GOP Elects First Korean American Woman To Congress. But You Wouldn’t Know It. [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Despite early returns, Kim did not in fact win in CA-39. Instead, Cisneros won a narrow victory over Kim. The original article appears in its entirety below.

While leftists are howling at the moon over the ascent of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman elected to Congress, the media has almost virtually ignored another historic victory from Tuesday night’s midterm: Young Kim of the CA-39, the first Korean American elected to Congress, who is also a Republican.

The CA-39 has been a Republican stronghold for well over 20 years now and Democrats were hoping to flip it blue with the retirement of Congressman Ed Royce. They picked the perfect candidate for it: MegaMillions jackpot winner Gil Cisneros, who turned to philanthropy after a lucky lotto ticket secured him $266 million. Despite a hardfought battle, Cisneros came up short on Tuesday night, losing to State Assembly Member Young Kim by just a little under 4,000 votes: 78,201 to 74,330.

As noted by The Washington Examiner, Young Kim is the embodiment of everything that leftists apparently love: self-made woman of color, immigrant, etc. Unsurprisingly, the media ignored her anyway.

Despite the media’s laser focus on Orange County, famously a conservative dot on California’s deep blue coast, the media have largely ignored Kim. The likes of POLITICO Magazine and the Washington Post have found the page space to laud Rashida Tlaib, the other presumptive first Muslim woman in Congress who, like Omar, has flirted with embracing a one-state solution eradicating the state of Israel. Yet the Los Angeles Times, Kim’s own county paper, failed to profile her until a month ago, and ABC just did a few days ago.

The lack of national coverage received by Kim is certainly demonstrative of a quiet, presumably unintentional media bias that is disconcerting nonetheless. There’s nothing offensive or unremarkable about Kim that would disqualify her from the same glowing coverage granted to fellow first-timers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ayanna Pressley. Except for the fact that she’s a self-made woman of color with the wrong letter next to her name.

Kim also ran on a pro-immigration platform, separating herself from President Trump on issues like DACA and chain migration. She was arguably the only person the GOP could tap to keep the district red.

The only major media outlet to give any mention of Young Kim’s novel rise to the CA-39 is, believe it or not, Refinery29, which featured her at the very bottom of the article, “Women Of Color Who Made History This Midterm Election.”

Young Kim was born in Inchon, South Korea before spending most of her childhood Seoul. She first moved with her family to Guam and then attended University of Southern California where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in business administration. After graduating, she worked as a financial analyst for First Interstate Bank and then as a controller for JK Sportswear Manufacturing. Her political career began in 2014 when she successfully unseated Sharon Quirk-Silva.

Though Kim originally had planned to run for the Orange County Board of Supervisors, she immediately decided to run for Congress shortly after Ed Royce announced his retirement. He endorsed her just one day later.

Welcome to Congress, Young Kim.