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