David Kim, a children’s and family court attorney for Los Angeles County, is running to be elected in California’s 34th Congressional District. Kim seeks to reduce the amount of corporate and super PAC money in Congress and wants to practice “people-centered politics.” Through his background working for people and volunteering for campaigns in the past, he aims to change Congress from the inside.
California’s 34th Congressional District is located just north of USC in Los Angeles and is currently represented by incumbent Democrat Jimmy Gomez. Gomez has represented the district since 2017, when he was first elected in a special election.
Kim is a Democrat who is running for election for the third time against incumbent Democrat Jimmy Gomez. In an interview with Annenberg Media, he spoke about the goals he has for his time in Congress.
Could you introduce yourself and talk about your background?
David Kim: I am a children’s court attorney for parents, a juvenile dependency attorney for parents, where I’m one of the 150 or so L.A. County attorneys. We represent the most vulnerable parents of L.A. County trying to get their children back, getting them engaged in services. Prior to that, I was an immigration court attorney defending undocumented individuals and families in court, and for most of my career, I’ve just been helping working class people, those just really struggling to make ends meet. I came to run for Congress because I first volunteered for Kenneth Mejia, who’s our current L.A. City Controller, as he had ran for the seat back in 2018, unfortunately, he lost and decided not to run again, and so I asked if I could take his place, and that’s how we ended up running in 2020. Came really close, didn’t win it. We ran again last cycle, came even closer, but didn’t win it. And now we’re running a third time, and hopefully, third time’s the charm.
Why do you use we to refer to your campaign?
DK: It’s not myself running; it’s our campaign. We’ve always, from the start, built a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multi-background campaign coalition. And it’s not really for myself that I’m running. It’s really for our community, because our community hasn’t had town halls for years and our constituents’ voices aren’t being lifted up. So that’s what I mean by we, in terms of the volunteers, the activists that have helped out in this campaign, the previous campaign, and those who also helped out in Kenneth Mejia’s efforts to run for Congress as well.
You ran in 2020, then you ran in 2022, and now you’re running again. Why are you running again for the third time against [incumbent] Jimmy Gomez?
DK: In terms of the corporate PAC special interest money system and how it’s set up, it makes it impossible for any regular person to run. But fortunately, through different circumstances, we’ve been able to run again. And it takes a third time, to be honest, for anybody, for a regular person to beat an incumbent Democrat. You see that with Cori Bush, where she didn’t win on the first try. You see that with other Democratic grassroots-funded Congress members as well. And it takes some time, because the system is designed so that regular people can’t win. So we had to run a third time to win. You can sort of see our campaign as a six-year campaign that’s culminating now into a victory tomorrow.
What is something you want voters to know about you as a candidate?
DK: I am somebody who knows what it’s like to work two, three jobs to make ends meet. I work inside and outside of the courtroom, servicing the most vulnerable parents and families of the county and it’s very clear that things aren’t working. What I would like for voters to know is that we’re all set on centering the people, centering our constituents, centering their needs, about everything else, where we want to be the ones leading in a new era of shifting the paradigm of power back to the people with people centered politics, moral evolution, where we’re having reform in campaign finance, and really being that change maker in Congress right now, because that’s something that we need so desperately, because so many feel that their voices aren’t being lifted up. With that lived experience, with my legal experience, with my activist and organizer experience, we’re ready to to really push and and fight for L.A., because L.A., we don’t have, we don’t have a single people-centered representative right now. And what I mean by that is a representative that isn’t funded by any corporate PAC and special interest money, and we don’t have that in all of Los Angeles. So once we clinch this win, we hope to make the domino effect where we have more L.A. Congress members who are elected or who refuse to accept corporate PAC money, so we can start changing and increasing that critical mass in Congress.
Are you planning on working with other members of Congress or candidates to change the system and achieve your goals?
