Young Kim takes down Democrat in California House rematch

Former California Assemblywoman Young Kim (R) has defeated Democratic Rep. Gil Cisneros in a rematch of 2018, returning a traditionally red seat to the GOP.

The Associated Press called the race for Kim on Friday night, 10 days after the election. Kim led Cisneros by just over 1 percentage point with 99 percent of precincts reporting, according to the AP.

Kim joins more than a dozen other Republican women elected to the House this year and will take over a seat held by Democrats for only one term after the retirement of Republican Ed Royce, who held the seat from 1993 to 2019.

Kim’s victory will be a welcome recovery for Orange County Republicans, who had seen the area turn blue, following the majority of the state.

In 2016, Kim lost her Assembly seat to Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva, an early sign of the shifting political tides around Orange County.

The race between Cisneros and Kim became heated at times, with the campaigns trading accusations of hypocrisy, especially on health care and past statements Kim made downplaying the importance of the Latino vote.

Polling during the race had Cisneros and Kim at a dead heat, although political ratings site FiveThirtyEight’s model favored a Cisneros victory.