Kevin Kiley Left the Republican Party Over Gerrymandering. Now He's Testing Whether an Independent Can Beat the Map Drawn to Defeat Him.
If Kiley wins in the newly-drawn CA-6, a district drawn to create a safely Democratic seat, the only independent in the House will have proven that the label can beat the gerrymander that created it.
Independent voters now represent the largest share of the American electorate, and yet they remain almost entirely unrepresented in Congress. Both major parties have spent decades optimizing for their bases, leaving the near majority of Americans who identify as independent with the choice of either voting for a party candidate they don't fully support or staying home.
A handful of high-profile independent candidates are trying to change that in 2026. They are often covered as fringe candidates whose stories are told through the lens of how they'll impact the outcome between a Republican and a Democrat, rather than on their own terms. This series exists because independent voters deserve better than that.
In California's 6th Congressional District, Rep. Kevin Kiley serves as the only indep…