Republican Kevin Kiley faces two challengers in contentious 3rd District primary

There are three candidates vying to represent the California’s 3rd Congressional District, which has the most contentious House of Representatives election around Sacramento, according to nonpartisan analysts.

Election forecasters believe incumbent Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Roseville, will likely keep his seat in 2024. The top two vote-getters will advance from the March 5 primary to the Nov. 5 general election.

The 3rd stretches from the northern Sierra Nevada mountains along the Nevada border into Death Valley, covering Alpine, Inyo, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sierra and portions of El Dorado, Sacramento and Yuba counties.

Kevin Kiley

Party: Republican

Age: 39

Birthplace: Sacramento, California

Residence: Roseville, California

Occupation: U.S. Representative

Education: Harvard University (BA); Yale Law School (JD); Loyola Marymount University (Master’s in Secondary Education)

Offices held: U.S. Representative, 2023-present; California State Assemblyman, 2016-2022

Campaign website address: ElectKevinKiley.com

Q. What steps will you urge to help reduce federal deficits?

When I ran for Congress, I promised to do everything in my power to rein in the excessive federal spending that created the inflation crisis crushing California families. Shortly after taking office, I helped pass the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which made a $2.1 trillion down payment on that promise — the largest single deficit reduction in U.S. history.

I support having Congress balance its budget just as families have to do, and I’m working to remove waste, fraud and abuse from the federal budget.

Q. What is your view on abortion rights? What would you want Congress to do now, if anything?

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the issue of the legality of abortion should be left up to individual states. Last election, California voters enacted a Constitutional Amendment making abortion services broadly legal in the state.

While I personally believe in protecting life and am opposed to late-term abortions, I am mindful that our state’s voters have spoken on this issue.

Q. What changes, if any, do you support for immigration and border policy?

The border needs to be made secure. The lack of security at the border has led to a surge in illegal border crossings, an increase in human trafficking and the importation of dangerous drugs including fentanyl.

We need to beef-up border security through more border patrol, aerial technology and physical barriers. We also need to reform the broken asylum system to reduce abuse and end the Biden administration’s parole programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter legally, even those from countries hostile to the U.S.

Q. What should Congress’ next steps be in dealing with climate issues?

I joined the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus to work in a bipartisan way to preserve both our environment and economic opportunity and to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate. I have also actively supported investments in clean energy.

One of the highest priorities here in California needs to be better water management: building the dams, aqueducts, pipes, tunnels, canals, plants and pumping stations needed to provide clean, safe water to families and farmers.

Jessica Morse

Party: Democratic

Age: 42

Birthplace: Pacifica, California

Residence: Roseville, California

Occupation: Former Deputy Secretary for Forest and Wildland Resilience, California Natural Resources Agency

Education: Principia College (BA in Economics); Princeton University (Master of Public Affairs in International and National Security Studies)

Offices held: Member of the U.S. Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Campaign website address: morseforcongress.com

Q. What steps will you urge to help reduce federal deficits?

The federal government’s $34 trillion debt is a crisis. Last year, the U.S. paid $659 billion in interest alone: That is more than the government spent on Medicaid, veterans or children. This won’t get fixed in one budget cycle. We need to follow a multi-decade, fiscally responsible plan to bring the debt under control.

Drawing from my experience negotiating budgets for large government agencies, there are two ways to reduce deficits — raise revenue and lower spending. We can do both without raising tax rates or cutting government services.

We can generate revenue by closing loopholes and implementing tax reforms to ensure that corporations and the ultra-wealthy pay the taxes they owe.

We can lower costs by stabilizing government operational budgets and making forward investments in catastrophe prevention.

The constant lurches of near government shutdowns and unpredictable short-term spending bills raises the day-to-day costs of most U.S. government operations. Multi-year operational budgets for government agencies will lower the costs of these contracts and prevent politicians from using government services as a political football.

