For opposing president, Heller now may face 2018 primary challenge

WASHINGTON — Sen. Dean Heller’s biting denunciation of the Republican health care bill last month infuriated the White House and helped unravel his party’s attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act days before a vote was expected in the Senate.

Now Heller is facing an intense backlash in Nevada, his home state, where there is talk of a primary race challenge against him next year and a pair of the state’s wealthiest Republican donors are fuming.

America First Policies, a nonprofit group created to back President Donald Trump’s agenda, suspended its advertising campaign against Heller after he agreed to attend a West Wing meeting on the health bill and after a group of Republican senators in attendance complained about the commercials. But Heller, perhaps the most vulnerable Republican senator on the ballot next year, has by no means escaped the wrath of Trump and his vocal supporters, including two billionaire casino magnates, Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn.

“All of the Trump supporters I talk to are furious with Heller,” said Danny Tarkanian, the son of famed former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian and a frequent Republican candidate for office in the state. Tarkanian said he was considering taking on the senator next year and had been encouraged to do so by some of the president’s ardent grass-roots admirers. The political fallout from Heller’s high-profile news conference 12 days ago offers a vivid illustration of the new fault lines on the right in the Trump era. After years of fierce clashing between Republican