Two Republican congresswomen from California are withdrawing their support for Texas GOP House candidate Sery Kim after she said this week that she does not want Chinese immigrants to come to the U.S. and blames them for the spread of coronavirus.
The couple, Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel said in a joint statement on Friday: “We can not continue with good conscience to support her candidacy.”
“As the first Korean American Republican women to serve in Congress, we want to empower and uplift fellow members of the AAPI community who want to serve their communities,” they said.
Series Kim’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The candidate, who is also a Korean American, made false, anti-Chinese remarks earlier this week during a candidate forum in suburban Fort Worth.
“I do not want them here at all,” she said on Wednesday. “They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they do not hold themselves responsible.”
“I can say that because I’m Korean,” she argued.
The country’s first confirmed case of Covid-19 was a 35-year-old Snohomish County, Washington, man who visited Wuhan, China, and other infections are likely the result.
Several of the initial outbreaks of coronavirus in California and the East Coast have been linked to people who have just come from Europe, where they were probably infected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found.
Sery Kim, who served in the Small Business Administration during the Trump administration, is running in a special election on May 1 to fill the sixth vacant seat in the Congressional District when Ron Wright joined Covid-19 earlier this year. complications deceased.
Young Kim and Steel said they tried to get Sery Kim to apologize in vain.
“We spoke to Sery Kim yesterday about her hurtful and untrue comments about Chinese immigrants, and made it clear that her comments are unacceptable,” the duo said.
