NEVADAN’S VOTE COULD BE KEY ON SEVERAL ISSUES
hard-liners and mainstream conservatives, the purity-versus-pragmatist wars have given way to a new, Trump-centered debate that highlights how fully the president has taken over the party.
On the other hand, Heller faces enormous grass-roots pressure to stand his ground against the bill. He has clung tightly to Nevada’s popular Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, a staunch opponent of the repeal who accepted the Medicaid expansion dollars in the Affordable Care Act. More than 200,000 Nevadans have gained insurance through Medicaid since the passage of the health law.
What angered the Republican rank and file about Heller’s critique was not so much his unease with the compromise Senate legislation — a measure that many on the far right are also displeased with — but that he would so purposefully undermine the president’s agenda.
And it is not just party activists who are displeased with the senator.
Adelson and Wynn, two of Las Vegas’ leading gambling titans, each contacted Heller at the request of the White House to complain about his opposition to the Republican-written health overhaul, according to multiple Republican officials.
One ally of Heller’s acknowledged that Adelson and Wynn were unhappy with the senator at the moment and that their relationship needed some repair work.
Both billionaire donors are close to Trump, a fellow tycoon. Adelson played a pivotal role in Trump’s election, showering Republican groups last year with tens of millions of dollars. Wynn is the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and oversaw a fundraiser Wednesday at the president’s Washington hotel that Trump said raised about $7 million for the party committee and his re-election campaign.
Earlier that day, America First Policies held a donor meeting for those who were in the capital for that evening’s fundraiser. Every contributor who raised the issue of the anti-heller campaign — an extraordinary offensive against a vulnerable senator in one’s own party — said they approved of the attacks, according to an attendee.
Ronald Cameron, a major Republican donor who gave the maximum $5,400 donation to Heller’s re-election campaign this year, said he would consider investing in primary race challenges to Republican lawmakers who oppose the health care bill or other White House legislative priorities.
“I might support a challenger, and would certainly withhold support from someone that I thought was against Trump’s agenda,” said Cameron, an Arkansas poultry magnate who donated more than $2 million to committees supporting Trump’s 2016 campaign and attended the Wednesday fundraiser for his re-election.
Cameron — who was solicited by America First but said he had not donated to the group — said he was not familiar with the group’s ads against Heller, but he did not object to the idea of publicly calling out lawmakers who oppose the health care bill.
They should “shape up or get out of the way,” he said.
Trump himself, while acknowledging the complaints of the Republican senators at the White House meeting, has in other private sessions with his aides and allies made clear that he very much approved of the onslaught against Heller. At the wedding of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on June 24 and then again in the White House last week, he told advisers that he supported the ad blitz, according to multiple Republican officials who have spoken to the president.
Officials with America First insist that Trump and the White House staff all supported their decision to target Heller. But there has been some unease in the administration over the strategy, which created a significant rift with the Senate majority leader, Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky, and other Republican senators at the very moment they were trying to forge consensus around the repeal bill.
At least one White House official sought to halt the attacks out of fear that alienating Heller would carry adverse ramifications well beyond the health debate. The Nevada senator is a crucial vote not only in the chamber — where Republicans have a bare, two-seat majority — but also on the finance and banking committees. The two panels have jurisdiction over legislative priorities like tax cuts and presidential appointments.
Close advisers to Heller say he is open to eventually supporting the legislation, if significant changes are made.
Megan Taylor, a spokeswoman for Heller, did not respond to questions about his call with the casino magnates or the prospect of a primary race next year.
In a statement, she said Heller “continues to engage with his colleagues, leadership, and the administration to discuss what Nevada needs to see in this bill.” But, she said, “It’s not about Sen. Heller getting to a yes, it’s about improving the legislation so that it achieves his goals of lowering costs and protecting Nevada’s most vulnerable.”
Trump and Heller have little in the way of a relationship. The senator never supported the president’s campaign, and Trump identifies him with a larger group of Nevada Republicans, including Sandoval, who either remained on the sidelines throughout 2016 or spurned him in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tape disclosure in October.
The day after Trump was revealed to have boasted on that tape about sexually assaulting women, a pair of Republican lawmakers in Nevada made a show of abandoning their party nominee at a rally outside Las Vegas. In doing so, Rep. Joe Heck, who was running for the Senate, and Rep. Cresent Hardy, who was seeking re-election, enraged Trump’s supporters.
Both lost their campaigns, making Nevada a rare bright spot in an otherwise lackluster year for Democrats.
For Nevada conservatives, it was an instructive moment — and one they said Heller appears not to have learned a lesson from.
“He’s making a tragic mistake that I thought had already been learned by the GOP delegation in Nevada,” said Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative talk show host and columnist in Las Vegas. “When you abandon Trump, you don’t get one Democrat, but you lose Republicans.”