Scrum of challengers jockey to face Titus in Nevada’s 1st Congressional District

By Jessica Hill

Friday, June 10, 2022 | 2 a.m.

A crowded field of Republicans is looking to take down longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Dina Titus in Nevada’s 1st Congressional District, which covers the Strip, the Harry Reid International Airport and the East Las Vegas Valley.

And unlike previous elections, Titus — the representative since 2013 — should get a more significant Republican challenge this November because of the remapping of Nevada’s districts.

Titus’ district was reorganized during a legislative special session to redraw the maps, which happens every 10 years based on results from the U.S. Census. The reshuffling peeled off some of the Democratic voters in Titus’ district, which she easily won in 2020 by 28.4 percentage points, and put them in the more competitive 3rd and 4th districts. That made all three Democratic congressional seats vulnerable to Republican wins, Titus has said.

Titus also has a primary opponent Tuesday in Amy Vilela, an accountant who has done bookkeeping for campaigns and in 2018 lost a congressional race.

The Republican primary field is large, including: Jane Adams, David Kenneth Brog, Cresent Hardy, Mark Robertson, Carolina Serrano, Morgun Sholty, Cynthia Dianne Steel and Jessie Turner.

Meet the candidates

Adams is a political activist and former software developer who attended St. John’s University in New York.

Brog went to Harvard Law School and is executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, which works to stop the spread of antisemitism on college campuses.

Hardy is a former congressman who was elected in 2014 and served one term representing Nevada’s 4th Congressional District. He has served as the Mesquite public works director, a member of the Virgin Valley Water District, as a member of the Mesquite City Council and two terms in the state Assembly.

Robertson is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves. He has worked as a certified financial planner, and as an assistant professor and adjunct faculty member at UNLV, the National Defense University and the American College.

Serrano, a UNLV graduate with a degree in journalism and media studies, previously worked on Capitol Hill before leading the Hispanic outreach effort in Las Vegas for former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Sholty has a political consulting firm and came to Nevada in 2016 to work with Danny Tarkanian on his congressional race. He is a fourth-generation horseman and works for his family’s business that sells horse supplements. He is also part of Power 2 Parent, a parental rights group in Nevada.

Steel is a 22-year retired family court judge and was a Nevada assemblywoman in 1995. She also worked as chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren in 1996.

Turner hosts the “We Are Right” podcast and is a civil rights leader and homeless activist.

There hasn’t been much polling on the race but Predictit.org, where people can place bets on who they expect to win, has the most money on Serrano, who’s been campaigning alongside U.S. Senate candidate former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, and has raised the most campaign funds.

What do the candidates

have in common?

The candidates all see the value in a limited federal government and the importance of empowering states’ rights. They all want to tighten the budget and fix inflation. All of them are anti-abortion, although Adams did not return a recent request for comment.

When asked if they would support any gun reform legislation, none of them said yes. A couple of candidates, like Steel and Hardy, said they would have to read the legislation first and could not say one way or another. They all pointed to mental health as the real problem of mass shootings.

“I don’t know that gun control will (fix the problem),” Steel said. “If someone wants it bad enough, they’ll find a way to get it. A better course of action is to be on the defensive as far as soft targets are concerned and have protection in place.”

They all want election reform and talked about election integrity issues.

Serrano said a family member’s vote did not count. The person went to vote in person but someone else voted in his name with an old address, she said. Sholty does not think Trump won in Nevada, but he does think some races were stolen, pointing to Stavros Anthony’s defeat by eight votes for a seat on the Clark County Commission against Ross Miller.

Many of the candidates want to tackle immigration and close the border.

“We’ve got to stop the illegal flow of guns, drugs, gangs and people entering our country illegally,” Robertson said. “Once we’ve closed the border, then we can talk about immigration reform.”

Serrano thinks a lot of the country’s problems are tied to immigration, from crime to inflation to education.

“If you look at who’s coming over, these are people who cannot make it on their own,” Serrano said. They have to get on programs and that costs money.”

On education, with the exception of Steel, who believes education should be left up to the states, all of the candidates are in favor of school choice, charter schools and bringing parental rights back into education.

Sholty wants to reform the education system by adding more physical activity to the school curriculum and making school more experiential-based rather than memory based.

