By admin 
Rep. Kevin Kiley held a slim lead above a crowded field of opponents in the first round of returns Tuesday night, as he bids to maintain elected office by leaving the Republican Party and running as an independent in California’s 6th Congressional District.
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Kiley held around 27% of the vote in early vote totals Tuesday night. The Associated Press estimated 46% of the district — which under newly redrawn lines includes West Sacramento, Roseville, Rocklin, Citrus Heights and other communities north and east of Sacramento — had been counted just before midnight.
As votes were counted into the night, the race for second place shifted in ways worrying to Democrats hoping to flip California House seats through Proposition 50.
Republican candidate Michael Stansfield was leading the top Democrat candidate, former state Senator Richard Pan, by less than a percentage point. Though much of the vote remained uncounted, if that result holds, it would be devastating to Democrats, as it would block their candidates out of the general election.
Still, only 39% of the vote in Sacramento County, where Pan was leading by 2.6%, had been counted so far, according to The Associated Press. In Yolo County, where Pan led by nearly 6%, only 56% of the vote had been counted. Kiley was leading, with Stansfield behind him, in Placer County, where 54% of the vote had been counted.
The primary race drew a crowded field of talented Democrats. Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho was the next leading Democrat behind Pan, with 11.7% of the vote.
Kiley, speaking to a crowded room of supporters in Roseville who waved American flags and jeered references to California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, expressed confidence in the trajectory of the vote count and touted Kiley’s political independence.
“Certain politicians think they can move lines around on map and choose your representative for you,” he said, drawing boos from the crowd. “We still get to vote,” he continued, “and we will not let self-serving politicians of either party take away our representation. We will not let political insiders in Sacramento or Washington attack the values that make our area special.”
The field has been crowded all year. But it grew busier, and higher profile, after Kiley, a longtime Republican who’d been hunting a favorable district to run in after Democrats redrew the lines with Proposition 50 last fall, switched his party registration to independent and jumped into a field already crowded with four significant Democrat contenders.
The path to this year’s election in the 6th District has exemplified the confusing political game of musical chairs unleashed by Proposition 50’s passage. The district became an open race after Rep. Ami Bera, who currently represents it, announced he would run in the 3rd Congressional District, which Kiley currently holds. That seemed to set up a Bera vs. Kiley challenge in a redrawn district that now favored Democrats.
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But Kiley instead decided to run elsewhere, and ultimately settled on the 6th, which encompasses where he actually lives. “What we’re doing here is something very different,” Kiley told The Sacramento Bee in a brief interview, noting the rarity of independent politicians succeeding in the United States’ increasingly partisan elections.
The 6th District is Democrat leaning, and the race had filled up with candidates from that party early on after Bera announced he’d run in the 3rd. Several of them mounted viable campaigns. Chief among them were Pan, Ho and West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero, who served on that city’s council since 2018 and was elected mayor in 2020.
Kiley greatly outraised his opponents on the campaign finance front, and sought to emphasize his qualities as a political moderate who at times broke with the Republican Party. But his Democrat opponents took umbrage with that position, casting Kiley as an ally of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, neither of which is popular in California.
The crowd at Kiley’s watch event, at a coffee shop off the train tracks in Roseville’s historic downtown, leaned Republican, and there was at least one Make America Great Again hat wearer in attendance. But in interviews, several attendees said they were registered Republicans but had followed Kiley out of loyalty to the man, who they considered a pragmatic and attentive representative, not the party.
“I want to help him get where he needs to go, to help us constituents have good representation in the House,” Roseville resident Scott Hutchings, who has volunteered on multiple of Kiley’s campaigns, told The Bee. If his lead holds, Kiley faces a tough road in the general election, Hutchings conceded, that would be made tougher by the congressman’s past Republican affiliation.
“But there’s a lot of people who want to hear from somebody who is politically independent,” Hutchings said.
The large number of Democrats in the race likely served to dilute their fundraising capabilities, and Kiley will probably face a serious flood of opposition dollars in the general election.
Pan, a pediatrician, has run on healthcare issues, pointing to Republicans’ significant cuts to Medicaid and other health and human services programming in order to fund tax cuts for corporations and to the disproportionate benefit of wealthy Americans.
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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 10:09 PM.