An immigrant to the United States, Young Kim’s unique perspective on the American Dream has led her to devote her life to public service and giving back to her community.

A working mother of four, Young started her career as a small business owner and financial analyst. Young began public service in former U.S. Representative Ed Royce’s office over 25 years ago, eventually becoming his Director of Community Operations.

Despite long odds in 2014, Young Kim unseated an incumbent Democrat to become the first ever Korean-American Republican woman elected to serve in the California State Assembly. As an Assemblywoman, Young fought for public safety causes, low tuition rates, veterans, children, and victims of domestic violence.  As a legislator, Young championed a measure that kept tuition rates low and reserved millions to aid homeless veterans and children. Kim also authored AB 2078, a bill protecting domestic violence survivors, that passed the Assembly with overwhelming, bipartisan support.

Young Kim’s career in public service has inspired and shown fellow immigrants, working mothers, female business owners, and any American who believes in the American Dream that any individual can achieve success and serve their community despite race, gender and economic status.

Young is a proud recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marian Bergeson Excellence in Public Service Series. In 2019, Young was honored as one of only four “Women of Impact” from POLITICO at its national Annual Women Rule Summit. She was also recognized as one of the “Orange County’s 100 Most Influential People of 2019” by the Orange County Register.

Dedicated to community involvement, Young has founded and continues to serve on the Board of Directors for numerous local non-profit organizations.

Young and her husband Charles reside in La Habra and are the proud parents of four grown children.

Gil Cisneros is a Democrat representing California’s 39th Congressional district in the United States House of Representatives to ensure our children are provided with the same ladder of opportunity that the Navy provided him. Gil is not a career politician, he is a veteran and education advocate, who has the courage to stand up to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to lower healthcare costs, protect education funding, and work to create good-paying local jobs. He serves on the House Armed Services and Veteran’s Affairs Committees.

The son of a public school cafeteria worker and a Vietnam veteran, Gil attended college on a Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (R.O.T.C.) scholarship, and graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University. Gil also holds an MBA from Regis University and M.A. in Urban Education Policy from Brown. As the first in his family to graduate from college, Gil will fight Republican attempts to cut education funding and Pell Grants, tools that empower not just students, but entire communities.

Gil knows firsthand the challenges families face when they are unable to afford healthcare. Gil’s own father suffered health problems from exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam, and lost his health insurance. In Congress, Gil will stand up to Donald Trump and Republicans to protect healthcare as a right for all Californians.

Through ten years of service to our country as a U.S. Naval Officer, Gil was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, the National Defense Medal, and the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for his exemplary service to his country.

Gil is the Veterans, Education Advocate and co-founder of The Gilbert & Jacki Cisneros Foundation, an organization committed to strengthening public schools, and creating college opportunities for students and veterans.  He also serves on the advisory board of Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher Initiative for college access.

Gil’s dedication toward philanthropy began when he purchased a winning California Mega Millions lottery ticket in 2010. Gil and Jacki partnered with the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the city of Pico Rivera, California to create Generation First Degree Pico Rivera, with the goal of putting a college degree in every household in the city. Gil has worked to strengthen schools, and promote access to quality education by supporting Yellow Ribbon programs for Veterans, establishing scholarships, and creating an endowment for the dependents of former Navy Supply Corps personnel, so that tuition costs are never a barrier to educational opportunities.

Gil serves as Secretary of the Latino Donor Collaborative, and a board member of The Wooden Floor, a non-profit dance studio based in Santa Ana, California. He is a member of the Southern California Advisory Council for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, a member of the Advisory Council for the Dean of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at The George Washington University, a member of the Brown University Diversity Council, and previously served on the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts for The Kennedy Center under President Obama.

Now the parents of twin boys, Gil and Jacki remain committed to expanding educational opportunities for Southern California youth.

I was born in Fullerton, California, in 1977. A few months later, my mother, Jeannette - originally from Virginia - and my father, Dennis - originally from Iowa - moved me and my older sister, Denise, to Chino Hills, where I've lived almost ever since. I graduated from Ayala High School, in Chino Hills, in 1995, and went to Mt. SAC community college in Walnut, where I studied the fire sciences to become a firefighter. Soon after I graduated from Mt. SAC's EMT school and 22nd Basic Fire Academy, I got a job at a motorcycle magazine and stopped trying to get a job as a firefighter. I grew up riding and racing motocross, so the job was perfect for me. Over 20 years later, I still work in the motorcycle industry.

