ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA – Just past the sign welcoming visitors to the "All-American city" of Westminster, in one of the endless strip malls along its wide boulevards, I saw them. High up on a couple of light poles were a series of posters with just four words: "China’s Choice … Jay Chen." I’d heard about the posters, done in the colors of the Chinese flag, but wanted to seek one out, and it didn’t take long. Zooming in on my phone, I could read the disclaimer in tiny lettering: "Paid for by Michelle Steel for Congress."

This midterm election has played host to the usual cornucopia of misinformation, baseless accusations, and barely contained rage. But few places have seen such a sustained bout of open demonization as Steel’s campaign against Chen, a Taiwanese American lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and community college trustee, running as the Democratic candidate in California’s heavily Asian 45th District. Steel, herself a Korean immigrant, is targeting ads at the local Vietnamese community—the largest anywhere outside of Vietnam—which has historically been virulently anti-communist. She is playing on that history to tar her opponent as being in league with the Chinese Communist Party.

China has been a punching bag on both sides of the aisle this year. Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan drew criticism earlier in the year for an ad that repeatedly set up a U.S.-vs.-China binary. Trudy Busch Valentine, a Democrat running for Senate in Missouri, more recently criticized her opponent Eric Schmitt for voting to "allow communists from China to buy our farmland," saying that "he’d be China’s senator."

But the decidedly personal and brazenly public message against Chen, whose grandmother fled communist China, has taken things to an entirely new level, even driving backlash within the community. A new divisiveness has come to the area known as "Little Saigon," with the potential to build dangerous momentum for hate.