How do they differ?

Most of the candidates are anti-abortion, and when asked if they would try to restrict abortion rights on a national level or leave it up to the states, almost all said they would leave it up to the states. Sholty, however, said he would consider a national bill proposed by the National Right to Life.

“I have a deep-seated fear of granting the government power at a federal level,” Sholty said, “however, there’s some bills proposed by the National Right to Life, and those bills are pretty sound to me, and I think it makes sense. … I think it’s the federal government’s duty to protect life.”

Robertson is said he was very pro-Second Amendment but does support keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. He supports background checks and prosecuting people who lie on background check forms. He also supports training.

“In the military, we don’t give a new soldier a weapon until they first have been trained on that weapon,” Robertson said.

A couple of candidates, while they all say the elections are insecure, still recognize that Biden is the president. Hardy, for instance, acknowledged that Biden is president but doesn’t agree with his policies. Adams also acknowledged that he’s the president.

“Well, he’s the president,” Adams said. “I could tell you that. I don’t know how conscious he is, or how capable he is at being a president. He’s made terrible decisions from the beginning. So like I said before, I don’t think we should be dwelling on the past.”

Most candidates believe there was election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, where Biden beat Trump by more than 30,000 votes in Nevada. (Those claims have been proven false in court challenges, and Nevada’s Republican secretary of state has assured the public the election was free and fair and untainted by meaningful fraud).

Steel said she has “not seen anything that’s provable.” As a judge, she’s seen children make allegations of abuse, and those allegations were found to be unsubstantiated.

“It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” she said. “It means they couldn’t prove it.”

Adams also has a unique priority of increasing the use of bitcoin. On her first day in office, she would introduce legislation to make bitcoin a legal tender. She also calls the environment a big priority.

“I think climate change is really destroying our planet,” Adams said. “There are people that still deny it, which I think is insane.” She thinks a lot of the technology being developed will help combat climate change.

Adams is also concerned about financial education and financial literacy.

“I think the difference between poor people and rich people is their understanding of finances,” Adams said. “And if we could put more of that into schools, give children access to that, we can definitely have things turned around as far as just people being able to provide for themselves and people being able to make better decisions about student loans.”

On water, some candidates, like Serrano, believe the problem should be handled by the states, while others see themselves getting involved at a federal level. Hardy and Robertson, for instance, would want Congress to work with Western states to find a solution, such as desalination and conservation efforts.

“Let’s spend time working on issues. This is where the federal government can make a difference,” Hardy said, pointing to major infrastructure projects the government was involved in.

Steel said if the federal government wants to get involved, it should help build desalination plants off Pacific coast.

“It shouldn’t be just up to California to go through the expense of doing it if everybody’s going to benefit from it,” Steel said. “I think the states want to be in charge of it. They don’t want the federal government to come in and interrupt years-long negotiations.”

Steel said she wants to make sure immigrants on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals have stability and understand how they can get on the path to citizenship.

“They’ve been here a long time,” Steel said. “They haven’t had a decision on what to do about their existence. That’s a shame. We use them as a political football. Their parents brought them; they were desperate for a better life for their kids.”

Steel also wants to reform campaign finances, saying that candidates should not accept money from corporations or those who cannot vote for the candidate.

“If you can’t vote for me, you can’t give me any money,” Steel said. “If I’m depending on PACs and corporations and lobbyists to get money, then what am I focusing on?” Not the constituents, she said.

Serrano thinks she’s unique because she is the only one who’s worked on Trump’s campaign. She also thinks she understands the people living in the district.

“A lot of the people that live there work in hospitality,” she said. “That’s me my whole life. I understand what it’s like for them to clock in and out, to sacrifice weekends and holidays. … None of the other candidates can relate in that way.”

At 28 years old, Sholty thinks he can help rebrand the Republican Party with more contemporary messages to attract more young people.

When asked what he would do on his first day if elected and what legislation he would introduce, he said, “I don’t necessarily want to go up there and start passing a bunch of bills. The solutions that the government tends to provide, tend to be worse than the problem.”

Hardy thinks he’s the most qualified because of his previous experience in Congress.

“I’ll hit the ground running,” Hardy said. “I’m not going to be a freshman going there. I’ve been in there once.”