Hot off the press from the CA40 campaign of Esther Kim-Varet:
With a 15X Cash Advantage Raised From Over 50,000 Individual Donations, Social Media Reach in Tens of Millions Monthly, and Polling Showing Her Positioned to Flip CA-40, Kim-Varet is the ONLY Viable Candidate Who Can Retire MAGA Incumbents Ken Calvert and Young Kim.
COTO DE CAZA, CA — With only 100 days to go before the June 2nd midterm primary election, Esther Kim-Varet, frontrunner to flip California’s 40th Congressional District, calls on fellow Democratic candidates Lisa Ramirez and Joe Kerr to exit the CA-40 race before March 6 in order to keep their names off the ballot, to preserve the path towards flipping this critical battleground House seat.
CA-40 is the ONLY House district race in the nation where, due to Prop 50 redistricting, two incumbent Republican Representatives are both competing against each other. Reps Ken Calvert and Young Kim are both traitorous MAGA-aligned career politicians who no longer serve the people.
Yesterday the California Democratic Party announced that it will NOT endorse in this cycle’s CA-40 race. Of the remaining Democratic candidates in the race, FEC records indicate that Kim-Varet is the only viable candidate — in resources, reach, and residency — to take on Kim and Calvert.
Democratic candidate Lisa Ramirez (neé Elizabeth Sergi), who is not a resident of CA-40, lives in the Santa Ana gated community of Rocking Horse Ridge. Ramirez’s primary source of income according to her financial disclosures is through the landlordship of over 10 single family homes as investment properties. Small scale landlords like Ramirez who take advantage of homeownership tax subsidies account for 85% of the investor-hoarded single family home inventory in Orange County and Riverside, directly contributing to the housing affordability crisis. Kim-Varet is the only candidate with a published housing affordability plan, which would exclude investment properties from these subsidies. Additionally, Ramirez was not registered to vote as a Democrat until August 2025, just before she filed to enter the CA-40 race. Planned Parenthood has assigned Ramirez, whose husband is a Catholic minister, a mixed score on women’s right to choose.
Democratic candidate Joe Kerr is a perennial candidate who has lost all previous races for elected office. In the 2022 CA-40 campaign, Kerr failed to raise enough money as a candidate to successfully compete, was outspent 20-to-1, and lost to Young Kim by a wide margin. Kerr’s long time Virginia-based campaign consultants i77Strategies (run by Trump booster Jeffrey Nickels) exclusively advise MAGA Republican candidates (Editor’s note: this campaign consultant also takes on Democratic clients and wa sresponsible for flipping the VA state assembly blue).
“Enough is enough,” said Esther Kim-Varet. “We have only one shot to do this. With 100 days until the primary, right now is the time to unite around a single viable campaign. For Ramirez or Kerr to insist on staying in as spoilers will imperil our prospects of unseating both Calvert and Kim — that is simply unpatriotic. If they refuse to exit the race, it’s on them if no Democrat advances to the general election. We need to get this done in order to help the residents of CA-40 who are suffering from the Trump Administration’s cascading cruelty and chaos. That’s why I’m fighting to Flip 40.”
Neither of Kim-Varet’s Democratic opponent candidates have demonstrated the resources nor the policies needed to flip CA-40. Kim-Varet is the only candidate who has conducted polling to demonstrate a pathway for victory
Kim-Varet’s campaign has received a string of high-profile endorsements, including every current and former elected official who has actually defeated Young Kim in past elections, as well as state and local leaders, current and former members of Congress, and national organizations including the Congressional AAPI Caucus PAC and VoteMama. With Kim-Varet’s viral social media reach of over 30 million people in the past month alone, and nationwide support from over 50,000 small dollar contributions to date, her campaign is poised to retire not one but two corrupt MAGA incumbents from Congress this November.
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California’s newly drawn 40th Congressional District, spanning portions of Riverside County and Orange County, is one of the most consequential U.S. House district battlegrounds in the nation. CA-40 includes the cities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Murrieta, Menifee, Lake Elsinore, Wildomar and Canyon Lake as well as parts of Mission Viejo, Orange, Anaheim, and Corona.
First-time candidate Esther Kim-Varet has raised over $2.6 million to date, powered by over 50,000 individual small dollar contributions from across the nation.
Esther is not a politician — she is a working mom of two young kids, running for Congress to restore the American Dream for all. In Congress, Esther will combat corruption, defend democracy, and fight for the middle class, small businesses, public education, and healthcare access.
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