Health care may haunt senator
Vulnerable Republican being slammed from the left and the right
RENO Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., is struggling with his messaging. That’s a problem, because Heller — who won his last election by just 1 percentage point — is one of the most vulnerable GOP senators trying to keep his seat in the 2018 midterm elections.
His positions on repealing the Affordable Care Act and cutting off Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood have both Democrats and conservative Republicans ready to pounce.
Heller’s most likely general election challenger is first-term Democrat Rep. Jacky Rosen, a former synagogue president and software developer who was able to take Nevada’s 3rd District from Republican hands in 2016.
Before he moves into the general election, Heller must make it through what is likely to be a bruising primary against Danny Tarkanian, a conservative businessman who has aligned himself closely with President Trump.
Heller is struggling to figure out how vigorously to support a president who is popular with his base but has low approval ratings overall.
“He doesn’t know which way he has to go, I mean really. I have said to people, ‘It’s no fun being Dean these days,’ ” said Pam duPre, a former executive director of the Washoe County Democratic Party. Washoe County includes Reno and is the state’s swing county.
Heller became a central figure in the unsuccessful Republicanled effort to repeal Obamacare because he originally said he would not vote for the bill advanced by Senate leadership. Nevada expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and hundreds of thousands of people started receiving coverage. The original bill introduced by GOP leadership would have curbed that program, and Nevada’s GOP governor opposed any efforts to undo the expansion.
During a marathon series of votes on health care last month, Heller opposed the leadership bill, and it was was scrapped for lack of Republican support. Heller also voted against a straight Obamacare repeal bill that House and Senate Republicans passed in 2015 only to have President Obama veto it. That bill also failed.
Heller did vote for a narrower repeal bill — nicknamed “skinny repeal” — that was intended just to get a bill through the Senate to kick off negotiations with Republicans in the House. That bill also died in the Senate as three other Republicans voted against it.
The bill he voted for didn’t touch Medicaid — which Heller was concerned about protecting — but that bill was not going to be the final version. If it had passed, it would have moved to conference with the more conservative House. The final bill that came out of conference could have ended up rolling back the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid.
Conservatives said Heller’s public statements and votes against two of the three repeal efforts, including the simple repeal — which he had voted for in 2015 — were not enough.
“The biggest problem that he is gonna have is Obamacare. As you know, Republicans have been running on ‘repeal Obamacare’ for seven years, and then when it becomes time, it’s like, well, they can’t get it done,” said David Buell former chair of Washoe County’s GOP. “He’s gotta stay off that message and get on the positive things he’s done as he’s been a senator. He’s been a big supporter of the military and veterans.”
“It will impact him significantly in the primary,” said Sam Kumar, who also held the top spot in Washoe County’s Republican Party. Kumar would have liked to repeal Obamacare in its entirety. Kumar also would like a more conservative senator than Heller to win, but he acknowledged Tarkanian could have a hard time in a general election and said it’s most important to keep the seat in Republican hands.
Heller defended the way he handled the health care vote in an interview with USA TODAY.
“I did exactly what I said I was going to do on health care, and that was to protect Medicaid expansion here in the state of Nevada and at the same time get rid of the mandates — those portions of Obamacare that I disagreed with,” Heller said.
Heller muddied his stance on Planned Parenthood at a town hall event where he said he would “protect” the women’s health organization. Heller said later that taxpayer money shouldn’t fund abortions, but Planned Parenthood already is barred from using federal money for abortions. It is reimbursed for non-abortion reproductive services.
“Dean Heller campaigned on a promise that he would defund Planned Parenthood and then he got in front of a wild town hall … and then he promised he would protect the funding of Planned Parenthood,” Tarkanian told USA TODAY. “He keeps going back and forth based on whatever way the political winds are blowing.”
The Trump administration imposed sanctions Tuesday on 10 companies and six individuals mostly from China and Russia who it says helped North Korea develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The sanctions are the latest in a raft of blacklists issued in recent months to punish Chinese and Russian companies that try to evade international efforts to isolate North Korea. The penalties seek to cut violators off from the U.S. financial system, which extends to banks in Russia and China that use it to transfer money between institutions.
Trump seeks China’s assistance in reining in North Korea’s nuclear program, which has demonstrated significant strides in the past year. The president has expressed frustration with China, North Korea’s key ally China, saying the United States would use the tools at its disposal to increase pressure on the North.
Tuesday’s sanctions targeted companies and individuals involved in North Korean weapons programs, its coal and oil trade and its foreign worker program, which the State Department says are three major sources of funding for illicit weapons programs.
Navy and Marine Corps divers located the remains of some of the 10 sailors missing from the USS John S. McCain after its collision with an oil tanker off Malaysia, the Navy said Tuesday.
Divers investigating damage to the ship probed sealed compartments and “were able to locate some remains in those sealed compartments,” Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said from Changi Naval Base in Singapore.
Swift said the Malaysian navy reported locating a body and was working to confirm whether it was one of the missing U.S. sailors. Naval ships from Singapore and Malaysia were aiding the U.S. Navy in a massive search Tuesday, Swift said.