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Democrats Doing Something Different (Finally!) Pt 1: Esther Kim Varet [1]
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Date: 2025-07-27
In an era where every Democrat in the country is forking over cash trying to figure out what resonates before the midterms, when a candidate catches my attention by actually doing something instead of just talking about it, I tune in. One such individual did that recently: enter Esther Kim Varet.
CA-40 isn’t a seat most folks are familiar with outside of the beltway. MAGA Rep. Young Kim is a rubber stamp for all the worst policies of the administration, but largely keeps out of the spotlight. Esther is a successful art gallery entrepreneur and child of Korean immigrants, the kind of big thinking person you rarely see on the ballot.
So, how does one get the nation to pay attention to a flip seat in largely blue California? Constant innovation. I first clocked Esther when she made national news for being the first campaign to publicly use AI to produce an attack ad . The campaign rolled out the ad, which said that Young Kim was as fake as the people in the ad, not even a WEEK after Google’s VEO3 model went public.
From there, it didn’t take much investigation to see how their campaign was blending tried and true tactics with new flavors. Their yard signs have fill in the blank gaps for supporters to customize them. A few weeks ago they did a jewelry sweepstakes to raise money and draw attention to their campaign. Just this week they rolled out anime-esther for a social media snippet. Their merch is a far cry from most campaign shirts that end up in the garbage.
Her newest move is billboard trucks slamming Young Kim for voting to hide the Epstein list. That kind of “year round” attacks and paid messaging is the reason why MAGA wins the messaging game. In some parts of the country, they have year round newspaper
and radio outlets constantly spewing propaganda, whereas Dems only parachute in at the last minute. Esther has spun the game board, and is keeping the opponent on defense.
What she is doing is working. The NRCC is firing off blog posts, tweets, and fundraising emails nearly daily at this point, absolutely hammering Esther. Meanwhile, Esther has had a groundswell of grassroots donors, doubling the raise of basically every other Dem in her primary.
I love to see campaigns that experiment and innovate, because that’s how we win, by staying a step ahead and forcing the opponent to respond. With so much at stake during the midterms, we need more candidates like Esther Kim Varet.
You can join me in donating to her campaign HERE :
And can follow her @estherkimvaret on most platforms.
Thanks for reading, and keep resisting!
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