Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

4th Congressional District: Horsford squares off against Marchant

Congressman Horsford at Las Vegas Sun

Steve Marcus

Congressman Steven Horsford, D-Nev., responds to a question during an editorial board meeting at the Las Vegas Sun offices in Henderson Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019.

Nevada’s 4th congressional district is a huge swath of land stretching from North Las Vegas to southern Lyon County near Carson City. The rurality of the district can be deceiving, however, as the majority of the district’s voters reside in North Las Vegas and Clark County.

Like the nearby 3rd congressional district, the 4th district has gone back and forth between Democratic and Republican representation since its creation in 2013. Current Rep. Steven Horsford, a Democrat, was the first representative for the seat before losing reelection in 2015. He regained the seat in 2018.

He is being challenged in the general election by former Nevada Assemblyman and businessman Jim Marchant, who emerged from a crowded Republican primary field in June.

Here’s more on each candidate:

Steven Horsford

Horsford, the first Black elected to Congress from Nevada, has been critical of President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed around 217,000 Americans.

“I wanted the president to rise to the occasion when this pandemic first became evident and we knew just how horrific it could be,” Horsford said. “Unfortunately, he failed the American people.”

Horsford, along with Democratic New Mexico Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, introduced the Back on Your Feet Act, which would extend federal unemployment benefits to the end of January 2021 and grant those returning to work $3,600 to provide for basic needs until getting their first paychecks.

He also announced the Nursing Facility Quality Reporting Act, a bill that would require the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to publish information on COVID-19 infections and deaths in care facilities. That bill’s measures were included in House Democrats’ Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which passed the House but froze in the U.S. Senate.

“We have an economy, a city, largely driven by the service and tourism industry, and because of that Nevada families have been particularly hard hit more on the economic side, but the underlying health issues have also shown a number of the disparities particularly among communities of color and the elderly,” Horsford said.

Horsford, who sits on the Rural and Underserved Communities Health Task Force of the Ways and Means Committee, has made health care, especially prescription drug pricing, one of his signature issues.

He backed the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, which would allow Medicare to negotiate prices directly with drug companies, create a $2,000 limit on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries and make lower costs negotiated by Medicare available to Americans with private insurance.

Horsford also voted for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill that would allow the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to subpoena police departments in bias investigations, limit the transfer of military-grade equipment to police departments and bar no-knock warrants in federal drug investigations, among other issues. That bill has frozen in the Republican-led Senate.

Horsford, who is pro-choice, criticized a 2019 Alabama law that bars abortions except under the most extreme circumstances. That law is currently tied up in the courts.

“Women won’t go back to the days where policy dictates what they do with their bodies,” he said in a statement when that law was passed. “This restrictive law on reproductive freedom is a huge setback in overcoming gender inequality.”

Horsford called the election safe and secure, commending Republican Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske for her work on the election.

Click to enlarge photo

Jim Marchant, Republican candidate for Nevada's 4th Congressional District.

Horsford called his challenger Marchant “ideologically extreme,” criticizing him for his plan to privatize Social Security.

“The options couldn’t be starker between my opponent and me as well as Joe Biden and President Trump,” Horsford said.

Jim Marchant

Marchant, who was a Nevada assemblyman from 2016 to 2018, has views aligning with those of Trump, according to his campaign site. Marchant did not respond to requests for an interview.

Marchant, who touts endorsements from multiple police unions, criticizes “radical socialists” for trying to defund the police. Marchant also plays up his ability to “take on the establishment,” mirroring Trump’s 2016 platform of “draining the swamp.”

Marchant promises he will “hold China accountable” and accuses the country of being “largely responsible for the devastation of the coronavirus.” He criticized China for its unprecedented censorship campaign starting a few weeks after the coronavirus first emerged in Hubei Province, its intellectual property theft of American companies and “cyberwarfare against American interests.”

Marchant has been endorsed by Nevada Right to Life, the Silver State’s affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion organization. In responses entered in to iVoterGuide, a conservative voter guide system, Marchant said that abortion should only be allowed to prevent the death of the mother.

In that guide, he also expressed support for building a wall on the country’s southern border, support for merit-based immigration policies and support for blocking state and federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities.” Immigrants, he wrote, should “assimilate and adapt to our way of life.”

Marchant has also said that he would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. He does not support adding protections for LGBTQ individuals to federal nondiscrimination laws.

He wants to privatize Social Security, but not immediately, allowing it remain for citizens who have paid into it. In his responses to iVoterGuide, he wrote that he would rather have money invested privately in businesses that manage pension funds rather than going to the government. Taxpayers should also, “under no circumstances,” he writes, pay off student loans.

Under health care, Marchant wrote that he wants to rebuild the current health care system using “free-market capitalism principles.”