candidate runs on a single ballot, with their titles and party affiliations detailed.All voters choose their candidate from the list. The two candidates who receive the most votes progress to the general election. And there’s no guarantee that both major parties will have a candidate in the general election.For many candidates — even incumbents like Kim — there is a real risk in getting lost in a list of names.Notably, she isn’t just promoting herself. She is also attacking her Republican opponent, Greg Raths, a retired combat fighter pilot for the Marines who drives for Uber and recently issued an apology for comments that had been criticized as antisemitic.Kim’s operation spliced Raths’ image together with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden in one television ad that her campaign has paid more than $570,000 to air — a huge sum for a single ad in a House primary.Even more notable: The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that is aligned with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and is devoted to making him speaker, has also jumped in, with even more ads attacking Raths.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.The total anti-Raths spending is now around $1 million, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking service — a sign of the importance of the race, for which there has been scant public polling.“Following redistricting, Young Kim has a largely new district and it’s important voters know that she’s the only credible conservative in the race,” said Calvin Moore, a spokesman for the Congressional Leadership Fund. “It’s a must-win race for November, and we’re going to do all we can to make sure a standout leader like Kim prevails.”Orange County: A blue-red battlegroundAfter years as a Republican stronghold, Orange County had already been shifting to the left before Donald Trump accelerated the change. In 2016, Kim lost her Orange County seat in the State Assembly to a Democrat.In that campaign, she faced attacks comparing her to Trump, including an Auto-Tuned music video titled “Young Kim Is Like Donald Trump.” In 2018, she ran for Congress and fell short. That year, Democrats flipped all seven House seats in Orange County.After the 2018 blue wave, however, Republicans recovered some of that lost ground. Kim and Michelle Steel, two of the first three Korean American women in Congress, were the only Republicans to flip Orange County seats in 2020.“It says a lot about how the times have changed,” Kim, whose campaign declined to make her available for an interview, told The New York Times after she won her 2020 race. “Our Republican Party has been very aggressive in recruiting quality candidates who happen to be women.”Democrats have made defeating both Kim and Steel top priorities in 2022, despite a national environment that favors Republicans.Enter Greg Raths.Unlike Kim, he hasn’t been a successful federal candidate. A member of the Mission Viejo City Council who has also served as mayor, he has lost three congressional elections since 2014.Greg Raths, a retired fighter pilot, in front of a “Top Gun: Maverick” movie poster. A member of the Mission Viejo City Council who once served as mayor, he also drives for Uber.Greg Raths for CongressRaths has called himself the “only conservative in this race,” and he recently tweeted a photo of himself, wearing a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, standing in front of Tom Cruise on a “Top Gun: Maverick” poster.This campaign, Raths said in an interview, feels different — or, at least, it did until the huge spending against him began a few weeks ago.Raths hasn’t had the resources to air ads in the expensive Los Angeles media market, but he said he had knocked on so many doors that he had probably lost 30 pounds. He also drives for Uber at night — in a Lexus hybrid because, he says, he is an “environmentalist” — and estimates that he has reached 2,000 voters alone by driving them around.“How many candidates do you know who make money while they’re campaigning?” he asked.On the stump, he reminds voters that Kim voted to censure Trump and to remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from congressional committees. Raths said he flew to an event at Mar-a-Lago in February to try to win over Trump’s support, but wasn’t successful.Not just any RepublicanThe potential concern for national Republicans is that if Kim doesn’t make it past the primary, the seat could be in danger.Raths isn’t concerned. He believes that any Republican who wins the primary will be strongly favored to win the general election over Asif Mahmood, the only Democrat on the ballot, and his $1.3 million war chest. When asked if he’d need to win over Biden voters in the general election, Raths pointed to his “worldly experience,” including working with the federal government as a colonel in the Marines, and his service on the Mission Viejo City Council, where he is a self-described “fiscal hawk.”But there is another factor at play with the involvement of the McCarthy-linked Congressional Leadership Fund.The super PAC wants more Republicans, of course. But it also wants more Republicans who will help the party — and McCarthy — govern effectively if the G.O.P. takes back the House. The goal is for Republicans to end up with a majority big enough to overpower some of the furthest-right members of the party, which will be crucial if McCarthy and a Republican-controlled House actually want to get anything done.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Donations Surge for Republicans Who Challenged Election Results

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      The lawmakers, who encouraged their followers to protest in Washington on Jan. 6, have capitalized on the riot to draw huge campaign donations.WASHINGTON — Republicans who were the most vocal in urging their followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 to try to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s loss, pushing to overturn the election and stoking the grievances that prompted the deadly Capitol riot, have profited handsomely in its aftermath, according to new campaign data.Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the challenges to President Biden’s victory in their chamber, each brought in more than $3 million in campaign donations in the three months that followed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia who called the rampage a “1776 moment” and was later stripped of committee assignments for espousing bigoted conspiracy theories and endorsing political violence, raised $3.2 million — more than the individual campaign of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, and nearly every other member of House leadership.A New York Times analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission disclosures illustrates how the leaders of the effort to overturn Mr. Biden’s electoral victory have capitalized on the outrage of their supporters to collect huge sums of campaign cash. Far from being punished for encouraging the protest that turned lethal, they have thrived in a system that often rewards the loudest and most extreme voices, using the fury around the riot to build their political brands. The analysis examined the individual campaign accounts of lawmakers, not joint fund-raising committees or leadership political action committees.