Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore gives a thumbs up to supporters during an opening ceremony for mountain bike trails and a BMX pump track at Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs Saturday, May 23, 2020.
Sunday, March 6, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Conservatives at the Principles First summit last weekend in Washington wanted to see a return to civility and mutual respect and the dissolving of, let’s just say, more candid speech that former President Donald Trump popularized within the party.
Many of the attendees and speakers said they no longer fit in the “Trumpian” party and referred to themselves as “principled conservatives,” focusing on character, truth and the rule of law. We attended the summit.
Featured speakers, like Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have a different outlook from many of the Republican officeholders in Nevada, who seem to be doubling down on their support for the former president and his intention to run again in 2024.
While covering different Republican forums or campaign events, we haven’t heard any Republican in Nevada speak of any other option. Many are like Las Vegas City Councilwoman and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Michele Fiore, who ran 62 campaign ads on Fox News in the Florida market of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home base with hopes of catching his attention and capturing a much-coveted endorsement from him.
They know speaking out against Trump would signal a quick end to their election chances, as they’d be blacklisted by Trump and his supporters, who now are the base of the party. Trump called Cheney, who is on the special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riots, a “smug fool.” Trump called Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, a “stone cold loser” and a RINO, “Republican In Name Only,” after Romney criticized Trump for attempting to corrupt the 2020 election. Since then Trump’s supporters often refer to Romney as a RINO.
While conservatives at the summit praised politicians like Romney and Mike Pence for upholding the 2020 election results, many Republicans in Nevada are still repeating false claims of election fraud and calling politicians like Romney fake Republicans.
That means the “real” Republicans are like Justin Andersch, one of the two men who berated Gov. Steve Sisolak and his wife at the restaurant last weekend. The two went as far as saying they should string Sisolak up to a lamppost.
Fiore didn’t condemn the threat but instead said that Sisolak was lucky it was just words. “If you look at the history of dictators, pitchforks will be next,” she said.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, the presumed frontrunner in the GOP governor’s race, did condemn the violence, saying that if you oppose an elected leader you should vote them out instead of accosting them at a restaurant.
Lombardo and Fiore seem to be foils to each other and perhaps represent the different sides of Nevada’s Republican Party, one condemning harassment and the other supporting it. Lombardo also has a history of being more moderate, although since running for governor he has branded himself as more conservative. Fiore has made it clear where she stands, as a proud “Lady Trump.”
It will be interesting to see where the Nevada Republican Party goes in just a few months during the June primary. Will it nominate a candidate who has traditionally followed more moderate policies, and will that person abandon the Trump bandwagon when they receive the nomination? Or will a more extreme, staunch Trump supporter be nominated?
Painting with a wide brush
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is seeking the GOP nomination to face incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in November, claims “the left” has destroyed the constitutional system, has refused to prosecute low-level criminals and has gone against law enforcement communities all over the U.S. He also condemned the left for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
Laxalt delivered the broadsides, including claims about how the nation’s “open” southern border has led to rampant drug trafficking, which has especially affected Nevada, last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.
He said the left’s criticisms of the U.S. have told the rest of the world that the country was flawed and damaged.
“What do you think that tells Vladimir Putin?” Laxalt said. “It tells him it’s the time to march, that America won’t be strong enough to stand up.”
Laxalt called on the crowd to march and “expose the left and their failed ideologies.”
No more emergency?
Senate Republicans late last week passed a resolution to end the coronavirus national public health emergency, taking advantage of the absences of three Democratic senators to push the resolution through.
All Democrats who were present voted against it, including Nevada’s senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen.
A spokesperson for Rosen said in a statement that although Nevada is actively making strides to recover, “ending the emergency declaration at this moment could create barriers to securing necessary medical and protective supplies should there be another spike, and could eliminate the President’s emergency powers that are helping thousands of Nevadans like pausing student loan payments.”
“Instead of responsibly phasing out our COVID-19 response programs, voting to end this declaration would have shut off critical supports overnight,” a spokesperson for Cortez Masto said in a statement. “It would also end the paus of federal student loan repayments through May 1. We’re on the road to recovery, but health care providers and state and local governments need continued support while they plan for the future.”
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, Cortez Masto’s presumed opponent in the November midterm election, called her vote an insult to “thousands of Nevada school children, countless small businesses, and every person in this state who lost their job because of overbearing COVID restrictions.”
Although Republican senators passed the resolution, it is failing in the House, and President Joe Biden has said he would veto the measure if it got to his desk.
In Nevada, Gov. Steve Sisolak could soon consider ending the two-year state of emergency declaration, he told the Reno Gazette Journal last week.
Nevada congressional delegation update
The Nevada delegation was quite busy in D.C. last week.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Dina Titus and Steven Horsford and Republican Mark Amodei, along with representatives from Pennsylvania and Maryland introduced the Shifting Limits on Thresholds (SLOT) Act that would raise the threshold for reporting slot winnings to the Internal Revenue Service.
The threshold for reporting slot winnings is currently $1,200, which was set in 1977, said Titus, co-chair of the Congressional Gaming Caucus. The threshold would be around $5,000 if indexed for inflation, and because of inflation the number of jackpots hitting the $1,200 threshold has increased dramatically, she said.
“This creates an unnecessary burden on the gaming industry, an economic driver for Southern Nevada and other communities nationwide where slot machines exist,” Titus said in the statement. “While I believe appropriate taxes should be collected on winnings, raising the threshold would reduce paperwork and ensure this is accomplished more efficiently.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen’s Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act passed the Senate this week, which will help address the maternal health crisis by mapping out areas that need both increased maternal care and broadband access so the government can target where telemedicine improvements will be most effective. “I am glad that my bipartisan legislation to address this issue passed the Senate unanimously and is one step closer to becoming law,” Rosen said in a statement.
Additionally, Rosen and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., are cosponsoring the Affordable Insulin Now Act which was introduced by Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga. The legislation will cap the out-of-pocket cost of insulin at $35 per month.
“I’m working to lower costs for hardworking families, and that includes making sure that lifesaving drugs like insulin are affordable for all Nevadans,” Cortez Masto said in a statement.
Countdown
Days until the filing deadline for the 2022 election: 12
Days to primary: 99
Days to midterms: 246
What to look out for this week: Candidates seeking election this year to federal, state and local offices can begin filing for office starting Monday. The filing period lasts 11 days with the deadline March 18.
