Democrats narrowly avoid embarrassing shutout in California House race

After a week of uncertainty for Democrats near the California capital, new election returns should bring some relief. 

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In District 6, a Sacramento-area district that was redrawn by  Proposition 50 to lean blue, Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan will face off against independent Rep. Kevin Kiley, according to the Associated Press, which called the election at about 5 p.m. Tuesday.

District 6 was redrawn last year. That new district was reallocated to include mostly left-leaning areas, including most of Sacramento, as well as Rocklin and Citrus Heights. When voters passed Prop. 50 last year, it was considered a safe blue seat, but early results showing Pan in third, behind Kiley and a Republican, led to questions of whether those plans backfired. 

In all, Kiley secured 24.5% of the vote, while Pan received 23.2% of the vote, according to the AP. 

Kiley, a former Republican with a reputation for trying to “Newsom-proof” the state, switched to run as an independent after his original district, District 3, was split into six pieces as a result of Prop. 50. That put Kiley in a tricky position, where he had to decide to either run in a more competitive Democrat-leaning district — District 6 — face-off with a Republican colleague in District 5, or risk being out of a job entirely after representing California in Congress since 2022. 

When Kiley finally decided in March to run in the Sacramento suburban area, Republican analysts were relieved to avoid the GOP-on-GOP race. Even so, Kiley was up against Pan, as well as other reputable Democrats, including Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero. He filed to run as an independent a few days later.

Since Election Day last week, Kiley has been leading with about 25% of the vote. While ballot counting has taken longer than most Californians have hoped for — including Gov. Gavin Newsom — early results indicated that Michael Stansfield, a former seminary student who ran solely to spread an inclusive message on religion, would join Kiley in November after holding steady in second place. He shifted down to third place after Tuesday’s final results, with 20% of the vote.

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Now, with the race called and Pan overtaking Stansfield for the second spot, Democrats can breathe a sigh of relief at not being shut out of the suburban district they were supposed to win handily. Analysts were also closely watching the results of this race trickle in; well-known demographer Paul Mitchell cautioned last week that two Republicans could make it to the general election in November but projected that Pan would inch up to the top two once more ballots were counted. 

While Kiley lives in the district, in Rocklin, and is familiar to its constituents, he will be up against Pan, who has represented the area in the state Senate since 2014. 

Pan is a pediatrician and a former educator at UC Davis. He ran on a public health campaign, pledging to secure California’s healthcare, to hold Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accountable and to uphold vaccine science. Pan was called a vaccine “hero” by Time Magazine in a 2015 feature for sponsoring legislation that promoted higher vaccine rates in California by removing a religious exemption. He faced a potential recall attempt after anti-vaxxers pushed back on his bill.

In his two terms in Congress, Kiley has diverged from many of the policies brought forward by Newsom, and he even ran against Newsom in the 2021 recall attempt. Kiley successfully reversed the governor’s gas car ban that would have prevented the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. He also attempted to dismantle the California Coastal Commission, a state agency that has control over public access to 1,100 miles of coastal land.