Obama goes to Nevada to focus on a tight Senate race.
NORTH LAS VEGAS — President Barack Obama left little doubt why he was in Nevada on Sunday, focusing the majority of his 45-minute speech in a packed high school gym on Nevada’s closely contested Senate race.
His shirt sleeves rolled up, he seemed buoyant, confident and even cocky.
“I am here to tell you right now that you’ve got a sure thing,” Obama told the crowd. “You’ve got a winning hand. You’ve got blackjack.”
He barely mentioned Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has surged to a lead in the polls. Instead, Obama talked about Catherine Cortez Masto, a former state attorney general, who is locked in a tight race with Rep. Joe Heck, a three-term Republican congressman, to replace Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.
Heck has struggled to balance Donald Trump’s popularity in some parts of the state with his controversial comments. Recently he angered some Trump supporters by dropping his support for the GOP nominee after a video surfaced showing Trump making sexually aggressive statements.
In the final days of Cortez Masto’s Senate campaign, her strategy has been to link Heck to Trump. She has been airing an ad that juxtaposes Trump attacking undocumented immigrants and a disabled journalist with Heck’s previous supportive comments about the nominee.
Obama doubled down on Cortez Masto’s strategy, doing everything he could to connect to Trump the congressman who represents the Las Vegas suburbs.
“Now that Trump’s poll numbers have cratered, he is saying I am not supporting him,” Obama said of Heck. “Too late. You don’t get credit for that.”