Esther Kim Varet believes she has what it takes

The CA-40 congressional candidate comes to The Truth OC to make her case ...

Esther Kim Varet a Democratic candidate in the CA-40 congressional race, was offered the opportunity to write a piece following Lisa Ramirez’s guest post from earlier this week.

Dear CA40 voters: if you live in CA40, your June 2 ballot includes an extremely important choice that has urgent implications for our district and our entire nation.

In our district, two well-funded Republican incumbents are at war with each other over who is more loyal to Donald Trump. Five Democrats, including me (Esther Kim-Varet), are running to replace them, alongside one candidate not affiliated with a party. Eight candidates total. Under California’s top-two primary, only the top two vote-count candidates advance to November, regardless of party and regardless of percentages. This is a “sudden death” primary that offers no second chance.

Because both the Republican and Democrat votes are split, this is a very similar dynamic to the Governor’s race, but even riskier because CA40 has more registered Republicans than registered Democrats. Compare my campaign to Xavier Becerra’s: well-funded, organized, and competitive in the polls. The other Democratic candidates’ campaigns are comparable to Antonio Villaraigosa’s: well-intentioned and hardworking, but mathematically stalled and at risk of dividing the vote enough to pre-emptively hand the election to Republicans on June 2.

I do not say this to disparage anyone. I respect every Democrat who has stepped forward to run in this district. But in this particular primary, with only three weeks left, we need to move past mud-slinging and wish-casting and instead focus on the facts, the math, and the stakes.

The facts. Tulchin Research’s latest poll of five hundred likely CA40 primary voters shows me at 20 percent, statistically tied with Republican incumbents Ken Calvert and Young Kim. Among Democratic voters specifically, my support has surged to 42 percent in just four months, since the earlier January poll. My closest Democratic rival lost ground and is down to 6 percent overall support. The next closest Democrat is at 4 percent. Both of those other Democratic candidates are trending downward since January. To date, my campaign has raised $3 million dollars (mostly from 65,000 small dollar grassroots donations), run paid television advertising, deployed mail across the district, and built a social media audience of more than one hundred and fifty thousand supporters. My Democratic opponents, after trying for six months since redistricting, have done none of these things at scale, not because they lack character or commitment, but because they lack the resources and operational infrastructure required to compete with two well-funded Republican incumbents.

The math. The two candidates with the highest vote totals on June 2 advance to November, regardless of party. With Calvert, Young Kim, and me locked in a statistical tie at the top of the field, this race is an unusual “sudden death” primary. There is no second chance for Democrats. If our Democratic vote splits between multiple challenger candidates while the Republican vote consolidates behind Calvert and Young Kim, two MAGA Republicans WILL advance to November together. A vote for any Democrat other than the only Democrat in striking distance (me) is implicitly a vote to forfeit CA40 to Trump-enabling Republicans. Like it or not, like me or not, that is just the factual math of this high-stakes dual-Republican top-2 primary.

The stakes. They could not be higher. After this week’s Virginia ruling, the path to a Democratic House majority has narrowed to a perilous knife’s edge. CA40 is the LAST MAGA-held seat in Southern California that Democrats can realistically flip in 2026, and the ONLY red-to-blue seat in the nation that is at risk of forfeiture in the primary. If we surrender this district because our coalition could not unite around the only candidate in position to actually get a spot in the general election, we will all share responsibility for a Republican-held House through the remainder of President Trump’s second term. That means no oversight of an administration that has already targeted civil liberties, environmental protections, the press, and the basic machinery of American democracy. The cost of disunity in CA40 would be paid by every American who believes in free elections and the rule of law.

I am not your only option in this primary. I am your only viable option. I have made missteps in this race, as every first-time candidate does, and I will make more before June 2. If you need to hold your nose to vote for me, please do. Hold your nose. Cast the ballot. Move on. Let’s make CA40 blue together. Let’s help put checks and balances on the Trump administration together. The only alternative is a CA40 represented by two of the most corrupt and harmful incumbents in Congress.

For those who want more detail on my policies and platform, I welcome and encourage you to review them here and here, and hope you will reach out to me to discuss at ekv@estherforcongress.org.

My door is always open.

I am asking every Democrat in CA40, every independent who values democracy, and every Republican who recognizes that something has gone deeply wrong in their party and our nation, to join me on June 2. We have only three weeks to prevent this critical House seat from being forfeited to Trump-enabling Republicans.

Here is a link to the detailed poll analysis of 500 CA40 primary voters taken last week by highly respected pollster Ben Tulchin, who also works with among others Bernie Sanders, Gavin Newsom, Dave Min, Fiona Ma, and Sharon Quirk-Silva. This is the best information available today on where the CA40 race stands and how we can prevent a Republican lock-out.

Thanks for listening …

— Esther

Esther Kim Varet is a Democratic candidate in the CA-40 congressional race.