GOP PINS HOPES ON NEVADA’S LAXALT
Republicans need win from rookie to get control of Senate
The man Republicans hope could be their 51st senator, putting them back in power, took the stage recently at a rowdy country music bar in Las Vegas packed with excited voters.
Adam Laxalt is the grandson of a Republican senator from Nevada and an avowed conservative who was state attorney general before losing a 2018 race for governor. By his side in the bar was Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a likely candidate for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination who was fresh off his legislation punishing Disney for opposing his new law barring instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade.
Laxalt has already drawn criticism for being too hardline to win a race in a state that has mostly elected Democrats over the past 15 years. But he called Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, his potential opponent in November, the partisan problem.
“Nevada deserves someone that will break from the radical left and stand with our state when we need courage,” Laxalt said to cheers from supporters waving “Patriots for Laxalt” signs. “We need independence and someone that will break from that party and stand with us.”
Nevada is central to the GOP’s hopes this year to retake the evenly-split Senate and potentially make longerterm inroads with minority voters. It’s the third most-diverse
state, but Democratic margins have been steadily shrinking here since 2008, when Barack Obama became his party’s first presidential candidate to carry Nevada in 12 years.
Toppling Cortez Masto would not only give Republicans the additional seat needed for control — provided they do not lose any seats they now hold — but bragging rights to having greater appeal among immigrant communities.
It also would be a sign
there are fewer barriers to aggressive conservatives than assumed.
Laxalt served a single term as Nevada’s attorney general, then was soundly defeated in his 2018 gubernatorial bid. In 2020, he co-chaired President Donald Trump’s campaign in Nevada and repeated Trump’s lies about the election being swung by voter fraud.
Laxalt is also a strong opponent of abortion rights, which Democrats hope will become a bigger vulnerability
for him if the U.S. Supreme Court follows through with a draft opinion released last week that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. His dilemma quickly became clear when he simultaneously praised the potential opinion as “an historic victory for the sanctity of life” but played down ts impact in Nevada, where voters enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution in 1990.
Cortez Masto, whose staff said she was not available for an interview for this story,
tried to highlight the contrast in the race.
“My opponent says that overturning Roe v. Wade and ending protections for a woman’s right to choose is a ‘historic victory,’” she tweeted. “I trust women and their doctors to make the health care decisions that are best for them — not politicians.”
Laxalt’s conservative positions go well beyond abortion. He has warned that he may file lawsuits challenging the election even before the November vote. As attorney general he feuded with the state’s moderate Republican governor over guns, taxes and immigration.
Republicans argue that will not matter in a year when inflation is at 40-year highs and President Joe Biden’s approval numbers are scraping record lows.
“This election will be focused on inflation, the price of gas and Joe Biden’s first two years in office,” said Jeremy Hughes, a GOP strategist in the state. “Under that scenario, Adam Laxalt is in line with a vast majority of Nevada voters.”
There is a history in Nevada, however, of a Democratic senator defying the odds during a Republican wave year. In 2010, Sen. Harry Reid beat GOP challenger Sharron Angle by portraying her as extreme on immigration and unfit for higher office. Democrats have similar plans for Laxalt.
“Voters already rejected him,” said Josh MarcusBlank, a spokesman for Cortez Masto’s campaign. “He’s only gotten worse.”
Reid, a legendary figure in Nevada and national politics, died of pancreatic cancer last year. He hand-picked Cortez Masto, herself a former attorney general, as the Democratic nominee when he retired in 2016. Cortez Masto is the first Latina U.S. senator. This year’s election will be the first test of Reid’s vaunted political operation since he died.
When his political machine has worked, Democrats have been able to win Nevada by rallying its heavily workingclass, minority population with promises to protect their economic interests, immigration needs or both.