My wife, Erica, and I just welcomed our first (and likely only) child on Christmas Day, 2019. Her name's Daphne, and she's our entire world.

My father served in the US Marine Corps, serving three tours in Vietnam before working as a truck driver and then a construction superintendant (the latter of which was a skill he learned working as an apprentice to my grandfather on my mother's side, Norman Karn, who was a master brick and stone mason, and was responsible for building some of the add-on buildings for the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, as well as the brick buildings across the street from Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park). My mother spent most of her professional life in banking, starting as a teller in the 1970s and eventually becoming a Vice President.

I'm self-taught. I have an insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge and spend my time reading almost entirely non-fiction, from history (US history is my favorite subject) to physics, biology, philosophy, sociology, economics, and more. But I'm a regular person just like most people in the 39th district. And as you can see from above, I have incredibly deep roots here.

My father has been fighting cancers associated with Agent Orange exposure from his time in Vietnam for about 13 years now. To date, he has overcome five different cancers, and not only did the health insurance nearly bankrupt him prior to his qualifying for Medicare, but in 2016, the VA cut my father's disability benefits in half, justifying it by saying his cancers are in remission so he's "less disabled" now. This has put an undue burden on my parents, and that was the final straw that caused me to decide to run for office the first time during the 2018 election. And I'm going to keep running until we win. Because it's important.

As far as I'm concerned, any valid political philosophy must be consistent from one subject to the next. It took me at least a decade of constant effort to figure out what I believe and why I believe it. My political philosophy is also consistent with the philosophy I live by every day, which I believe is as it should be.

The first point of my political philosophy is that all people are the same at their core, regardless of where they're born, what language they speak, what religion they adhere to, their gender, sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristic. All people want three things: To be able to live and raise a family in relative safety; to be accepted for who they are; and to be respected. It's that simple. And if we all keep this in mind when we meet someone different from us - that we are all human beings, and as such are the same at our core - I think it becomes much easier to not only accept, but celebrate our differences.

My second point is that I believe in honesty even when honesty is inconvenient. One of my favorite quotes is, "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." Today, we live in a world where people who tell the truth about the misdeeds of our own government are treated quite literally as "America's Most Wanted" while the people who commit said misdeeds are not punished in any way whatsoever. This is indicative of a massive problem within our government, and both parties perpetuate this idea. Meanwhile, the same government tells us that it's okay for the government to spy on us under the provisions included in the USA PATRIOT Act because "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." If this government is ever going to be "by, for, and of the people" again, it's the government that should live by that adage, not the citizenry. If we don't know what our government is actually doing here and abroad, we cannot be expected to use our votes and activism to guide our government. And if our votes don't guide our country, this isn't any kind of democracy (republic or otherwise).

My final core belief is in the importance of actual "liberty and justice for all." We, the people, must take ownership of the behavior of our government, because if we won't, who will? We must also take ownership of our own lives. I am running for office to empower people, not to take power from them. I have definite beliefs about how to fix almost every problem we face as a nation, and I can explain those things to anybody who asks, in as much detail as they want. But everything I believe is rooted in the belief that we, the people, are capable of making good choices if only given the education and opportunity to do so. I get the feeling sometimes that the two, corrupt parties that run our country think we're stupid and that their job is to take care of us, but I prefer a world where we are empowered through education and economic security and then expected to make good decisions for ourselves, our families, and our communities.

Keeping these things in mind, here are two of my positions to illustrate how I believe things should be done in government:
Abortion: Pro-choice. Almost 3/4 of women who have abortions cite financial hardship as a primary reason. If we fix the financial hardship, we drastically reduce abortions; but it must remain each woman's choice to make.
Guns: Pro-2nd-Amendment. Gun crime, like all violent crime, is a direct result of a lack of affordable healthcare (including mental healthcare) and other social structures that most first-world countries have (and we lack). Fix those things, you fix gun crime, but it's not smart to take guns from people to protect themselves and their families in a society that is this dangerous. And gun owners will never go for it (and they shouldn't).

Those two issues (among many others) are used to polarize the public against each other and keep the two parties in charge using the age-old strategy of "divide and conquer". But banning abortions, or guns, won't actually address, or even significantly reduce, abortions or gun-crimes. The fact is we can address and reduce both with essentially the same policies. Almost every "wedge issue" the parties use to divide us up is similar to this. Neither party has the actual solution. They just have a *marketable* sound-bite solution that would change nothing.

It's way past time we stand together as a community and demand actual solutions. It's time we vote independent and kick these parties out.