Rep. Kevin Kiley comes home to Placer, cautions constituents about ‘Newsom acolyte’ Julie Su

Freshman Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley returned home to Placer County on Saturday, where he continued to cultivate his role as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief antagonist in the California congressional delegation.

Kiley, in Roseville to speak to a meeting of the South Placer Republican Women Federated, took on several of his Democratic foes — specifically former California Labor Secretary Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Labor.

Kiley was welcomed home in warm and patriotic fashion at the Sierra View Country Club, where dozens of women — led by Dry Creek School Joint Elementary School District Board member Jean Pagnone, the South Placer RWF president — applauded his return.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a more patriotic group,” Kiley told the crowd adorned in MAGA hats, Let’s Go Brandon shirts, and other Trump attire and accessories.

Kiley was home from Washington, D.C. to give the group an update about his first months as Congressman and caution voters about the Newsom administration’s continued “model of failure.”

“Where the battle lines have really being drawn right now,” said Kiley, “is with the nomination of the next Secretary of Labor for the United States.”

“Who is Julie Su?” he asked his supporters. “She was an acolyte of Gavin Newsom.”

Su, a longtime union leader, faces a Senate confirmation hearing later this month that will likely be messy. During her two-year tenure as the state’s Labor Secretary, California experienced unprecedented unemployment fraud in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the state is estimated to have lost $30 billion in fraudulent claims.

“She was responsible for that,” Kiley said. “Because she didn’t know basic, common sense things like not sending checks to prisons.”

In 2020, district attorneys from across the state wrote to Gov. Newsom asking him to implement changes at the unemployment department when the state paid upwards of $1 billion in fraudulent claims to prison inmates.

“There is no sugarcoating the reality,” Su said at a news conference in early 2021. “California did not have enough security measures in place.”

Republicans have said that Su continues to “fail up” — first when Biden appointed her as Deputy Secretary of Labor in 2021, and again earlier this year when he appointed her to take over for outgoing Secretary Marty Walsh.

Su was also “the architect who ruthlessly enforced” AB5, Kiley said. The bill, which passed in 2020, extended employee benefits to some independent contractors. Proponents, like Su, said it protects workers. Opponents, like Kiley, said it put people out of work. Congress is considering a national version of the same bill.

“I’ve made it a top priority to ... lay the case against Julie Su, and by extension, Gavin Newsom,” Kiley said. Kiley was unavailable for an interview on Saturday after the event.

“I think this is the most high stakes moment yet for this goal (of) bringing California’s failures to the national level ... if we can defeat her nomination, it is going to be a huge victory, and a huge loss for Gavin Newsom.”

Newsom has been a strong supporter of Su. In 2021, when Biden appointed her Deputy U.S. Labor Secretary, Newsom said: “With a leader like Julie at the helm — a tireless fighter for working Americans and a voice for the voiceless — the U.S. Department of Labor will play a central role in guiding us through recovery toward becoming a safer, more equitable and more prosperous nation.”