{"id":5912,"date":"2025-10-15T12:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T12:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/5912\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T12:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T12:44:10","slug":"well-known-sacramento-democrat-is-taking-on-this-suddenly-vulnerable-california-republican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/5912\/","title":{"rendered":"Well-known Sacramento Democrat is taking on this suddenly vulnerable California Republican"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters<\/a>.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their newsletters<\/p>\n

Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley\u2019s newest Democratic challenger might be even more well known to Sacramento-area voters than the two-term congressman who has represented the area since 2023.<\/p>\n

Dr. Richard Pan, a Harvard-trained pediatrician and former state senator who made national headlines for\u00a0leading California\u2019s effort to eliminate<\/a>\u00a0religious and \u201cpersonal belief\u201d exemptions to school vaccine mandates, announced his candidacy for California\u2019s 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Pan and Democrats nationwide hope to hold Republicans like Kiley accountable for supporting President Donald Trump\u2019s megabill, which over the next 10 years will cause an estimated 10 million Americans to lose health coverage under Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, according to the\u00a0nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a federal government that seems to be intentionally attacking health care, whether it\u2019s taking away people\u2019s health insurance, undermining public health to allow disease to spread, cutting research for things like cancer treatments,\u201d Pan told CalMatters in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a pediatrician, I\u2019ve spent my life really trying to keep kids and their families healthy,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m running for Congress to be sure that we can protect people\u2019s health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pan joins Democrats\u00a0Tyler Vandenberg<\/a>, a Marine Corps veteran and\u00a0former \u201cJeopardy!\u201d winner<\/a>, and\u00a0Heidi Hall<\/a>, an environmental advocate and Nevada County supervisor, who launched campaigns against Kiley earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Proposition 50 would remake the district<\/p>\n

Kiley\u2019s district is one of five that would shift to favor Democrats if California voters next month approve a plan to gerrymander the state\u2019s congressional districts \u2013\u00a0known as Proposition 50<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the district he represents currently spans much of the California-Nevada border and is in largely rural, forested areas, the new seat would encompass many of Sacramento\u2019s eastern neighborhoods and suburbs, including Auburn, Rancho Cordova and Folsom. The new district would also include Grass Valley, Truckee and the California portion of Lake Tahoe, as well as the Eldorado National Forest.<\/p>\n

\"File<\/p>\n

File photo – Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, meets with audience members at a rally held in Redding on Tuesday evening, Aug. 3, 2021, as part of his campaign for governor in the Gov. Gavin Newsom recall election<\/p>\n

Kiley, who has branded himself as a Republican foil to Gov. Gavin Newsom, has been a vocal opponent of Prop. 50 and accused the governor of targeting his seat because of his attempts to \u201cNewsom-proof California\u201d in Congress by eliminating the state\u2019s ban on gas-powered cars and halting federal funding for high-speed rail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a reason Newsom sent his own staffer to run against me last year,\u201d Kiley\u00a0wrote on social media last month<\/a>, referring to Democrat Jessica Morse, \u201cand has now made me the number one target of his redistricting sham.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pan, a Sacramento resident who supports Prop. 50, has previously represented about 70% of voters who live in what would become the new district, according to his campaign.<\/p>\n

By challenging Kiley, whom Pan has characterized as a \u201crubber stamp\u201d for House Republicans and Trump\u2019s agenda, Pan hopes to also serve as a check on the Trump White House and a former nemesis of his own, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n

Pan started pushing to eliminate religious and personal belief exemptions to school vaccine requirements after public health experts traced the origin of a 2014 measles outbreak to an unvaccinated Disneyland traveler. His 2015 bill, and a subsequent measure in 2019 to strengthen that original law, ignited Kennedy\u2019s anti-vaccine activist allies and prompted harassment from opponents, death threats and\u00a0physical violence<\/a>\u00a0against the then-state senator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI even had blood thrown at me and got assaulted on the street, but I didn\u2019t back down,\u201d Pan said of the bills he led that ended religious and personal belief exemptions for school vaccination requirements. He said Americans \u201cshould be very disturbed and concerned and worried\u201d about Kennedy\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Pan said he first ran for the state Assembly in 2010 to address the gridlock he saw in California\u2019s government. He said he watched as\u00a0local hospitals struggled to make payroll<\/a>\u00a0because state lawmakers couldn\u2019t agree on a budget. Now, seeing the same thing in Washington, D.C., he said he wants to make the government \u201cwork for people\u201d again \u2013 which he says Kiley failed to accomplish despite at times paying lip service to bipartisanship and pushing to outlaw mid-decade redistricting nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalk is easy,\u201d Pan said. \u201cWhen push comes to shove and you get to that bill where you basically get to choose between, \u2018Do I support the president\u2019s agenda, or do I defend the people in my district?\u2019 he chose to support the president\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Richard Pan taking on suddenly vulnerable California Republican Kiley<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up\u00a0for their newsletters Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley\u2019s newest Democratic challenger might be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,457,4797,6375,4798,6374],"class_list":{"0":"post-5912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-gavin-newsom","12":"tag-kevin-kiley","13":"tag-personal-belief","14":"tag-richard-pan","15":"tag-vaccine-mandates"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}