SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In 2007, an idealistic 22-year-old Harvard student named Kevin Kiley wrote in his undergraduate thesis that “politicians are inclined to do the easy thing — cater to the worldviews of their constituents — rather than offer the more challenging task of self-examination.”
Fifteen years later, Kiley resembles the kind of politician he once disdained.
When the Placer County assemblyman and congressional candidate was first elected, he presented himself as a moderate conservative who could make common cause with the Democrats running the California Legislature. Before he began his political career, he taught high school English in South Central Los Angeles through Teach for America, which places graduates of elite colleges in low-income schools. And before that, he wrote his 150-page thesis arguing that “the guiding principles of liberalism itself are most fully realizable through Republican politics” as exemplified by the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.
