Kiley and Morse are running for California Congressional District 3

ROCKLIN, Calif. — In canvassing voters to endorse Democratic congressional candidate Jessica Morse weeks before Election Day, Robert Sherriff, a retired science teacher, wore a hat he designed himself that read “Make America Think Again “.

The silver-mustached 63-year-old, who also wore a shirt that read “Save Democracy, Vote Nonfiction,” has lived in Placer County for more than 20 years. Once a more moderate voter with no party preference, Sherriff is now a registered Democrat and fed up with Donald Trump supporters like his congressman, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin).

He believes his conservative neighbors here in the Sierra foothills, where the old gold country meets the posh suburb of Sacramento.

“(Kiley) has tied himself to a lot of the MAGA policies, but a lot of Republicans here have been disenfranchised with all of that,” Sherriff said at a Greek restaurant in a Rocklin mall this month, where Morse organized a campaign event.

Placer County is home to more than half of the voters in California’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, a 450 mile stretch of the state which straddles the Nevada border from Lake Tahoe to Death Valley. About 39 percent of voters in the district are Republican, but it’s bluer than it was years ago — likely in part because a migration of inhabitants from the liberal Bay Area to more affordable inner cities like Rocklin and Roseville during the pandemic.

Trump beat Joe Biden here by just 1.78% in 2020.

Democrats are struggling to flip some of California’s red districts in an effort to gain control of the House hopefully enough Republicans and independent voters will be turned off by Kiley’s Trumpisms and instead vote for Morse, a former national security expert for the US Department of Defense who has campaigned on popular issues like abortion access.

Morse, 42, of Roseville, is a fire resilience specialist for the state who spent time in Iraq working for the federal government after studying international relations at Princeton. In 2018, she lost a bid against Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) in another attempt to turn a red district blue.

Kiley, a Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer who grew up in Granite Bay, an affluent Placer County suburb, was considered a moderate Republican when he was elected to the California Assembly in 2016. endorsing former Ohio governor John Kasich for president over Trump. But since then he has marched further to the right, supporting the opposition to California’s vaccine and mask mandates during the worst of COVID-19.

The 39-year-old freshman congressman he emerged as a relentless critic of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, which helped him gain traction Trump’s endorsement for Congress in 2022. Like some Republicans they distanced themselves since the controversial presidential candidate, Kiley has stayed in step with Trump on issues like immigration and gender identity; shared stages with top MAGA activists such as Charlie Kirk and frequented the right-wing media.

“Kevin Kiley represents the next generation of the MAGA movement,” Morse said. “He and JD Vance We’re trying to normalize this, which is why we need to turn this place around.”

Kiley’s brand is centered on a steady growth of blog posts and dissenting speeches in Congress, which criticized Democrats and how their policies affected California. In press releases promoting MorseThe Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Kiley embodies “the worst kind of hyper-partisan, power-hungry politics.”

But campaigning for re-election, Kiley said he’s focused on issues like crime and the cost of living, and that politics “rarely ever comes up.” He emphasized his recent support for Lake Tahoe Restoration Reauthorization Act alongside Congressional Democrats as a proud and bipartisan achievement.

“I have a need to try to create some kind of partisan angle on everything, it’s the nature of our current political climate. But that’s not how I approach my work. And frankly, that’s not the kind of feedback I’m getting from voters,” said Kiley, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in the 2021 Newsom recall election.

Just as Morse connects Kiley to Trump and Vance, Kiley connects her to Newsom. Morse was appointed by Newsom as deputy secretary of forest resource management for the California Natural Resources Agency in 2019.

His relentless focus on Newsom may be working: More than 56 percent of 3rd District voters voted for the Republican state senator Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) for governor of the Democratic incumbent in 2022.

“In this area, we’ve maintained a quality of life that doesn’t exist in other parts of California. We don’t have the level of waste, crime and homelessness that you have in places like LA and San Francisco and even Sacramento,” Kiley said during a TV debate with Morse hosted by KCRA this month. “But that could change if we don’t have the right representation.”

Kiley and his supporters have played down Democrats’ attempts to make the district appear competitive in the final weeks before Election Day, saying support for Morse is due to her association with Newsom and not because they believe they can swing the district. .

Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy PAC recently sent an email to supporters naming Morse among the four candidates who could help Democrats win control of the Housepainting it as a way to provide “Trump Protection”. But the California Democratic Party hasn’t prioritized or funded its campaign like it has in the most competitive congressional races.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report labeled several California districts as competitive tossups, but rated District 3 as “likely Republican.”

Trump is embraced by some constituents in the massive district, which includes conservative rural counties such as Plumas, Sierra and Inyo. Just last month, the Nevada County GOP hosted an event in Kiley’s district Laura Loomera far-right activist and Trump ally whom even Republicans have condemned for her spread of conspiracy theories.

Despite Trump pattern of liesBetsy Mahan, chairwoman of the Sacramento County Republican Party, praised the presidential candidate as “genuine” and said California voters see someone who keeps his word and disrupts the status quo.

“I don’t think (Kiley) is in any danger at all, to be honest,” Mahan said. “This is just gaslighting by the Democrats.”

Kiley, however, seems less sure. In a text message sent to voters by his campaign on Wednesday, Kiley said the success of his race “will come down to getting out the vote last week” and “we need all the help we can get.”

When asked by The Times if he was worried about his district going Democratic, he said, “Every district in the country — all 435 — is competitive.”

Morse, who was defeated by Kiley in the primary by more than 13 percentage points, is optimistic.

After a debate-watching party at a gyro and kebab shop in Rocklin — a suburb in the center of her district that’s even whiter and more conservative than most of California — she warned that the state and the nation were at a crossroads.

Supporters cheered when she told them the “most swing” voters could be swayed in the final days before the election.

“We’ll go find them. We’re going to get them,” she said. “We will turn the place around because the problems we face are real. They are serious. We can shape the future we want and deserve.”