A well-known Sacramento Democrat is taking on this suddenly vulnerable California Republican

Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley’s 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. 

Dr. Richard Pan, a Harvard-trained pediatrician and former state senator who made national headlines for leading California’s effort to eliminate religious and “personal belief” exemptions to school vaccine mandates, announced his candidacy for California’s 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday. 

Pan and Democrats nationwide hope to hold Republicans like Kiley accountable for supporting President Donald Trump’s 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 nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“We see a federal government that seems to be intentionally attacking health care, whether it’s taking away people’s health insurance, undermining public health to allow disease to spread, cutting research for things like cancer treatments,” Pan told CalMatters in an interview. 

“As a pediatrician, I’ve spent my life really trying to keep kids and their families healthy,” he added. “I’m running for Congress to be sure that we can protect people’s health care.”

Pan joins Democrats Tyler Vandenberg, a Marine Corps veteran and former “Jeopardy!” winner, and Heidi Hall, an environmental advocate and Nevada County supervisor, who launched campaigns against Kiley earlier this year.

Proposition 50 would remake the district

Kiley’s district is one of five that would shift to favor Democrats if California voters next month approve a plan to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts – known as Proposition 50.

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’s 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.

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 “Newsom-proof California” in Congress by eliminating the state’s ban on gas-powered cars and halting federal funding for high-speed rail.

“There’s a reason Newsom sent his own staffer to run against me last year,” Kiley wrote on social media last month, referring to Democrat Jessica Morse, “and has now made me the number one target of his redistricting sham.”

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.

By challenging Kiley, whom Pan has characterized as a “rubber stamp” for House Republicans and Trump’s 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. 

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’s anti-vaccine activist allies and prompted harassment from opponents, death threats and physical violence against the then-state senator. 

“I even had blood thrown at me and got assaulted on the street, but I didn’t back down,” Pan said of the bills he led that ended religious and personal belief exemptions for school vaccination requirements. He said Americans “should be very disturbed and concerned and worried” about Kennedy’s leadership. 

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Pan said he first ran for the state Assembly in 2010 to address the gridlock he saw in California’s government. He said he watched as local hospitals struggled to make payroll because state lawmakers couldn’t agree on a budget. Now, seeing the same thing in Washington, D.C., he said he wants to make the government “work for people” again – which he says Kiley failed to accomplish despite at times paying lip service to bipartisanship and pushing to outlaw mid-decade redistricting nationwide. 

“Talk is easy,” Pan said. “When push comes to shove and you get to that bill where you basically get to choose between, ‘Do I support the president’s agenda, or do I defend the people in my district?’ he chose to support the president’s agenda.”