The Washington Post’s Henry Olsen has a column about the U.S. Senate race in Nevada. Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto contends with Republican Adam Laxalt in November.
Henry observes that Clark County’s considerable Filipino vote could end up working for Laxalt, grandson of former Nevada Gov. and Sen. Paul Laxalt. Quoth Olsen:
The socio-religious background of many Filipino Americans gives Republicans hope. Filipinos are overwhelmingly Catholic, meaning they are relatively socially conservative.
And:
Nevada’s swing state status and its mélange of ethnic groups make it a petri dish for election analysis this year. Don’t be surprised if the often-overlooked Filipino American vote proves decisive.
RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende also has a piece on the race. He writes:
The state has moved rightward of late, and his opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto, has had an unspectacular first term. The Democratic president is grossly unpopular in the state, with multiple polls finding his job approval in the 30s, and she has not cracked 44% in a poll this year.
A July 8NewsNow and Emerson College poll suggests the race between the incumbent Democrat and former GOP Attorney General will be close, with CCM ahead by 3.7 percent, not much more than a 2.1 percent margin of error.
Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Victor Joecks rightly points out that Cortez Masto would be in much better shape in November if she were more of a moderate in the mold of Sen. Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., and not a no-hesitation supporter of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. Joecks warns,
In June, household inflation costs in Nevada hit 14.9 percent. Per household, that’s an $800 increase in expenses. Over a year, that would be a $9,700 increase. Inflation acts like a termite infestation. It that eats away at savings accounts and families’ dreams of upward mobility. It hinders low-income families from achieving the American Dream.
Joecks rightly has his eye on the issues that keep Nevadans up at night.
Nevada’s economic woes are on President Joe Biden, whose big spending policies (on the heels of former President Donald Trump’s big spending ) have fed inflation to the detriment of the Las Vegas economy and Sin City’s workforce. The sour economy is bad news for Cortez Masto.
My question is: How much of a role will former President Donald Trump play in November? Voters tend to vote with an eye on the future, but GOP primary candidates have spent a lot of time taking about the past.
GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt and Secretary of State nominee Jim Marchant (who says there hasn’t been an honest election in Nevada in a decade) question whether President Joe Biden won Nevada in 2020.
As for gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo told the Reno Gazette Journal:
Lombardo in July told the RGJ he didn’t know if the results of November’s election were accurate.
He hasn’t changed his mind since then, though he said Joe Biden is the duly elected president and that the election was not stolen.
No doubt denier or semi-denier status, coupled with Trump’s endorsement, helped these Rs with the GOP base — but what does it mean for November?
To win general elections, candidates used to reach out to independents and members of the rival party. In 2020, the Trump campaign tried to win, not by reaching out to independent voters, but by ginning up the base — and Trump lost Nevada.
Democrats can claim 598,542 registered voters in Nevada, more than the R’s 530,541, although recently the GOP has seen larger registration gains over the Dems. And 516,120 Nevadans are registered as nonpartisan.
GOP candidates will need the votes of Nevadans not registered with their party, even as they deny the legitimacy of the 2020 Nevada vote.
Awkward.
Debra J. Saunders is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.
Note: I updated my remarks on the stance of Laxalt, Marchant and Lombardo stance on 2020 and have made unsubstantianted claims of fraud. For more, look here and here.