Young Kim is defending her support for President Trump's strike on Iran even as she tries to keep the focus on the cost of living in her race against Ken Calvert in California's 40th congressional district. The exchange puts foreign policy and grocery bills in the same frame, and it comes as voters in the district weigh two Republicans with very different styles.
Earlier this month in Mission Viejo, Madison Aument asked Kim about affordability, Iran, gas prices and immigration. Kim answered that affordability is the keyword for the 2026 election cycle and said she has known that for some time. She also said she supports the initial action of President Trump having to go and attack Iran, adding that the United States needed to make sure Iran does not possess or develop weapons of mass destruction or the ability to build more nuclear weapons.
Kim tied that position to what she described as the practical effects of conflict. She said the action has crippled Iran's ability to continue with its nuclear program and suggested the Strait of Hormuz conflict may have contributed to higher energy prices. At the same time, she pointed to the price of gasoline at home, saying California gas prices are on average $1 or $2 more than the national average.
That matters because affordability is not a side issue in this race. A Public Policy Institute of California survey found that 96% of Californians say affordability is their number one concern heading into the midterms. And a recent UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found that 70% of California voters do not approve of President Trump's war, leaving Kim to defend a military decision that many of the state's voters reject while also arguing that higher fuel costs are part of a broader pattern.
Kim put the blame on state politics, saying Sacramento politicians have created the situation on gas prices. That line fits her broader pitch as a Republican who has sponsored many bipartisan bills, but it also exposes the harder edge of the campaign: she is backing a president's strike abroad while asking voters to trust her on the price they pay at the pump. Calvert, by contrast, is running as a hardline MAGA conservative, and the contest is shaping up as a fight between two versions of the same party in one of Southern California's only safe Republican seats.
The unresolved question is whether Kim can persuade voters that her support for the Iran strike was the right call without letting it overpower the bread-and-butter issues that brought affordability to the center of the race. For now, she is betting that gas prices, immigration and her record of bipartisan bills will matter more than the backlash over the war.
