For a number of election cycles, Democrats have been gunning for California’s fortieth Congressional District, a purplish space encompassing inland Orange County and neighboring San Bernardino and Riverside Counties that would assist ship the celebration management of the Home if Republican U.S. Rep. Younger Kim is ousted.
Privateness lawyer and former Chino Valley faculty board member Christina Gagnier spoke with the Washington Blade lately about her marketing campaign for the seat, which attracts from years of expertise “standing as much as bullies” all through her life and profession.
In 2021, she misplaced her faculty board seat by voting to defend the LGBTQ group towards assaults by teams like Mothers for Liberty and the Proud Boys, in addition to a coverage of pressured outing within the district.
On the identical time, “regardless of all of the tradition war-laden headlines, we created twin immersion packages. We labored on STEM schooling. We opened new faculties. We opened a bioscience academy. We did all these great issues that sadly didn’t make the headlines, however [it was] the issues that folks care about.”
Likewise, she advised the Blade, “the problems on this marketing campaign are kitchen desk points. Via Our Faculties, USA,” a gaggle that she based to advance public schooling, “I’m speaking to public faculty mother and father every single day, and they’re fearful about having the ability to purchase groceries.”
Gagnier continued, “I simply spoke with a mother who took out a mortgage to purchase groceries and provides for a month due to how they’re getting hit. I’ve talked to enterprise homeowners who’ve simply misplaced authorities contracts and is perhaps going into debt as a result of the federal government simply minimize off the contract.”
Right here is the place the rubber meets the highway by way of how the brand new administration’s work in Washington is harming the lives of on a regular basis individuals, she stated.
“Persons are realizing that whereas Younger Kim masquerades as a average, she’s voting 100% in lockstep with Mike Johnson’s MAGA majority,” Gagnier stated, referring to the Republican Home speaker.
“We see households on this district struggling, they usually’re contacting their consultant, and she or he’s not doing something,” she stated, including that constituents are prone to proceed struggling as “Donald Trump is reducing funding and doing issues which are impacting their day-to-day lives.”
The president and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill are bullying individuals, Gagnier burdened. About 82,000 individuals in CA-40 will probably be harmed by proposed cuts to Medicaid, she stated. “The problems on this marketing campaign are kitchen desk points.”
Represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Younger Kim since 2021, the district is dwelling to small companies that present its “lifeblood,” she stated, and the homeowners of those enterprises are “already feeling the impacts” of “the tariffs” in addition to “the cuts popping out of D.C.”
“I converse to veterans who’re additionally enterprise homeowners, and , they’re shedding alternatives and assist left and proper,” Gagnier added.
Moreover, she stated, “the opposite factor that’s getting attacked is selection: Households having the ability to make their very own personal medical selections, ladies having the ability to have the rights that they need to have.”
“I’m placing within the work to ensure that we’ve the assets and the message and we’re reaching voters in order that we will truly flip the seat,” Gagnier stated. “So, , I feel that is completely doable.”
CA-40 is the GOP-held seat in California that Donald Trump received by the smallest margin in 2024, and final yr Kim defended her seat with 1.5 factors lower than the margin she received in 2022, regardless of the remainder of the nation transferring towards the fitting throughout that point interval.
Looking forward to the Democratic major election, “There’s a pair different candidates which have thrown their hat within the ring, however, , I’m 100% laser-focused on my marketing campaign, ensuring that I’m speaking with our households, our enterprise homeowners, our veterans, and our seniors, and that I’m doing the work I have to do,” Gagnier stated.
Trump is “destroying the Division of Training,” Gagnier stated, and he chosen a nominee to guide the company, Linda McMahon, who represents “chaos and destruction.”
The newly confirmed secretary was picked to not “reform the Division of Training,” to not “make things better that is perhaps points on the Division of Training,” however somewhat is “coming in to destroy” the company.
