Kevin Kiley (politician)

Kevin Kiley
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 3rd district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2023
Preceded by	John Garamendi (redistricted)
Member of the California State Assembly from the 6th district
In office December 5, 2016 – November 30, 2022
Preceded by	Beth Gaines
Succeeded by	Kevin McCarty (redistricted)
Personal details
Born	Kevin Patrick Kiley January 30, 1985 Sacramento, California, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Chelsee Gardner ​ (m. 2023)​
Education	Harvard University (BA) Yale University (JD) Loyola Marymount University (MA)
Website	House website

Kevin Patrick Kiley (born January 30, 1985) is an American politician, attorney, and former educator serving as the U.S. representative for California's 3rd congressional district since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he represented the 6th district in the California State Assembly from 2016 to 2022. Kiley was a candidate to replace California governor Gavin Newsom in the voter-initiated recall election on September 14, 2021.

Early life, education, and career

Kiley grew up in the Sacramento area, where his father was a physician and his mother was a special education teacher. He attended local public schools, including Cavitt Junior High School and Granite Bay High School, where he was valedictorian.

He graduated with an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 2007, completing a thesis titled "The Civil Rights Movement and the Reemergence of Classical Democracy". Upon graduation, he became a teacher in Los Angeles through Teach for America, teaching for two years at Manual Arts High School while earning his teaching credentials at Loyola Marymount University. In 2008, he was recognized as a national debate champion while participating as a member of the Loyola debate team.

Kiley later attended Yale Law School, worked as an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and clerked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He returned to California to join the law firm Irell & Manella, where he helped prepare an intellectual property theft case for T-Mobile against Chinese technology company Huawei that was the basis for a federal criminal investigation. He was an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.

He resides in Rocklin, California.

Political career

In 2016, Kiley was elected to the California State Assembly. In May 2016, Kiley told The Sacramento Bee that he supported then-Ohio Governor John Kasich in the 2016 United States presidential election. In 2018, Kiley authored legislation to make it easier for students to transfer school districts.

After winning a second term in the State Assembly, Kiley ran for the State Senate in California's 1st District. He finished second in the primary, but lost the runoff to fellow Assemblyman Brian Dahle. Soon after the start of the new legislative session, Kiley introduced legislation to close for private use a controversial DMV office that exclusively catered to state legislators and staff. In a statement to The Sacramento Bee, Kiley said: "This is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people, not an oligarchy where a gilded political class enjoys privileges that aren’t available to the people that we represent."

According to the Associated Press, Kiley is "a conservative who often flirts with the fringes of the GOP". He has said climate change is real, but opposed Governor Gavin Newsom's executive orders requiring all new vehicles in California to be zero emission by 2035 and banning oil-drilling by 2045. He is a supporter of charter schools. Kiley introduced legislation to ban local and state governments from implementing vaccine requirements. After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump refused to concede while making claims of fraud, Kiley refused to say whether Biden won the 2020 election legitimately. Kiley has said his position is to "stay out of national politics altogether", and that "national politics is a distraction that is used frankly by those in power in Sacramento [as] kind of a smokescreen for their own failures."

2021 California gubernatorial recall election

Though he voted to authorize $1 billion of emergency pandemic spending for Governor Newsom in March 2020, saying "to trust in Governor Newsom’s leadership and listen to his guidance", Kiley later said Newsom "made a mockery of that trust" and, alongside fellow California legislator James Gallagher, successfully sued in June 2020 to remove Newsom's emergency powers (though the ruling was overturned on appeal), and was influential in the campaign to recall Newsom, publishing a book in January 2021 titled Recall Gavin Newsom: The Case Against America's Most Corrupt Governor.

On July 6, 2021, Kiley announced his candidacy for governor of California in the 2021 recall election. According to the New York Times, he was one of the "more moderate Republican recall candidates," while the Los Angeles Times deemed him and John Cox the "more traditional conservatives" in the election, which failed to remove Newsom from office.

Kiley indicated his support for school choice during the campaign and said teachers' unions in the state were too powerful (with the California Teachers Association having been Newsom's top donor), to students' detriment. Though vaccinated against COVID-19, Kiley pledged to overturn vaccine and mask mandates Newsom implemented if he became governor.

United States Senate vacancies

In 2020, Kiley urged passage of his bill that would require the potential successor of then-candidate for vice president and Senator Kamala Harris to be elected by California's voters and not appointed by the governor; he reiterated that view during the 2021 gubernatorial recall campaign by pledging to allow voters to pick a replacement for Senator Dianne Feinstein if he became governor and her seat became vacant. Kiley later flagged a constitutional issue with Newsom's appointment of Alex Padilla to replace Harris and Padilla's expected service until January 2023, since the U.S. Constitution stipulates that such appointees serve "until the people fill the vacancies by election".

After lawmakers in the state assembly passed a bill to address the issue that would require voters to select two senators for the same seat—one to serve in the lame-duck session from November 2022 to January 2023 and another for January 2023 to January 2029—Kiley said Newsom should have called a special election to fill Harris's seat much earlier, and that the bill would solve the problem in "the most undemocratic way possible". Newsom eventually signed the bill, which meant California's voters had to vote simultaneously for both the lame-duck Senate seat and the next full Senate term.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2022

On December 29, 2021, Kiley announced he would run for the U.S. House in California's newly redrawn 3rd congressional district, which includes all or parts of Inyo, Sacramento, Mono, Alpine, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada, Sierra, Yuba, and Plumas counties.

Committee assignments

For the 118th Congress:

• Committee on Education and the Workforce
  • Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education
  • Subcommittee on Workforce Protections (Chair)
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet
  • Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance
  • Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government

Caucus memberships

• Republican Study Committee

Electoral history

Personal life

Kiley married Chelsee Gardner on December 30, 2023. The ceremony took place at Pioneer Church in Auburn, California, the oldest church in Placer County. Chelsee and Kevin met at a community event in Rocklin, California, celebrating the Fourth of July. Kevin proposed to Chelsee in the summer of 2023 in the same park where they first met. The couple will reside in Roseville.

Works

• Kevin Kiley (2021). Recall Gavin Newsom: The Case Against America's Most Corrupt Governor. ISBN 9781098361587.