Representative Young Kim, a battle-tested Orange County Republican, has ousted veteran Democrats in tight races, but she\u2019s actually a \u201cTrump-hating liberal,\u201d one television advertisement proclaims.<\/p>\n
Representative Ken Calvert, a Republican fixture in nearby Riverside County, is a longtime thorn in the side of Democrats, but he\u2019s guilty of \u201csabotaging President Trump\u2019s agenda,\u201d a different ad declares.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans are distancing themselves from Mr. Trump these days, given his flagging approval ratings and an unpopular war with Iran that has divided the MAGA base. But not Ms. Kim or Mr. Calvert, two G.O.P. incumbents forced to face off for political survival after Democrats scrambled their House districts in a gerrymandering push last fall.<\/p>\n
Squaring off in a redrawn and heavily Republican district that combines their turf, Ms. Kim, 63, and Mr. Calvert, 72, longtime colleagues in the House, are both proudly touting their conservative bona fides while accusing each other of being out of step with MAGA voters.<\/p>\n
For all the hand-wringing over fractures in Mr. Trump\u2019s America First coalition and his waning influence over some corners of the Republican Party, the contest shows that plenty of conservatives remain eager to align closely with the president.<\/p>\n
Both members say they maintain a cordial relationship when they see each other on Capitol Hill. But as a June primary approaches, there is little to call cordial in their campaign rhetoric. Mr. Calvert, in particular, has blasted out a series of emails portraying Ms. Kim as a RINO: a Republican In Name Only.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis race is going to get very ugly, very quickly,\u201d said Jon Fleischman, a veteran Republican strategist in Orange County who has not taken a side in the primary. He added: \u201cThese are both rough-and-tumble candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n
This primary season has seen a host of intraparty spats, but most have featured Democratic incumbents facing challengers as the party endures a reckoning over age and establishment politics. Last year\u2019s redistricting wars, though, have set up several potential member-on-member contests, including two Democratic representatives in Houston<\/a>.<\/p>\n Republicans have ducked potential face-offs created by redistricting elsewhere, in Utah<\/a> and in Northern California<\/a>.<\/p>\n But in Southern California, Ms. Kim and Mr. Calvert are clinging doggedly to shrinking red turf. They are fighting over the new 40th District, a swath of terrain southeast of Los Angeles that includes Orange County suburbs, Riverside County cities and a stretch of the Santa Ana Mountains near where bright orange California poppies sometimes form a vibrant spring \u201csuper bloom.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Proposition 50, the redistricting measure championed by California Democrats as a response to Republican-led redistricting in Texas, imperiled five Republican-held districts \u2014 including Mr. Calvert\u2019s, which was sliced up and divided among other nearby districts. In the process of making other districts more favorable to Democrats, the ballot measure dumped conservative neighborhoods into the 40th District held by Ms. Kim, transforming it to a solidly Republican seat from a battleground. Because it includes significant territory from Mr. Calvert\u2019s current district, both incumbents can lay claim to it.<\/p>\n The G.O.P. infighting has divided local Republicans, who must confront the question: Who do you side with when two of your friends are fighting?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very awkward \u2014 it\u2019s awkward for donors, it\u2019s awkward for electeds,\u201d said Will O\u2019Neill, the chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County. \u201cBecause our county party hasn\u2019t endorsed between two good Republicans, my job is to make sure the conflict doesn\u2019t cause down-ballot problems.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Calvert, a 33-year House veteran who leads the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee, has cultivated decades of local connections. Ms. Kim, known as a prodigious fund-raiser and tenacious campaigner, has become battle-scarred with her narrow loss in a battleground House district to Gil Cisneros, a Democrat, in 2018, and then her comeback victory against Mr. Cisneros two years later.<\/p>\n In this year\u2019s showdown, a super PAC aligned with Mr. Calvert struck first, dropping about $2.2 million into television, radio and mail advertisements this spring accusing Ms. Kim of being insufficiently conservative.<\/p>\n The super PAC does have some fodder to work with: Ms. Kim voted in 2021 to censure Mr. Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Mr. Calvert\u2019s campaign has also pointed to Ms. Kim\u2019s comments to The Orange County Register<\/a> in 2022, when, asked about Mr. Trump, she said she had \u201cnever met him.\u201d (Ms. Kim\u2019s campaign said the two have met on several occasions since then, pointing to evidence of two encounters in early 2025.)<\/p>\n \u201cWe need a conservative who\u2019s been with President Trump through thick and thin, not just when it\u2019s politically expedient,\u201d Mr. Calvert said in an interview. \u201cShe\u2019s part of the more moderate group in the House, and she has separated herself from President Trump on numerous occasions.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI don\u2019t try to make this stuff personal, but sometimes it ends up that way.\u201d<\/p>\n