The race between Republican Rep. Young Kim and Democrat Joe Kerr to represent Orange County in Congress remained too close to call Tuesday night as votes continued to be counted.
Although President Biden won California’s 40th District by a narrow margin in 2020, Republicans maintained a voter registration advantage of nearly 5 percentage points.
In past years, the campaign arm of Congressional Democrats has included the district on their list of seats that could be moved from red to blue. But this year, the 40th Congressional District did not appear on the Democrats’ list and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report deemed it “likely to go Republican.”
Kim lives just outside the county, which includes some of Orange County’s strongest cities, including Yorba Linda and Villa Park. It also includes parts of Corona in Riverside County and Chino Hills in San Bernardino County.
Kim, who was born in South Korea, served in the State Council and ran for Congress in 2018 before winning two years later.
Kim has focused his campaign on reducing taxes and the burden of rising costs on middle-class families, a message that resonates with voters in his suburban district.
Kerr spent 34 years as a fire captain with the Orange County Fire Authority and served 17 years as president of the Orange County Professional Firefighters Assn., a labor union representing 800 firefighters. He ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in 2022 and for the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 2018.
Much of Kerr’s message focused on his time as a firefighter. In a recent ad, Kerr pledged to help enforce federal legislation that would provide firefighters with health care.
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