Gagnier stated “Trump and Musk are already within the Division of Training, gutting it, and the tip results of that’s already being felt by public faculty households.” For instance, she stated, “We work with a number of particular schooling mother and father. I’ve mother and father which are frightened that their youngsters are not going to have the ability to go to public faculty as a result of they received’t have assets. That’s not okay.”
“We now have academics which are getting fired already as a result of the grants and packages that come from Division of Training are being taken away,” she continued. “We now have actually proficient educators who love youngsters, who love serving to youngsters, getting unemployed.”
Returning to her election, Gagnier burdened “this is the reason this race is so vital. We now have to flip the home. We now have to get in there and ensure that these cuts are stopped and we restore all these invaluable funding sources which are impacting households.”
“In flipping the home, what meaning is we’re capable of restore these packages,” she stated. “We’re capable of ensure that these protections and funding that’s in place to assist America’s households, that they’re reinstituted.”
“Donald Trump is a bully. Donald Trump shouldn’t be going to cease being a bully. He’s going to maintain entering into and reducing issues that America’s households, that the households of CA-40, depend on,” Gagnier stated.
Requested what the Democratic Occasion writ giant ought to do following final yr’s electoral defeat, she stated “we’d like a reset on usually as a celebration is the best way we talk with on a regular basis individuals,” which is able to contain being “higher listeners” somewhat than doing “one-way communication.”
“We have to begin listening to voters, not tweeting at them,” Gagnier defined. “We have to make it clear to voters that we respect them, and that’s what I’m doing. I respect them, regardless of who they voted for [as] president, I respect them. I’m listening to them. I’m right here to advocate for them.”
This focus deviates from the ways utilized by her Republican opponent who, Gagnier stated, “can’t even take easy votes like supporting same-sex marriage” and whose voting file isn’t any completely different from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.).
“Younger Kim has taken an oppositional stance to defending fundamental rights, like whether or not it’s for the LGBTQIA+ group or a lady’s proper to selection and to make their very own healthcare selections, she actually has taken an oppositional stance to defending fundamental rights,” she added. “We’re going to speak that, however I feel that individuals must be conscious that her voting file isn’t any completely different than the remainder of the MAGA majority.”
Standing as much as bullies
“What retains mother and father up at evening, households up at evening, are costs on the grocery retailer, not tradition wars,” Gagnier stated. “And so I’m going to do my half on this marketing campaign to gear my messaging again towards these kitchen desk points.”
In contrast, Republicans like Kim have prioritized trans points that the majority mother and father and constituents in CA-40 do not likely care about, she stated. “They’re fearful about their youngsters accessing school and profession alternatives. Once they’re going dwelling at evening after working all day, commuting, choose up and drop off, [trans issues] should not the problems that they’re involved about.”
“I misplaced a college board seat,” Gagnier stated. “And I might do it time and again and once more, as a result of I’m going to face as much as bullies, and I used to be not going to permit these college students to be bullied within the faculty district I represented.”
Nor do different mother and father approve of children being bullied in faculties, neither theirs nor anybody else’s, she stated. “They don’t like youngsters getting singled out. They don’t like faculties being much less protected.”
Gagnier added, “we see a number of noise on the market however mother and father love their public faculties, and I feel that we have to deal with faculty security. And a part of that is faculty security. If youngsters at college don’t really feel protected going to high school, don’t really feel protected whereas they’re at college, they usually’re being focused, that makes the college unsafe for each different child, too.”
The bioscience academy she helped to spearhead as a college board member is a “four-year program for highschool college students” that — “along with the common issues highschool youngsters have within the classroom” — affords them the chance to discover “careers in bioscience, biotechnology, the medical subject, engineering.”
Gagnier continued, “So it simply actually offers these youngsters this very career-technical schooling centered publicity to those fields. And I’m very proud that we launched that program whereas I used to be on the college board, and households love this system, and so I’m simply so blessed that we had been capable of present that for the scholars and their households.”
