Nevada County supervisor is challenging Kevin Kiley for Congress. Who is she?
Nevada County Supervisor Heidi Hall will challenge Rep. Kevin Kiley, a two-term Republican, for the 3rd U.S. Congressional District seat in Congress.
Hall, a Democrat and supervisor for the last eight years, is taking on a congressman who has won both his House races fairly easily.
Kiley’s race is regarded as “likely Republican” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. It’s seen as “likely Republican” by Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, two other independent House analyses.
But EMILYs List, a political group that supports Democratic women candidates, lists Kiley as one of 46 top national targets for defeat. The 46 seats “constitute the Democratic Party’s best path to flip Republican-held seats and take back power in the House.” Democrats need a net gain of three seats next year to win control of the House.
The district goes from the northern Sierra Nevada along the Nevada border into Death Valley. It includes Alpine, Inyo, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas and Sierra counties and parts of El Dorado, Sacramento and Yuba counties.
Hall, an environmental specialist, pointed to her record as both an elected official and a government worker, describing herself as a problem solver with a background of working with others in both parties.
“I’ve always been a problem solver,” she told The Bee.
Asked to cite some problems she would try to solve if she’s elected to Congress, Hall discussed how she’d work to get more housing built, help people with insurance, protect public lands and work to keep schools safer.
Her background, she said, gives her special insight as to what needs to be done and how to do it.
Hall managed budgets and staffers at the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she worked on water and resource management efforts in four states and with 122 Native American tribes.
Hall was also a program manager with the California State Department of Water Resources.
“I’m familiar with bureaucracies,” she said. “What’s been done in Congress is devastating. They’re adopted a budget that can’t be balanced without cutting deeply into Medi-Cal and threatening people’s Social Security accounts. That’s not a functional budget.”
The Republican-led Congress has passed a budget outline. It includes instructions to the committee that writes legislation for Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in California. No specific cuts have been written into major legislation, let alone passed yet. That debate is unlikely for weeks if not months.
While Social Security administrative costs face cuts, President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that benefits would not be cut, and there’s no serious talk in Congress of doing so.
Hall vs. Kiley
Hall criticized Kiley for too often working on matters that have little to do with the district.
“He’s been out campaigning on issues that don’t affect our district at all,” she said, such as his efforts to dilute the power of the California Coastal Commission and withhold high speed rail funds.
Kiley is pushing legislation to get rid of federal funding for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which wants to construct a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He introduced a bill to strip the Coastal Commission of its powers under federal law.
The congressman said doing so would “expedite important coastal activities, including national security initiatives, critical infrastructure development, and disaster mitigation and recovery efforts.”
Kiley was first elected in 2022, with a boost from Trump. Kiley won a tough race that year against Democrat Kermit Jones by 7 percentage points, and won reelection against wildfire mitigation expert Jessica Morse by 11%.
He starts the 2026 campaign with a healthy $911,001 on hand. His campaign has debts of about $61,000. The campaign finance report, released Wednesday, covers the first three months of this year.
Hall filed her candidacy this week.
This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Nevada County supervisor is challenging Kevin Kiley for Congress. Who is she?."
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