DK: For sure. Currently, the Democratic incumbents there, they’re all part of the club where they don’t let any new people in. So right now, Democratic incumbents, they’re really just kind of looking at the race if we do win, and obviously they’ll open their communication channels. But traditionally, Democratic incumbents don’t really open their communication channels to Democratic challengers unless that challenger wins. But we are prioritizing, and will prioritize to work with other Congress members, both in the party and across the aisle where necessary.
What did you find were the top issues for your constituents and what you plan to do while in office to address those issues?
DK: I was able to make 1000s of calls this cycle, and the top issues were affordability, housing, homelessness, Gaza, reproductive justice and climate action and senior rights were tied for fifth. In terms of all of those, you can check our website. We’re really fighting for all of those, whether it be bringing something that’s comprehensive, like the People’s Action homes guarantee, where we’re building millions of social housing units and we’re bringing that funding back, whether it be really pushing on a Green New Deal for our communities, not just a Green New Deal that’s abstract in theory, but something that’s really practical and starts now… We’ve always called for a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire, and we will continue to call for one, an arms embargo. And I will push whoever the next president and our Congress in that as well, once we get elected.
Extra questions:
What are your goals as a Congress member?
DK: It’s fundamentally changing the discourse of how politics and representation should be. Right now, I don’t believe our politicians are accurately representing constituents’ interests and needs. For example, a majority of Americans today want health care for all. A majority of Americans today want a ceasefire [in Gaza]. But obviously that’s not reflected in our Congress, and that’s a huge failure of representation. Town halls are just a part, but it’s a bigger part of this idea of co-governance, where our representatives are elected to co-govern with us. They report back to us, the constituents, and they hear our needs, they listen to our concerns, they take those back to Congress, and then they report back as to how that has been. But up until now, we’ve had business as usual where representatives aren’t even having face time with their constituents and are just taking commands and prioritizing whatever the party leaders’ interests and agendas are at the top, from the top to bottom approach. But really, representation is where representatives should really be primarily representing their constituents’ needs in tandem with all of that. And so we want to bring in an era of co-governance. That means monthly town halls, as there’s no single piece of legislation in the entire country that requires a congress member to have even one second of face time with their constituent, and that’s a huge issue. It would require congress members to hold office hours to create constituent lobbying, constituent caucuses for all of their districts, where constituents can join a caucus and meet regularly with their congress member. It would entail creating an online constituent portal, and so that we can increase the communication, collaboration, co-governance, constituents, and then the bigger part of people-centered politics, which is another core value of our platform, is while we while we try to increase the ways that we can leverage co-governance in the government, we also need to make sure that our politics is people-centered. That means really taking out all of the corporate PAC and special interest money and dark money that’s been pouring into our politics. And so that means creating a people centered politics systems where we’re banning corporate PAC money, overturning and Citizens United introducing a system of public financing of democracy dollars or democracy vouchers, where it would actually give regular people the ability to actually run for office and actually have a real chance, because there’s so much corporate PAC and special interest money that makes it entirely 1,000% impossible for any regular person to run for office. When the House of Representatives was intended for people of all backgrounds in life to run and and then introducing ranked choice voting, where people are able to have their votes be more accurately represented in the results that happen with the ranked choice voting system, in addition to fighting for all of the life empowering policies, whether it be for healthcare, for all housing, education, climate action, canceling student debt, and still fighting for all of that, but we can continue to say we’re fighting for all of that, but if we don’t fix the fundamentals, where we’re changing the corporate center politics into people-centered politics, where we’re changing the party-led leadership into co-governance led leadership, and then all of those other life empowering policies of Green New Deal, Medicare for all those are not possible. They just become utter lies that are coming out of politicians’ mouths if we don’t change the fundamental structures.
What sets you apart from the incumbent Jimmy Gomez?
