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Incumbent Young Kim (R) has defeated Democratic challenger Asif Mahmood in her bid for re-election to represent California’s 40th congressional district, the Associated Press reports.
While Kim ran as a Republican who could reach across the aisle when first elected in 2020, she has doubled down on her conservative track record this cycle, reflecting the district’s stronger conservative lean after it was redrawn in 2021.
The new district includes parts of Orange and Riverside Counties, which have significant Asian and Hispanic populations. Kim currently represents about one-fifth of the voters in what would be her new constituency.
Her re-election campaign centered around slowing inflation and preventing illegal immigration. In contrast to Mahmood, a Pakistani American physician who campaigned on support for codifying abortion rights, Kim voted against multiple abortion protection bills and expressed support for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The moderate Republican has also emphasized her alignment with law enforcement and highlighted her work pushing for human rights in countries with authoritarian regimes.
Kim—who became one of the first Korean American women ever elected to Congress in 2020—raised almost $8.4 million for her campaign, more than twice as much as Mahmood. She drew early and sustained support from the Republican National Committee, which launched its first Asian Pacific American community center in Orange County in a bid to target AAPI voters.
Kim currently sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Small Business. The first-term lawmaker helped introduce a resolution to censure former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection—though she opposed impeaching him—and voted to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) from congressional committees amid reports of her previous social media posts lauding the far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories.
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