Finally, government programs are often budgeted to respond to devastating crises rather than making forward investments to prevent disasters. For example, I helped design and implement a California-wide wildfire prevention initiative. Within the first year of the program, a $1 billion investment had established 1,200 wildfire safety projects, like fuel breaks, throughout the state. Despite a larger number of wildfires from the year before, there was a significant reduction in the acres burned, dropping from 2.4 million acres burned in 2021 to 360,000 acres in 2022. This $1 billion investment in prevention resulted in a roughly $2 billion savings in the emergency fire suppression fund from the year before.

These are the kind of responsible fiscal strategies that will help us protect the financial well-being of both our local community and the nation.

Q. What is your view on abortion rights? What would you want Congress to do now if anything?

The decision about when and how to have a child is deeply personal and should be made by a woman, her family and her doctors. Her member of Congress shouldn’t have a say in it.

National reproductive rights rest on two key principles: 1. ensuring that women have agency over how and when they become mothers; and 2. ensuring that women have access to the medical care they need during pregnancy.

By reversing nearly 50 years of precedent in the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court has both undermined women’s autonomy and jeopardized the health and safety of mothers. In the wake of this decision, 26 states have banned or severely restricted abortions. In these states, mothers are three times more likely to die in childbirth and infants are 30% more likely to die than in states that have legalized abortion.

If I am elected to Congress, one of my top priorities will be to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at securing national abortion rights. I will also advocate for increased access to contraception and health care services to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And I plan to support investments in programs to provide families with quality prenatal care, paid parental leave, child tax credits and affordable child care. These commitments will reaffirm that, here in America, women can choose when to become mothers.

Q. What changes, if any, do you support for immigration and border policy?

The situation along our borders is a national security and humanitarian crisis that demands immediate attention and decisive action. For too long, politicians have ignored practical solutions to immigration, instead exploiting the issue for political gain. If elected to Congress, I am committed to working across the aisle to secure our borders — without compromising our core values or needlessly harming our economy.

I support enhancing border security through investing in advanced technologies, ensuring thorough vetting and dramatically more efficient visa processing times. Equally important is working closely with our neighboring countries to address the root causes of illegal immigration. This includes supporting their enforcement of their own immigration laws and providing humanitarian aid.

It’s also essential that we do more to help align the skills of legal immigrants entering our country with job opportunities and employer needs. We should welcome immigrants who adhere to our immigration laws, undergo the proper visa application and vetting processes, and contribute positively to our economy and tax system. But our immigration application and vetting process needs to move exponentially faster — it shouldn’t take slews of lawyers and years of processes to join the American economy. Such modernization efforts are crucial for meeting local business demands and shifting us away from underground economies.

I support a legal, earned path to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants who have already been living and working in America for a significant amount of time, including DREAMers.

This balanced, common-sense approach not only strengthens our nation’s border security but also respects and honors the contributions of hard working immigrants.

Q. What should Congress’ next steps be in dealing with climate issues?

Climate change, combined with a century of under-investment in public lands, has been adversely affecting our environment, our health and our communities. In California’s 3rd Congressional District, we are at the forefront of this challenge, grappling with extreme droughts, some of the worst wildfires in our nation’s history, costly flooding and skyrocketing insurance premiums. These impacts are especially alarming in regions like ours, where the local economy is deeply intertwined with outdoor recreation like skiing, hiking, fishing and hunting. Local businesses suffer under extreme climate conditions.

For four years, I served as the deputy secretary at the California Natural Resources Agency, leading the state’s wildfire prevention efforts. In Congress, I will be a fierce advocate for practical and effective climate solutions including drought and wildfire resilience. This includes widespread federal programs that will improve and protect public lands, invest in solutions to drought like restoring upper watersheds and groundwater recharge, invest in local workforce programs like expanding the Conservation Corps, and support business to expand sustainable forestry.

I will also work to make environmental regulations more efficient, so environmental protection processes don’t slow down our ability to protect the environment.

Nationally, I will work to transition to a clean and green energy economy through a myriad of tools including supporting utilities to use the cleanest local power sources, expanding public transit and incentivizing clean energy sources like wind and solar to reduce carbon emissions.

