GOP’s Kevin Kiley leads Democrat Kermit Jones in close race for 3rd Congressional District
Republican Kevin Kiley was leading Democrat Kermit Jones in a too-close-to-call duel for the new 3rd Congressional District seat late Tuesday night.
With 49% of the vote counted as of 4 p.m. PST Friday, Kiley had about 53% to Jones’ 47%, CNN reported. Independent analysts rated the district as a potential Republican win.
The winner will represent the newly drawn 3rd District, which stretches 450 miles from from Plumas County, through the Sacramento suburbs and parts of El Dorado County, and south to Inyo County.
The race was a classic Republican vs. Democratic battle. Kiley argued that California was a mess, plagued by rising crime, runaway inflation and excessive government spending.
Jones, a Navy veteran and physician, vowed to improve access to health care, make higher education more affordable and provide more help for small businesses.
Running in a district that leaned Republican, Jones was often reluctant to talk about the Democratic Party. Kiley tried in his ads and social media to portray Jones as a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Jones would not commit to supporting Pelosi for another term as Democratic leader.
Kiley, an assemblyman since 2016, drew statewide notice last year when he helped lead the fight to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. The effort was rejected overwhelmingly; among those who wanted Newsom replaced, Kiley got 3.5% of the vote.
But he gained a strong following among conservatives, and quickly pivoted to a House race in the newly drawn district that seemed to tilt Republican. The governor remained his favorite target.
“We have a governor, Gavin Newsom, who says repeatedly that California is a model for the nation. So everything that’s motivating this to be a change election across the country in immigration, in terms of crime, in terms of the economy — all of those things apply here in California to an even greater degree,” Kiley told Newsmax’s “National Report” last week.
He got a big boost in May during the primary campaign. Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones challenged him for the GOP nomination, but Kiley won the Trump endorsement. That mattered in a district where Trump got about half the 2020 vote.
“No one has fought Gavin Newsom harder than Kevin. He doesn’t wait for the fight, like the do-nothing RINOs who have watched California get absolutely destroyed by the radical maniacs in Sacramento,” Trump said at the time. A RINO is a Republican in name only, a favorite conservative jab at more centrist Republicans.
Kiley has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale and a master’s degree in secondary education from Loyola Marymount University. He’s worked as a prosecutor and a teacher.
Jones had never run for political office. He became a favorite of the national Democratic Party, and was roughly even in fundraising with Kiley for much of the campaign.
This story was originally published November 8, 2022 at 9:44 PM.
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