Kiley Undecided About Re-Election as Filing Deadline Approaches

DISTRICT 3 — Third District Congressman Kevin Kiley is facing a difficult choice. The congressional district Kiley currently represents owes its current outlines to routine redistricting after the 2020 census. It is one of California’s most geographically diverse districts, stretching south from the Sierra in Plumas County to the desert near Death Valley and taking in the eastern suburbs of Sacramento.

Kiley, a Republican from Roseville, was elected in 2022 as the newly redrawn district’s first Representative in Congress and was re-elected in 2024. The district has voted consistently, but by modest margins, for Republicans in statewide and national elections: Donald Trump won the district by 50% to 47% in 2024.

For the 2026 elections, however, the existing third district will be broken up and combined with other areas as a result of a Democrat-led temporary redistricting plan, known as Proposition 50, that voters approved last year. The plan’s new maps were intentionally drawn to favor Democrats in a redistricting fight that President Trump initiated when he encouraged Texas and other Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to advantage Republicans in the upcoming mid-term elections. An unintended side-effect of the president’s efforts may be that Kiley and several other California Republicans lose their seats.

Kiley’s record in the House puts him in the moderate wing of the Republican party, according to GovTrack.com. In the current Congress, he has generally voted solidly with the Republican majority in support of President Trump’s agenda. However, the nonpartisan news service CalMatters reported that, since his district was redrawn by Prop 50, he has been “working overtime” to increase his appeal to independent and Democratic voters. On several prominent issues, he has taken positions that appear to put distance between him and some of the Trump administration’s more unpopular policies.

During last year’s government shutdown, Kiley gained national media attention for working through it, when he criticized House leadership for failing to resolve the dispute at the heart of the shutdown over expiring health insurance subsidies. He co-authored bipartisan legislation that would have extended tax credits for health insurance. That bill was not adopted, however, and he ultimately voted against a related bipartisan bill to extend health insurance subsidies, which passed in the House in January.

This year, he voted with Democrats on a failed resolution to terminate President Trump’s emergency tariffs, which the Supreme Court later ruled illegal, and to override the President’s veto of funding for rural water projects in Colorado.

On other issues, his votes have tended to align with the administration’s positions, despite public statements suggesting views more palatable to independents and Democrats. When asked directly in an interview with CNN if he would support legislation to give power over military operations in Venezuela back to Congress, he said that Congress should be “centrally involved” in determining the US role in that country, yet he voted against a resolution requiring the removal of US forces from hostilities against Venezuela in the absence of authorization from Congress. During the current government shutdown over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, he has said in interviews that it’s necessary to “bring down the temperature” on immigration conflicts while allowing enforcement operations to continue.

At a February 17 town hall meeting sponsored by the Sacramento Bee, Kiley ruled out returning to the state legislature and said that he intends to stand for re-election to the House this year, but despite the impending March 6 deadline for filing for the June primary, he has not decided which of the new Democratic-leaning districts he will run to represent. The Bee reported that Kiley is currently favoring campaigning in the redrawn 5th or 6th districts, where he would face contenders including current 5th district representative Tom McClintock, a Republican.