Robert Smith

Party: No Party Preference (center-right)

Age: 44

Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts (moved to California at age 6)

Residence: Lincoln, California

Occupation: Director Operational Programs as a contractor of the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Services Programs; U.S. Army (Active Duty), retiree

Education: Chapman University (BA in Organizational Leadership); University of the Potomac (Advanced Certificate in Government Contract Management); Project Management Institute (Project Management Professional)

Offices held: None

Campaign website address: robert-smith.org

Q. What steps will you urge to help reduce federal deficits?

Some hard decisions will have to be made and executed in order to reduce budget deficits. Both Republicans and Democrats will have to make significant concessions on this. I believe more in the benefits of focusing on spending cuts versus widespread increased revenue through taxation.

What I do not support: 1. Far-reaching and sweeping modification or cutting of Social Security and Medicare programs that every American taxpayer has been paying into their whole lives and could be impacted due to the government’s negligence; 2. cutting veteran benefits; and 3. increasing revenue through significant tax increases upon the middle class.

I do support: 1. Limiting annual defense and nondefense spending growth to 1%; 2. reducing foreign aid and international program spending; 3. consolidating and reducing within some of the federal workforce; 4. reducing prescription drug costs; 5. allowing private plans to compete with Medicare, a choice, and expanding work requirements for Medicaid; 6. subjecting earnings greater than $250,000 a year to the payroll tax, increasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 25%; 7. extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act while raising the top rate; 8. requiring states to cover a quarter of the cost of food stamps; 9. repealing the Income Driven Repayment Plan; and 10. increasing cigarette and alcohol taxes.

Q. What is your view on abortion rights? What would you want Congress to do now, if anything?

Abortion is a state right, and California is a pro-abortion-rights state. I believe the federal government has no purview on a state’s rights.

Q. What changes, if any, do you support for immigration and border policy?

The U.S. is a country of immigrants, many of us as Americans are first- and second-generation. We are the most unique country in the world because of this. So, I fully support immigration to the U.S. and believe that much of the bureaucratic process of immigration needs adjustment to significantly reduce waiting and processing periods, especially for U.S. citizens sponsoring their direct family members, those under employment-based immigration and those seeking legitimate refugee and asylum status.

Regarding our borders, I do oppose any form of open border policies and I do believe that we need to secure our borders as a sovereign nation. I believe this for a few reasons: 1. Humanitarian crises and costing lives not only in the U.S., but also within bordering countries as people risk their lives to get to the border and cross; 2. human trafficking through criminal elements operating within these areas — men, women and children are placed at extreme risk for violence, sexual exploitation and servitude; 3. the flow of hardcore drugs like fentanyl coming through the border, affecting U.S. communities; 4. violence within these border areas between criminal elements, like the cartel, driving immigration surges; 5. the U.S. taxpayer burden and resource thinning created through massive illegal immigration; and 6. unvetted people coming through, participating in criminal actions and affecting U.S. communities.

I do advocate, based on a period, the granting of legal status to undocumented immigrants with temporary visas to eventually apply for permanent residency, and when requirements meet citizenship. I do fully support the immediate deportation of illegal immigrant criminals.

Q. What should Congress’ next steps be in dealing with climate issues?

Congress should support climate change initiatives in a very measured and very long-term generational approach. Our climate, our environment and our resources are vital to our national interests, communities and nation. I recognize that there is such a thing as human impacts to the environment, but I do not believe in the compressed impending doom touted by activists through the years — especially as I have lived through many high-profile figures telling us the end is near, and the end never came.

As we find conflict between climate change initiatives and economic interests, Americans must find sensible middle ground as a collective. Sweeping and abrupt reforms put in place by bureaucracies that are immediate or near-term do not garner support from the majority of American working-class citizens, because there are very valid affordability, accessibility and reliability issues. Onerous regulation driven by unchecked government agencies crushing entire energy industries, jobs and communities are wrong.

I do believe that lower U.S. consumer energy costs and asserting our energy dominance internationally is highly beneficial — not only in the use of fossil fuels, natural gas and modernized nuclear energy, but also in the continued development of new clean energy initiatives and infrastructure. A long-term plan that is realistic, where we invest in clean energy initiatives, infrastructure and capabilities, should be in place and highly affordable before we start attempting to move away from fossil fuels and placing severe economic impacts on our fellow citizens.