DK: In all of these things, Jimmy Gomez could be doing 1,000% more. He hasn’t held a single public town hall for the district in person advance notice. He hasn’t done that ever since we ran against him in 2020 he has these side passport fairs on the side. But that’s not enough. That’s not listening to our constituents concerns. He has the power to create a special task force on homelessness. He has the power to create a special task force on small businesses, two areas that greatly affect our district. Our district is the fourth course out of 52 districts in California during the pandemic. Despite our district having the highest numbers minority-owned small business owners in the in the state of California, we received the second lowest number of PPP loans. And that really shows upon representation, about resources, about information and connecting, all of that in terms of the caucuses that he’s created, renter’s caucus and dad’s caucuses, those are mere social clubs in Congress, and they don’t have much clout or teeth. If he really wanted to do something, he would create a special task force on homelessness, really declaring an emergency in L.A. and putting things to work in that but that requires so much time and takes away from your own political, aspirational moves and career moves and all of that. In addition, he’s taken millions and millions of dollars from student debt collectors, private prisons, big farm, Big Oil, real estate developers, military defense contractors that we’re paying to commit to to continue our endless wars across the world. And so everything that he does is really just performative, if he I know that once we started running against him in 2020 he switched his vote on the military budget each year, but that’s just a performative vote, because he’s still taking money from Raytheon and all of these huge military defense contractors, and he’s just a very performative politician. Another example is going ahead and saying he’s calling for a ceasefire, but yet he’s not added his name to a single actual legislation of a permanent ceasefire, where he then where he also goes and claps for Netanyahu is addressed to Congress and smiles and claps and then calls on him to resign in a tweet after so and the way, and he’s being full progressive and doing these performative acts, because our district happens to be one of the most progressive in California out of the 52 and so knowing that for him to keep his seat and keep his political career, he has to say some magical words. And so he’s positioned himself as progressive, but in terms of substantively, where you follow his money, where you follow he might, yes, he might add his name as a co-sponsor to Medicare for all. But when did he at last organize? When did he last lead on those issues? What else did he do in terms of those progressive policies, in terms of just merely adding his name. And so at this time, we can’t afford to re-elect an incumbent that is just saying these magic words and does nothing. We need somebody that is more proactive, that will organize, that will rally up people in other districts, that will really listen to the concerns in our districts as well. And so there’s a huge, huge differences between the current Congress member and us.
You said that the results of the election have been getting closer. As the 2024 election is a presidential election, are you doing anything in particular to tap into the portion of the electorate that only votes in the presidential cycle?
DK: We’ve continued to engage with our constituents through the years, through the cycles, and we’ve made more inroads into different communities and neighborhoods of our district. I know that the voter turnout is expected to turn out to be a little higher than the 2020 election, but not too much higher. In terms of ways we’ve engaged, it’s just really being intentional in terms of trying to reach as many constituents, having conversations with them, but then also with the activists and organizers and organizations. They know that we aren’t in it just for namesake, and they’ve seen us be dedicated and running a first time, second time and third time. So as a result, I think it’s just the persistence in terms of getting the word out, really listening to what people have to say, whether it be millennials, Boomers, Gen Z, Gen X, and seeing what they really care about. And I think what’s very clear is that a lot of people are very jaded and are very disconnected from what’s going on. Because politics is seemingly a reality TV show right now because they’re not connected to what constituents really want. It comes back to this idea of: Are representatives really representing our needs? And they’re not. And so that’s the message we’ve been pushing with, and it’s done a lot to really gain hope for those who might be not interested in wanting to vote in this presidential election, and we’ve come across a lot of constituents who say “Hey, I’m going to sit out.” But we have that conversation of “hey, but you have so much impact to make in these down ballot races,” because for a position like ours, Congress is the one that authorizes the president to do certain actions or not actions, and we need more people in Congress who will really fight for the people and center the people’s needs first. And so that’s the message that we’re pushing forward with, in terms of strategy-wise, in terms of really getting out to the masses as much as possible, and then also really just listening. Because we’ve been listening, that’s why, as a result, four years ago, no Democratic Club endorsed us, but now, a majority of L.A. Democratic clubs have endorsed us and not the incumbent.