California GOP Rep. Ken Calvert defeats Rep. Young Kim in race for merged 40th District

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) is projected to win the race for California’s 40th Congressional District against fellow California Republican Rep. Young Kim in a race determined by the Golden State’s passage of Proposition 50 last year, according to preliminary results from Decision Desk HQ .

With 69 percent reporting, Calvert leads his fellow Republican by about 7 points. Per DDHQ, he currently has 53.5 percent of the vote to Kim’s 46.5 percent.

The new district merged Calvert’s 41st District and Kim’s 40th District. It stretches across part of Orange County and the Inland Empire in San Bernardino County, encompassing the cities Mission Viejo, Corona, Lake Elsinore and Rancho Santa Margarita.

The race was predetermined to cost one of the two California Republicans their House seat, as both candidates represented large parts of the new boundaries from their original districts. Calvert held on to a larger portion of the new district compared to Kim.

Calvert first won his House seat in 1992, becoming California’s longest-serving Republican member in its congressional delegation. The lifelong Corona resident has served on the House Appropriations Committee as chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Calvert is also the chairman of the California Republican House Delegation.

He campaigned on his conservative bonafides, pointing at Kim’s 2021 vote alongside Democrats against a Trump-era rule to roll back regulations on methane emissions, the Los Angeles Times reported. While at a rally in Murrieta with California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton (R) and state Assembly member Carl DeMaio (R), he contrasted himself as a consistent conservative.

“People know exactly where I’m at,” he told Spectrum News last month. “I haven’t changed a bit in the 30 years, and so I’ll continue to give people the kind of common sense governance that they deserve.”

Calvert won endorsements from several large conservative and Republican organizations in the state, along with other Golden State Republican candidates like Hilton and former gubernatorial candidate and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.