On election night, over 50 people gathered to monitor the preliminary results of the election at a barbershop-sized retail office in Buena Park in support of 45th District Congressional Republican candidate Michelle Steel.
As of Nov. 9, at 5 p.m. Steel had 55.3 percent of the vote over Democrat candidate Jay Chen with 44.7 percent.
Among Tuesday night’s crowd were several local leaders and politicians that said Steel was the best choice.
“She does such a great job for Orange County and Fountain Valley, and all these cities here, so we’re very excited to participate in the victory,” Fountain Valley Mayor Patrick Harper, who is in a race of his own for re-election, told The Epoch Times.
Also in attendance was Chuong Vo, mayor of Cerritos.
“I think she’s done an outstanding job so far. We need good conservative minds at the Congress level to make sure that we, as a country, and locally can sustain this high inflation,” Vo told The Epoch Times.
Steel spoke to the crowd around 10:30 p.m.
“To all my wonderful volunteers, amazing volunteers who knocked on nearly 200,000 doors and made 700,000 phone calls, from the bottom of my heart I just want to say thank you,” she said.
She also said that her team campaigned in seven different languages, which demonstrated the Republicans’ ability to connect with large swaths of voters.
“It shows that Republicans can compete in a diverse community and districts like this for years to come across America,” she said. “Republicans are standing up for the issues people care about. Lower taxes, safer communities, and giving everyone a shot at the American dream.”
Steel seeks to represent the newly drawn California 45th district, encompassing portions of Los Angeles and Orange counties including Artesia, Buena Park, Cerritos, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Hawaiian Gardens, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Placentia, and Westminster, and portions of Brea, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Lakewood, and Yorba Linda.
She is currently serving her first term as a representative of California’s 48th District, which encompasses most of the Orange County coast and the Little Saigon District of Garden Grove and Westminster.
As an immigrant from South Korea, Steel said she became interested in politics after seeing her mother struggle as a small business to pay taxes, according to her campaign website.
Ultimately, she successfully ran for the Board of Equalization, which administers and collects faxes for the state, and represented its 3rd district from 2007 to 2015. Then, she served as a member of Orange County Board of Supervisors from 2015 to 2021, before representing the 48th district since 2021.
While of the tax board, she helped return over $400 million back to California taxpayers and as a supervisor, she successfully advocated to oppose all tax increases, according to her campaign website.
Now as a member of Congress, she seeks to continue her fight against taxes, support law enforcement, improve the healthcare system and find solutions to fix the economy, according to her campaign website.
Her opponent, Chen, is a real estate business owner, Harvard graduate and former U.S. Navy Reserve reaching the rank of lieutenant commander, when he was deployed as an intelligence officer in the Middle East in 2020 in the campaign against ISIS.
He previously served on the Board of Education for Hacienda La Puente Unified School District from 2007 to 2015 and was elected in 2015 to represent Area 5, which covers Hacienda Heights and La Puente, on the Mt. San Antonio College Board of Trustees. He was reelected in 2020 and served as the board president in 2021.
According to Chen’s campaign website, he will fight for small businesses to have more access to loans to help the local economy, put forth legislation to invest in education, reduce inflation and work to strengthen supply chains. He said he will also fight to make sure veterans have better access to quality health insurance and employment opportunities after service.
