Rep. Young Kim joins other GOP candidates in tight races distancing themselves from Trump

SACRAMENTO — 
Fighting for reelection, GOP Rep. Young Kim has quietly scrubbed references to President Trump from her campaign website, a striking effort to broaden her appeal as she faces a Republican rival for her Orange County seat.

It’s the latest example of a Republican distancing themselves from a historically unpopular president less than two months out from the midterm elections.

Elsewhere in California, David Valadao is strategically distancing himself from Trump in his fight for political survival in a heavily Latino congressional district. Carlos De La Cruz and Eric Flores, two Republican House candidates in Texas, deemphasized their ties to Trump on their websites after winning their primaries. And Republicans in tight Senate races in Alaska and Maine skipped Trump’s unconventional midterm convention in Dallas this week.

The trend poses a challenge to Trump, whose grip on the Republican brand has been ironclad for over a decade.

On Wednesday night, at the Republican convention, Trump told voters to consider the midterms a referendum on his presidency.

“I’m asking you to pretend I’m on the ballot,” he said, “just one more time.”

Kim is locked in a brutal intra-party fight with Rep. Ken Calvert over one of the only safe districts left for Republicans in Southern California after voters approved new congressional boundaries last year.

Throughout the primary, both Republicans used campaign ads and mailers to play up their support for Trump and court GOP voters. But as the general election approaches, both candidates are diminishing the president’s presence in their messaging by varying degrees.

Until recently, a banner on the homepage of Kim’s website described her as a “Proven Fighter” who would “Stand with President Trump to deliver a bold America First Agenda,” according to archived versions of the site.

As of this week, the banner said the congresswoman is “taking on Career Politicians to Restore the American Dream.” References to Trump and “America First” have also been removed from Kim’s biography. The changes were first reported by Politico.

An “Issues” page that highlighted Kim’s positions on red-meat topics such as “Standing with President Trump to Save America,” “Protecting Election Integrity” and “Fixing Bidenflation” has been taken down.

Since she was first elected to Congress in 2020, Kim has largely backed Trump’s agenda. She cast votes in support of the president’s tax and spending cut package last year and against his second impeachment in 2021. Both Kim and Calvert aligned with Trump on 95% of the votes they cast last year, according to a tracker by RollCall.

Kim’s campaign pushed back on the notion that she is distancing herself from Trump, calling it “completely absurd.”

“Our campaign has consistently framed this race as a choice between an effective leader like Young Kim, who has delivered results in less than three terms in Congress, and Ken Calvert, whose career has been plagued by corruption controversies and FBI investigations,” said Kim campaign spokesperson Chris Pack. “Calvert incessantly complains about Washington getting nothing done, seemingly oblivious to the fact that after nearly 40 years, he has become Washington.”

The new 40th Congressional District, reconfigured under Proposition 50, which was approved by California voters in 2025, packs many of the region’s Republican voters into a district that includes inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

While 40% of the registered voters in the district are Republicans, 31% are Democrats and 21% declared themselves to have “no party preference,” according to the secretary of state’s latest report.

The new map carved the district held by Calvert, a Corona Republican and 33-year fixture in Congress, into three pieces. Democrats redrew the map in an attempt to oust up to five Republicans and cancel out GOP-led gerrymandering in Texas. Kim, who is from Anaheim Hills, and Calvert advanced from the primary election over several Democrats and an independent candidate and will face off in the Nov. 3 general election.

Calvert continues to emphasize his close ties to Trump. His campaign homepage features a video with shots of him shaking Trump’s hand and interacting with him in the Oval Office.

Calvert’s campaign criticized Kim for scrubbing Trump from her website and at other times keeping the president at arm’s length.

“Young Kim can delete Trump from her website, but she’ll never be able to erase the fact that she is a complete and total fraud who will say anything if she thinks it will help her keep her job,” said Calvert campaign spokesperson Calvin Moore.

“Young Kim has had every opinion on Trump imaginable, from trying to censure him, to claiming she’s 100% with him, to promising to kick his butt then trying to lick his boots in the primary. It’s insulting to voters’ intelligence that she thinks voters won’t see right through it,” he said.

Calvert’s PAC, Americans 4 Security, has also changed messaging on its mailers. Before the primary, it sent out more than a dozen mailers attacking Kim for “blocking the Trump agenda” and “running from her anti-Trump record.”

Two recent mailers sent by the PAC contrast Calvert’s record with Kim’s and make no mention of Trump.

Other vulnerable California Republicans have quietly removed the president from campaign materials as the general election shifts into high gear.

Northern California Congressman James Gallagher took Trump’s endorsement off his website this summer, according to the Mercury News. Gallagher won a June special election to finish the remainder of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s term. He will face Democratic state Sen. Mike McGuire in November under the new boundaries, which favor McGuire.

Valadao (R-Hanford) represents a longtime swing district in the southern Central Valley and has often opted to focus his reelection messaging on the region’s needs, rather than Trump. The dairy farmer was one of just 10 Republicans who voted for Trump’s 2021 impeachment.

The post-primary messaging shifts weren’t a surprise to Matt Klink, a Republican political strategist.

“Through targeting, you look at Democrats and decline-to-state voters, and you soften your message to focus on things that they care about. That’s not changing their position, it’s just effective campaigning,” Klink said.

But personally, Calvert has continued to embrace the president. His campaign confirmed Calvert was attending the midterm Republican convention in Dallas, where Trump delivered a keynote speech Wednesday night and was scheduled to deliver another Thursday night.

Kim skipped the GOP convention in favor of meetings with constituents and a human trafficking task force, and to attend 9/11 remembrance events, according to her campaign.

“Calvert being with Trump, he’s helping to create that enthusiasm around his campaign,” Klink said. By skipping the convention, “Young Kim is signaling, ‘I may be a Republican, but I care about the district, too.’ It’s a good contrast.”