By admin 
Congressional candidate Mai Vang was denounced by a fellow Sacramento City Council member Wednesday over her upcoming campaign fundraising stream with socialist streamer Hasan Piker.
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In a statement on social media, Councilmember Lisa Kaplan said she stood in “absolute defiance” of the “toxic, misogynistic rhetoric propagated by online personalities like Hasan Piker,” and accused him of building a brand on “sexism, antisemitism and the degradation of women.”
“Councilmember Vang should not be aligning herself or her campaign with someone who uses his platform to perpetuate sexism and degrade women,” Kaplan, who represents North Natomas, said in the statement.
Vang’s campaign against longtime Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui in California’s 7th Congressional District is part of a national wave of progressive candidates challenging moderate Democrats and drawing support from national figures including Piker.
Kaplan, alongside four other Sacramento City Council members and Mayor Kevin McCarty, is endorsing Matsui for reelection over her colleague, who represents south Sacramento neighborhoods including Meadowview and Valley Hi/North Laguna.
Earlier Wednesday, Matsui’s campaign called on local female leaders to rescind their endorsements for Vang over her association with Piker, specifically calling on Sacramento Council Members Caity Maple and Karina Talamantes and State Sen. Angelique Ashby, D-Sacramento.
News that Vang would be joining Piker on his stream was first reported by Politico. Matsui‘s campaign echo Kaplan’s criticism, accusing Vang of aligning herself with an “anti-American and anti-Semitic clout chaser to raise money for her flailing and out of touch campaign” in a statement to Fox40.
Vang fired back against Matsui, telling Fox40 that the incumbent was “spending more energy on which shows I go on than on the working families in this district who can’t afford rent or groceries.”
Piker, who streams daily on the streaming platform Twitch, has become a controversial figure in leftist politics — drawing criticism from President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, which displayed a photo of Piker in his underwear at its September convention.
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Piker has also faced criticism from others on the political left, including years of accusations that his rhetoric about women is misogynistic.
mai’s opponent is a long term incumbent democrat who’s openly trying to elevate the republican so she doesn’t have to face a younger left challenger in the general election. classic ca dem machine politics.
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 23, 2026
Piker has been an uncompromising critic of Israel in his support for Palestinian liberation and has compared Zionists to neo-Nazis. His statements about Zionism have drawn condemnation from Jewish organizations including the Anti-Defamation League. Piker has rejected accusations of antisemitism, arguing that Judaism should not be conflated with Zionism.
Criticism by Kaplan, who is Jewish, came on the third anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage, an assault that set off the war in Gaza. The Anti-Defamation League has also criticized Piker over his commentary about the attack, accusing him of justifying the violence and disputing evidence that Hamas and other militants committed sexual violence that day.
Piker did not return a request for comment via email, but addressed Matsui’s statements about him in a Twitch stream last week. In the clip, Piker criticized Matsui and emphasized his support for Vang and fellow progressive congressional candidates but repeatedly mispronounced Vang’s name.
“They had a debate where Vang cooked her, right? Like she asked about who was funding her campaign and she looked very old, feeble, out of touch and oblivious… rather belligerent on that debate stage,” he said about the candidates’ Aug. 27 debate.
Piker asserted his confidence in Vang’s victory later in the stream.
“Mai Vang is going to win this race, we’re going to make sure that she does,” he said. “We’re going to increase the excitement because we cannot allow a blue safe haven like California and its many districts to be represented by the old calcified institutionalists that for far too long have leaned into corporate interests rather than the interests of the working class.”
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Vang’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
This story was originally published October 7, 2026 at 3:33 PM.