For years, Democrats have harbored fleeting hopes of toppling GOP Rep. Young Kim from her purplish SoCal seat, only to see her decisively bat away any significant challenge.
But that hasn’t dissuaded Christina Gagnier, an attorney and former member of the Chino Valley school board who is framing her candidacy around a schoolyard theme: standing up to bullies.
“The ultimate bullies are in charge of Washington, and local families are feeling bullied … Our congresswoman is not standing up and saying that anything that’s happening out of D.C. right now is wrong,” Gagnier told Playbook in an exclusive interview launching her campaign. “She’s sitting on the sidelines and basically giving Donald Trump and Elon Musk a green light.”
Gagnier returned to the anti-bullying theme often in the conversation — not just in discussing the current president, but about her own tenure on the school board, where raucous debates around religious influence in schools, COVID-19 mask mandates and policies around transgender students attracted national attention.
“If you can … manage a school board meeting and fight through that, that definitely is the fight that you need to go to Congress,” Gagnier said.
She lost her school board reelection bid to Sonja Shaw, who went on to promote a new policy mandating that parents be informed if their children requested to use a name or gender pronouns that did not align with their birth certificate or other measures. The policy, which was struck down in court, was criticized by pro-LGBTQ+ advocates as “forced outings.”
Some Democrats, in the wake of Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump, have expressed hesitation in wading into the debate over transgender rights. But Gagnier, who founded the pro-public schools nonprofit Our Schools USA after leaving the board, said it was the GOP, not her own party, that was fixated on the issue.
“It’s the Republican Party, it is Donald Trump that is putting way too much of an emphasis on this,” she said. “But I think we all need to stand behind the fact that we shouldn’t be allowing children to be bullied in our public schools.”
Taking on Kim will be an uphill climb.
The representative has largely avoided the strident partisanship of the current era, preferring to play up her aisle-crossing bona fides.
“Rep. Young Kim is focused on listening to her constituents, fighting for her district, and delivering results,” said Sam Oh, her political consultant. “That’s why Young has repeatedly been ranked one of the most bipartisan and most effective members of Congress.”
The district — which spans parts of Orange County and the Inland Empire, where Chino Valley is located — has swingy tendencies: Joe Biden narrowly won it in 2020, while Trump bested Kamala Harris there by more than two points. But in other statewide races, including in recent gubernatorial and Senate contests, the Republican candidates have had a clear advantage. And Kim easily coasted to reelection last year by more than 10 points.
“It’s more of an old-school Orange County Republican-type district, and Young Kim has typically done pretty well with that type,” said Rob Pyers of California Target Book, the nonpartisan campaign almanac.
Gagnier joins a field of Democratic candidates that already includes Joe Kerr, Kim’s 2024 opponent, and Esther Kim Varet, an art dealer. The prospect of a messy Democratic primary could suck up the precious resources that would be needed to oust an incumbent in the state’s most expensive media market.
But for Democrats looking to build on their silver-lining gains in last year’s California House races, there are only so many options. The national party identified Kim as one of three targeted incumbents in California for the upcoming cycle and are trying to follow their successful playbook in defeating Republicans such as Mike Garcia and Michelle Steel last November.
“We started targeting them early,” said CJ Warnke of House Majority PAC, the super PAC affiliated with House Democratic leadership. “We did not do that with [Kim] in 2024. But definitely a priority for us to do leading up to ’26 cycle is take a much tougher look at Young Kim.”
The frenetic cost-cutting of Trump’s first weeks in office may provide Democrats plenty of ammo. HMP is churning out research identifying how many Medicaid beneficiaries per district could be harmed by the GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts (roughly 74,000 people in Kim’s district). And Kim has already expressed reservations about Musk’s gutting of USAID, arguing such cuts could create a power vacuum that China would swiftly exploit.
But Kim does not have limitless room to distance herself from Trump. She spent more than $1 million in the 2022 primary to defeat a vastly under-funded Republican opponent, a sign that she’ll have to keep an eye on her right flank even if the spending cuts spark a backlash among liberal and independent voters.
Amid that tricky balancing act is where Gagnier senses opportunity.
“The reality is that if you are in Washington, D.C., right now, and you’re supposed to be a representative, you need to be somebody who’s willing to put your politics aside and do the job in Washington to get things done to the families in the Inland Empire and Orange County,” she said. “That’s why I’m running. That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
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