Republican Kevin Kiley is running for re-election in suburban Sacramento

from Maya S. MillerCalMatters

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After months of suspense, debate and a game-show-style process of elimination, Republican Kevin Kiley has finally picked a district in which to seek re-election.

The two-term congressman from Roseville announced this week that he will file to run for the Sacramento-area 6th Congressional District after California’s Proposition 50 dramatically changed his current district into a solid Democratic pickup.

If Kylie wants to keep her job, the former state assemblyman, who has gone from a more traditional center-right Republican to A Trump-approved outbreak — will have to defy the odds. The new 6th leans left — former Vice President Kamala Harris would have won the district by more than six percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, according to data from the California Target Book, a nonpartisan, subscriber-based election guide.

Challenges ahead

And while Kelly appears to have a clear path to the November election and a significant fundraising advantage, his Democratic opponents stand to gain much from widespread voter dissatisfaction with the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, especially among independents.

“He’s going to lose decisively unless something very strange happens,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist in California who co-founded the Lincoln Against Trump Project.

In a social media post on Monday, Kiley said he decided to run in the 6th District even though his team had “favorable polls” that showed he could win the safe Republican 5th Congressional District, currently held by longtime Rep. Tom McClintock.

Although Kiley emphasized that he chose the more Democratic district because it includes his home turf of Placer County, he almost certainly considered the complicated optics and logistics of mounting a primary challenge against a longtime Republican congressional colleague like McClintock.

“Although this will be a more challenging race, I believe we can build a winning coalition for common sense,” Kylie wrote on social media. “Thank you all for your encouragement and patience.”

Kylie’s spokesman, John Piersos, declined interview requests from CalMatters.

Kylie’s first hurdle will be prevailing in June’s nonpartisan primary. In that race, he faces a fractured Democratic field that includes Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and one-time colleague of Kylie’s in the Senate; Sacramento District Attorney Tien Ho; Lauren Babb-Tomlinson, who directs public affairs for Planned Parenthood; and Martha Guerrero, Mayor of West Sacramento.

As the only viable Republican running against a sea of ​​Democrats, Kylie has a good chance to become one of the top two candidates and advance to the Nov. 3 general election.

And unlike the crowded field of Democrats, who will race against each other on spending in hopes of gaining an edge over the rest of the field, Kylie should come out of June with a fuller war chest ready to unleash on her opponent in November. Kylie accounted for far more cash than any of his Democratic opponents — $2 million at the end of last year, according to the latest federal documents.

Despite a clear path to a seat in the November election, Kylie still faces the same obvious challenge as Republicans across the country — the unpopularity of the Trump administration and the GOP-controlled Congress. A recent Reuters-Ipsos survey put the president’s approval rating at 39%.

“This is not an ideal place for Democrats,” said Matt Rexroad, a Republican strategist and redistricting expert, speaking of the 6th District. “The problem is the overall atmosphere. Republicans are going to have a tough time in these midterms.”

From 2020 election skeptic to GOP critic

Over the past decade, Kylie has reinvented her political brand to fit the political mood of the moment. He has transformed from someone who voiced his support for then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the 2016 presidential election to a 2020 election skeptic who wouldn’t say whether former President Joe Biden’s victory was legitimate.

Early in her political career in Sacramento, Kylie clearly distanced herself from national politics and President Donald Trump. He pitched himself as a more traditional, moderate conservative who would unite the center-right in California.

“I’m trying to provide leadership for our party here in California that will look different than leadership in Washington,” Kylie told CapRadio in 2020. “I’m trying to stay in my lane and focus on state issues.”

Kylie has endeared herself to California’s Republican base during the COVID-19 pandemic by consistently and vociferously opposing Gov. Gavin Newsom, going so far as to write a 234-page treatise on why she thinks Newsom deserves to be impeached.

He even tried to run for governor in 2021 when California Republicans unsuccessfully tried to impeach Newsom over what they said was his poor handling of the pandemic. According to election results, Kylie emerged with less than 4% support from voters who named a preferred replacement candidate.

Softening his tone

After the redistricting of Prop. 50, Kylie noticeably softened her tone and made direct, if largely symbolic, appeals to independent voters.

Kailey introduced a bill in the House to ban diversion in the middle of the decade and urged Speaker Mike Johnson repeatedly to bring it up for a vote. As one of the few Republicans who did come to Washington during the 43-day government shutdown last fall, he earned New York Times profileplus an extended interview on the Times’ flagship podcast, “The Daily,”.

He recently opposed the Republican government and voted with Democrats to repeal Trump’s extraordinary tariffs on Canadaalthough he explained that his decision was more of a protest against the calendar tricks Johnson used to circumvent congressional powers.

But despite those efforts, Madrid, the GOP strategist, predicted voters would be skeptical of his recent moderation.

“He’s trying to adjust to a new area, but he’s too far out of the way,” Madrid said.

“The sad Greek tragedy of Kevin Kiley is that he’s more educated and he knows better. He always knew better. He knows this time it’s not what he believed,” Madrid said. “He’s not a populist. He’s not a nationalist. He was a classic conservative.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.