Kevin Kiley says Adam Schiff owes him an apology over CA redistricting tiff
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Rep. Kevin Kiley disputes Sen. Adam Schiff's claim he ignored redistricting reform.
- Kiley points out he took office in 2023, after the 2021 redistricting vote.
- The feud highlights partisan tensions over congressional map changes in 2025.
Sen. Adam Schiff says Kevin Kiley was “missing in action” on redrawing congressional district lines before the congressman was for it.
Kiley, a Republican congressman from Roseville, wants an apology. “Adam Schiff made a false accusation against me and was caught,” the congressman told The Bee.
The two California lawmakers are warring in a heated fight over the Washington chapter of the effort to bar mid-decade congressional redistricting.
Their brawl began last week, when Schiff, D-California, was asked by KTLA television anchor Cher Calvin about Kiley’s bill to ban such redistricting.
California voters in November will consider a redrawn congressional map that would place Kiley in a Democratic-dominated district instead of his current Republican-friendly one.
The initiative is a response to Texas’ action to redraw its lines to create more Republican-friendly seats. Democrats need a net gain of three seats to win control of the House next year.
“I would ask you where was Kevin Kiley when we put forward legislation to prohibit gerrymandering in every state?” Schiff asked. “I’ll tell you where. He was missing in action..”
Redistricting in the past
Democrats introduced sweeping legislation in 2023 to generally ban the practice. It got 217 House sponsors but was never put to a vote in the Republican-led House. Kiley was not among the sponsors. His office did not respond to a request for comment.
What particularly riled Kiley this week was that Schiff didn’t stop there.
“Democrats voted, I think, to a person, but not Republicans. That tells you where Republicans are coming from, even Kevin Kiley,” Schiff said on KTLA.
“There’s a risk so he has a sudden interest in the subject.”
There was a vote on a similar proposal in 2021, and it passed the then Democratic-run House on a party line vote.
But Kiley was not a House member at the time. He took office in January 2023.
‘I had a pretty good excuse’
Kiley responded to Schiff on his Capitol Quagmire blog.
“Turns out I had a pretty good excuse: I wasn’t in Congress yet,” he said of the vote. “So surprising that he would ever mislead the public.”
Kiley wants to hear from Schiff. “The honorable thing to do is to apologize. But that is clearly too much to ask of the senator,” the congressman told The Bee.
Schiff’s office referred The Bee to the senator’s comments on KTLA, citing the 2023 bill.
“Well, I have to look at his legislation, but I would ask you, where was Kevin Kiley when we put forward legislation to prohibit gerrymandering in every state? And I’ll tell you where he was, he was missing in action. I don’t think a single Republican supported a national ban on gerrymandering,” he said.
This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Kevin Kiley says Adam Schiff owes him an apology over CA redistricting tiff."
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