A few weeks before Election Day, Robert Sherriff, a retired science teacher, urged voters to support Democratic congressional candidate Jessica Morse. He wore a hat of his own design that read: “Make America Think Again.”
The 63-year-old man with the silver mustache, who also wore a shirt that read “Save Democracy, vote non-fiction,” has lived in Placer County for more than two decades. Once a more moderate voter with no party preference, Sherriff is now a registered Democrat and fed up with Donald Trump’s supporters, like his congressman, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin.)
He thinks so are his conservative neighbors here in the Sierra foothills, where the old gold country meets the posh suburbs of Sacramento.
“[Kiley] committed to a lot of the MAGA policies, but a lot of Republicans here are disenfranchised because of all that,” Sherriff said this month at a Greek restaurant in a Rocklin strip mall where Morse was holding a campaign event.
Placer County is home to more than half of the voters in California’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, a 450-mile swath of the state that spans the Nevada border from Lake Tahoe to Death Valley. About 39% of voters in the district are Republicans, but it is bluer than years ago — likely due in part to a migration of residents from the liberal Bay Area to more affordable inland cities like Rocklin and Roseville during the pandemic.
Trump defeated Joe Biden here by just 1.78% in 2020.
Democrats are trying to flip some of California’s red districts in an effort to win control of the House of Representatives. They hope enough Republicans and independent voters will turn away from Kiley’s Trumpism and vote instead for Morse, a former Defense Department national security expert who has campaigned on popular issues such as abortion access.
Morse, 42, of Roseville, is a wildfire resilience specialist for the state. He spent time in Iraq and worked 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, a wealthy suburb of Placer County, was considered a moderate Republican when he was elected to the California Assembly in 2016, where he defeated former Ohio Governor John Kasich supported Trump as president. . But he has since moved further to the right, championing opposition to California’s vaccine and mask mandates during the worst of COVID-19.
The 39-year-old freshman congressman has emerged as a ruthless critic of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fact that has helped him win Trump’s endorsement for Congress in 2022. As some Republicans have distanced themselves from the controversial presidential candidate, Kiley has remained in politics. talking to Trump about issues like immigration and gender identity; shared stages with top MAGA activists such as Charlie Kirk and frequented right-wing media.
“Kevin Kiley represents the next generation of the MAGA movement,” Morse said. “He and JD Vance are trying to normalize this, which is why we need to flip this chair.”
Kiley’s brand is centered on a steady stream of blog posts and dissenting speeches in Congress criticizing Democrats and how their policies have hurt California. In press releases promoting Morse, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has said Kiley embodies “the worst form of hyper-partisan, power-hungry politics.”
But during his campaign for re-election, Kiley said he focuses on issues like crime and the cost of living and that politics “almost never” comes up. He pointed to his recent support for the Lake Tahoe Restoration Re-authorization Act alongside Democrats in Congress as a proud – and bipartisan – achievement.
“I understand the need to try to create some kind of partisan angle on everything, that’s the nature of our current political climate. But that’s just not the way I approach my work. And it’s honestly not the kind of feedback I get from voters,” said Kiley, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in Newsom’s 2021 recall election.
Just as Morse links Kiley to Trump and Vance, Kiley links her to Newsom. Morse was appointed deputy secretary of forests for the California Natural Resources Agency by Newsom in 2019.
His relentless focus on Newsom could be working: More than 56% of voters in District 3 voted for Republican Sen. Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) as governor of the Democratic incumbent in 2022.
“We have maintained a quality of life in this area that does not exist in other parts of California. We don’t have the levels of waste, crime and homelessness that you have in places like LA, San Francisco and even Sacramento,” Kiley said this month during a TV debate with Morse hosted by KCRA. “But that could change if we don’t have the right representation.”
Kiley and his supporters have undermined Democrats’ efforts to make the district look competitive in the final weeks leading up to Election Day. They say the support for Morse comes because of her association with Newsom and not because they think they can actually flip the district. .
Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy PAC recently sent supporters an email that named Morse among four candidates who could help Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, portraying it as a way to ensure “Trump protection.” . But California’s Democratic Party has not prioritized and financed its campaign the way it has in the most competitive congressional races.
Cook’s non-partisan political report has labeled several districts in California as competitive toss-ups, but rated District 3 as “likely Republican.”
Trump is embraced by some voters in the huge district, which also includes conservative rural counties such as Plumas, Sierra and Inyo. Last month, the Nevada County GOP hosted an event in Kiley’s district featuring Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Trump ally who even Republicans have condemned for her spread of conspiracy theories.
Despite Trump’s pattern of lying, Sacramento County Republican Party Chairman Betsy Mahan praised the presidential candidate as “authentic” and said California voters see him as someone who keeps his word and disrupts the status quo.
“I don’t think so [Kiley] is in some danger, to be honest,” Mahan said. “This is just gaslighting from the Democrats.”
Kiley, however, seems less confident. 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 this past week” and “we need all the help we can get.”
Asked by The Times if he’s concerned about his district going Democratic, he said, “Every district in the country — all 435 of them — is competitive.”
Morse, who was defeated by Kiley by more than 13 percentage points in the primaries, is optimistic.
After a debate visit at a gyro and kebab shop in Rocklin — a suburb in the center of her district that is both whiter and more conservative than most of California — she warned that the state and the nation are at a crossroads.
Supporters cheered when she told them that “the swingest” voters could be convinced in the final days leading up to the election.
‘We’re going to look for them. We’re going to get them,” she said. “We are going to turn the chair around because the problems we face are real. They are serious. We can actually shape the future we want and deserve.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