“The outrage machine is powerful at inducing political contributions,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida.Shortly after the storming of the Capitol, some prominent corporations and political action committees vowed to cut off support for the Republicans who had fanned the flames of anger and conspiracy that resulted in violence. But any financial blowback from corporate America appears to have been dwarfed by a flood of cash from other quarters.Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, a freshman who urged his supporters to “lightly threaten” Republican lawmakers to goad them into challenging the election results, pulled in more than $1 million. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado — who like Ms. Greene compared Jan. 6 to the American Revolution — took in nearly $750,000.The sums reflect an emerging incentive structure in Washington, where the biggest provocateurs can parlay their notoriety into small-donor successes that can help them amass an even higher profile. It also illustrates the appetites of a Republican base of voters who have bought into Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud and are eager to reward those who worked to undermine the outcome of a free and fair election.Most of the dozens of corporations that pledged to cut off any Republican who supported overturning the election kept that promise, withholding political action committee donations during the most recent quarter. But for the loudest voices on Capitol Hill, that did not matter, as an energized base of pro-Trump donors rallied to their side and more than made up the shortfall.“We’re really seeing the emergence of small donors in the Republican Party,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist. “In the past, Democrats have been the ones who have benefited most from small-dollar donations. We’re seeing the Republicans rapidly catching up.”Lawmakers have long benefited richly from divisive news coverage, especially around prominent events that play to the emotions of an enraged or fearful voter base. But the new filings illustrate a growing chasm between those who raise money through a bombastic profile — often bolstered by significant fund-raising expenditures — and those who have focused their attentions on serious policy work.As provocative freshmen like Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and Mr. Cawthorn took in high-dollar figures, other more conventional members of their class in competitive districts — even those praised for their fund-raising prowess — were substantially behind.For instance, Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Young Kim of California, both of whom opposed the electoral challenges and have worked on bipartisan bills, each took in less than $600,000.Ms. Greene, Ms. Boebert and Mr. Cawthorn raised more money than the top Republicans on the most powerful committees in Congress, such as appropriations, budget, education and labor, foreign affairs and homeland security.In many cases, Republican lawmakers who fanned the flames of the Jan. 6 violence have since benefited by casting themselves as victims of a political backlash engineered by the Washington establishment, and appealed to their supporters.“Pennsylvania wasn’t following their own state’s election law, but the establishment didn’t want to hear it. But that’s not who I work for,” Mr. Hawley wrote in January in a fund-raising message. “I objected because I wanted to make sure your voice was heard. Now, Biden and his woke mob are coming after me. I need your help.”Ms. Greene fund-raised off a successful effort to exile her from committees, led by furious Democrats incensed at her past talk in support of executing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and encouraging her followers to “Stop the Steal” on Jan. 6. Setting goals of raising $150,000 each day in the days before and after the unusual vote, she surpassed them every time.“The D.C. swamp and the fake news media are attacking me because I am not one of them,” one such solicitation read. “I am one of you. And they hate me for it.”But the polarizing nature of Mr. Trump also helped some Republicans who took him to task for his behavior surrounding the events of Jan. 6.Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, took in $1.5 million, and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has started an organization to lead the Republican Party away from fealty to Mr. Trump, raised more than $1.1 million.“It’s obvious that there’s a strong market for Trumpism in the Republican base,” Mr. Curbelo said. “There is also a strong market for truth-telling and supporting the Constitution.”Mr. Conant questioned how much of the fund-raising surge for some candidates was directly tied to the Capitol assault, which he said the conservative news media had generally “moved on” from covering.Instead, he said that Republican voters were “very nervous” about the direction of the country under Democratic control and were eager to support Republicans they viewed as fighting a liberal agenda.“It pays to be high-profile,” Mr. Conant said. “It’s more evidence that there’s not a lot of grass-roots support for milquetoast middle of the road. It doesn’t mean you have to be pro-Trump. It just means you need to take strong positions, and then connect with those supporters.”But if the Republican civil war has paid campaign dividends for fighters on both sides, individual Democrats involved in prosecuting Mr. Trump for the riot in his impeachment trial have not reaped a similar windfall.With her $3.2 million raised this quarter, Ms. Greene brought in more money than the combined total raised by all nine impeachment managers — even though they won widespread applause in liberal circles for their case against the former president. Three of the managers have raised less than $100,000 each over the past three months, according to the data.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene brought in more than the combined total raised by nine impeachment managers, three of whom raised less than $100,000 over the past three months.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAs money pours into campaigns, the Jan. 6 assault has also resulted in much spending around security precautions.The Federal Election Commission expanded guidance allowing lawmakers to use campaign contributions to install residential security systems at their homes, and top Capitol Hill security told lawmakers to consider upgrading their home security systems to include panic buttons and key fobs.Campaign filings show nearly a dozen lawmakers have made payments of $20,000 or more to security companies in the past three months, including Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, who voted to convict Mr. Trump; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, who gave a harrowing account of the riot; and Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California and one of the impeachment managers against Mr. Trump.Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hawley were also among the biggest spenders on security.Lauren Hirsch More