Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Q+A: Sharelle Mendenhall:

Underdog’ Senate candidate: ‘We for too long have elected very weak leaders’

U.S. Senate Candidate Sharelle Mendenhall

Christopher DeVargas

Sharelle Mendenhall, former Miss California and Mrs. Nevada as well as business owner, is running for U.S. Senate, Thursday Nov. 4, 2021.

Republican business owner and pageant winner Sharelle Mendenhall announced her run for U.S. Senate in July, looking to oust Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto while also facing off against other Republicans, including former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt.

Mendenhall moved from California to Las Vegas a couple of years ago and is an entrepreneur. In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, she talked about one of her more recent companies called Mendanation, which sells hoodies. For every hoodie sold, another is given to a U.S. charity.

If elected, Mendenhall, who was Mrs. Nevada United States in 2020 and Ms. California United States in 2019, said she wants to fight against vaccine mandates, solve Nevada’s water issues, curb human trafficking and bring businesses to Nevada.

The Las Vegas Sun sat down for a Q&A with Mendenhall to learn more about her, where she stands on some of the biggest issues and how she plans to go up against her other Republican candidates. Her answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

What are some of the big issues facing Nevadans that you would solve if elected?

We can’t always count on a snowpack. And with the rate we’re growing, (the water is) declining and you can physically see the signs if you drive out to Lake Mead. There’s so many different things that just trickle down from that super vital piece. I really think that desalinization is a possibility. But I really love a couple of different options. I have a friend who is building out toward a couple of things that would actually pay for itself and have to do with water. We can take the water from Missouri and bring that over to the mouth of the Colorado river that is going to feed everything below. And you don’t throw everything you have at it with one solution. You find the different pieces that can work. I think for too long we’ve done mandates for our really big solutions. And that’s one of the things that I want to ensure that I’m not just saying, "Hey, it’s only going to be through desalinization." That might not be the only way, and it might not be the most economical way. We have three different ways that we’re currently addressing. ... We’re going run after it and whichever one is better, we will institute that.

How do you stand out from the other candidates, particularly the other Republican candidates?

I’m a business owner running after this with a business plan and I’m going to execute this. I’m not looking at this as business as usual. I’m not running after it as business as usual. I have an entirely different plan that I’m currently enacting, executing and will continue to execute throughout the entire time. I think, we for too long have elected very weak leaders. And I mean weak because so often they get in there, they make these promises and then you see their voting record and it looks like a heart monitor. It’s based off of interests. You don’t have a lot of people who have stood up for the things they promise. I guess you can call me the underdog. I know that. My eyes are very open to that. But it also means that I know I need to work harder than everybody in the room. I have that experience from a very young age. You’d be someone who is stereotyped and it gives you that drive to be like, "Watch me."

Adam Laxalt has Donald Trump’s endorsement. Are you worried about that all or do you think that will make you push harder?

(Trump) came out early. He’s never met me. So in my opinion that’s not a good business decision to endorse someone without knowing all the candidates in the arena. You need to be endorsing the right person. With that said, I’m going to continuously run after this with the eye on the prize, that it’s not just about business as usual. Business as usual is whoever gets the best endorsement, whoever gets the most money, wins. And look where that’s gotten us. (Trump) came out. He endorsed him. Great. If people want to take that word as the only word and not do their own research, that’s on them.

Was the 2020 election in Nevada free and fair?

No, not by any means. There was absolutely election fraud. And that has been in multiple states, and they have proven that. You look at Wisconsin, you look at what happened in New Jersey — people voting without IDs. People dropping off 40,000 ballots in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. in New Jersey (The Sun could not find evidence that 40,000 ballots were dropped off in the middle of the night in New Jersey. We did find a story in which 40,800 ballots were rejected during the New Jersey primary because they were filed incorrectly. Widespread election fraud has also been disproven. Officials have not been able to find widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden won with 7,060,347 more votes than Trump). I think that is undermining us as a country. We have always empowered people to have a voice. And we are taking that away by throwing this factor in there that, guess what, it might not matter. Your vote might not matter because we’re going to find things in the middle of the night. They admitted to fraud but not widespread fraud. And widespread is such an ambiguous name to talk about because there is fraud. And fraud should be addressed. If you see fraud in your company, you don’t let it exist. You cut it off. There is fraud and it needs to be addressed. It cannot be allowed to continue. If you see even a $10 charge on your bank account that’s not yours, you address it.

Is Joe Biden the rightfully elected president of the United States?

I believe that there was fraud. And it was widespread. So I do not believe he’s the rightfully elected president. Because if there was a full forensic audit and it showed that in fact he is the rightful president, then yes.

What kind of police reform do you believe is necessary, if any?

Right now, obviously the mandates are a huge thing that need to be cut off. (Police officers) need to be empowered. Right now, they’re not looked at as heroes. I think we need to start regarding them as heroes. We need to pay them appropriately. We’ve seen what happens on a small scale when you don’t have people showing up. If you’re calling the police station and no one shows up, it needs to be an entire reform — who the police actually are, that they serve our community, that they’re our heroes, that they need to be honored, they need to be respected. Defunding the police is never an option. Not everyone is going to be able to pay for private security. We need to have that confidence that when we call, they’re going to be there.

What are your thoughts about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol?

There’s so much noise around this. I have people that I know who were personally there. And they were there to support President Trump. The inner workings and what actually went on, again, I feel has been politicized. The woman who was killed, the people who rushed in. Do I think there’s a proper process for everything? Absolutely. And I think there’s certain things that need to be adhered to. I can take a look from the outside and can only speculate. People deserve the truth. And we’re getting distorted versions of what happened. There was someone who died. And why are we not searching after that truth? And why are we not ensuring that justice is served no matter what?

Is there anything else that you’d like to tell people?

We need to be serving the people. And that’s an entire community. We work for the people who elect us. And we’re supposed to work to make this place better. That’s why the Constitution was instituted. It was frameworked to ensure that we have these freedoms, these rights. Our kids are suffering. They’re trying to say that you have the right to call yourself all these other names and pronouns, but I can’t call myself a she, a her, a mom, a wife. Trying to take away genders — that is not OK. You have kids getting raped, even within prisons. A boy wearing a skirt raped a ninth-grader. And they talk about how many rapes are actually submitted and talked about and brought to light, the number is very low. Mixing transgenders inside of prisons causing rapes. It’s not OK. We need to be protecting. You can change your gender. You have that right, you have that freedom. But it’s when it’s encroaching and hurting other people that it’s not OK.

Don’t give up hope. It’s this message that no matter what we do, we can’t win. Because some sort of corruption will happen. And that’s never settling for any one. We don’t want corruption in anything that we do, in our system and our government. And that even though we’re not picking up a physical weapon, we are picking up the weapon which is our voice. We’re standing up for our kids, we’re standing up for our rights, and we’re standing up for this amazing state that we love. The world is watching what we do and how we fight. We need to make sure each seat is contested. We take back school board seats, and we can actually start focusing on education, making it better, because we are bottom of the barrel. We can start focusing on our real issues — water issues.