Republican Senate hopefuls in Nevada spar over ducking debates

By Jessica Hill

Sunday, May 15, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Retired Army Capt. Sam Brown is calling out one of his Republican primary opponents in the U.S. Senate race for not again agreeing to face him on the debate stage.

Last week, former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt and Brown had their first — and probably only — debate before the GOP primary. Brown has committed to participate in a debate hosted by KLAS-TV Channel 8 on May 26, two weeks before the primary, but Laxalt is saying he won’t be there.

In a statement, Brown said that “personal accountability is a hallmark of leadership, and anyone seeking to represent Nevada should be accessible to Nevadans.”

A KLAS spokesperson said the debate was still on, and that the station had invited all of the candidates in the race to participate.

Laxalt’s campaign communications director John Burke said in a statement that Brown was trailing Laxalt in the polls and called the retired captain’s performance at the debate Monday “lackluster.” The winner of the primary will face Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto in the general election.

“Adam Laxalt has spoken with more Nevada voters than any candidate running for any office in the state,” Burke said in the statement. “He’s going to continue taking our case directly to them and bringing Nevada Republicans together.”

In a May 2 poll from Emerson College Polling and The Hill, 50% of the 1,000 respondents, all likely Republican voters, said they planned to vote for Laxalt. Brown was favored by 27% of the poll respondents.

Moderate Republican Bill Hockstedler, another U.S. Senate candidate, wrote in an email that voters deserved a chance to learn about all candidates.

While Hockstedler has not made raising money a focus of his campaign, he said he had gained momentum recently “as voters are looking for someone with more to talk about than repeating lies about the last election.”

During the televised debate Monday hosted by Nevada Newsmakers’ Sam Shad, Brown criticized Laxalt for not doing enough to overturn the 2020 election results and fight for election integrity. Brown said Laxalt was late with filing lawsuits challenging Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump in the presidential election.

“Nevadans deserve better,” Brown said. “We’re not going to settle for people who blame everyone else when they fail. If you don’t want to be in a position of leadership where you shoulder the burden of executing or failure, you don’t have to pursue it.”

Laxalt called the criticism “comical,” saying as co-chair of Trump’s campaign in Nevada, he worked hard to fight the election results. Claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that there was widespread fraud have been disproven by federal and state judges across the country, and Nevada’s Republican secretary of state has assured the public the election was free and fair and untainted by meaningful fraud.

“We sounded every alarm imaginable as the Democrats radically altered our election,” Laxalt said, adding that it is the job of the secretary of state to investigate election fraud in Nevada. “I have stood consistently and concretely for our conservative values as attorney general and indeed through the end of the 2020 campaign.”

But he also said he wasn’t in charge of any lawsuits.

“I was on the Trump campaign, and they hired lawyers and they filed the lawsuits,” Laxalt said. “He’s just as disappointed as I am that lawsuits came late to the state of Nevada, came late to a lot of other places.”

Laxalt, however, was one of the faces of Trump’s fight against the election results. In 2020 he spoke on CSPAN announcing the lawsuit the campaign filed in the federal district court in Las Vegas, which was later dismissed.

“We warned for the last few weeks that we could end up in a situation where Nevada decides the fate of the presidency,” Laxalt said on CSPAN. “We are asking for emergency relief. … We’re asking the judge, due to all these irregularities, to stop the counting of improper votes.”

Brown also criticized Laxalt for “knowing” that noncitizens were voting in elections but doing nothing, however Laxalt did file a separate lawsuit not directly related to challenging the 2020 election results against Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske over an alleged inability to keep noncitizens off the state’s list of registered voters. That lawsuit was later dropped.

Brown and Laxalt did find commonalities during the debate, such as stances on the border crisis and energy independence.

Neither supports amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Brown said he would support reforms to make it easier for immigrants to become citizens. Laxalt said his top immigration-related priority was securing the southern border.

On water, Brown said affected states should collaborate to change the Colorado River Compact. It wouldn’t be up to him to figure out how the states would do that, he said, and he would hope the federal government would not have to drive that cause.

But a few minutes later, after Shad said the late Sen. Harry Reid took 30 years to renegotiate the Truckee River Operating Compact, which provided a new approach to managing the Truckee River, Brown said he did not accept that it could take 30 years to solve the issue.

“The crisis, the timeline does not allow for us to accept that. It’s time for Nevadans to demand more. We certainly deserve better,” Brown said. “At the end of the day, we don’t wait 30 years for somebody to be a champion over that sort of long haul. We need action soon.”

Laxalt said he would be open to any solution that will get Nevada more allocation of water, and he would “certainly” look at doing something at the federal level.

“At the end of the day, that’s probably what it’s going to take,” Laxalt said. “It’s going to take a courageous president that is going to have to look at the face of all the power in California, which has so much political power, and say Nevada is getting a short end of the stick, and we need to reallocate (water from) the Colorado.”

Shad asked the candidates whether, if elected, they would support Sen. Mitch McConnell to be majority leader of the Senate. Laxalt did not answer directly but said he would vote for the most conservative person that ran for leader. He pointed to Republican senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri as politicians who are “part of the next generation.”

Cortez Masto ‘vulnerable’

Roll Call, a news outlet covering Congress, issued a list of the top 10 most vulnerable senators facing reelection. At the top of that list: Cortez Masto.

Publications proclaiming her vulnerability aren’t new, as the Cook Political Report switched her race from “Lean Democrat” to a “Toss Up” in November.

The Roll Call list includes six Democrats and four Republicans. Others on the list include Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.; Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

Roll Call pointed to high inflation, Biden’s unpopularity and economic tumult as factors Republicans are banking on to win races. But it also pointed to the issues of abortion and voting rights, which Democrats are hoping will bring voters back toward them.

In a statement, Cortez Masto’s campaign press secretary Sigalle Reshef said, “With the Supreme Court about to overturn Roe v. Wade, the stakes of this election couldn’t be higher. Sen. Cortez Masto will continue to create good-paying union jobs, protect women’s reproductive freedoms, and fight for Nevada families.”

Nevadans in Congress

Cortez Masto last week joined Nevada’s other federal representatives in cosponsoring the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, a bill that will use $1.4 billion annually to support wildlife recovery efforts.

Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen are cosponsors of the Senate version of the bill, and on the House side, Rep. Mark Amodei, a Republican, and Democrats Dina Titus and Steven Horsford are cosponsors.

Russell Kuhlman, the executive director of the Nevada Wildlife Federation, called the bill the most important piece of wildlife legislation in 50 years. It would send about $24 million per year to the Nevada Department of Wildlife, which has said it would use the money to help 256 species, like mule deer, bighorn sheep and sage grouse.

“The nation’s wildlife are in crisis,” Kuhlman said in a statement from Cortez Masto’s office. “This bill will help Nevada’s vulnerable wildlife species including the sage grouse and desert tortoise, while there is still time to make a difference.”

Nevada’s Democratic senators last week also voted to advance the Women’s Health Protection Act, which proposed to codify Roe v. Wade by protecting a person’s ability to determine whether to continue or end a pregnancy and protect a health care provider’s ability to provide abortion services. But the Senate’s bid to enshrine abortion access as federal law was blocked by a Republican filibuster, falling 11 shy of the required 60 votes to end debate, 51-49.

“For nearly half a century, Roe has protected a woman’s right to make extremely personal decisions about her own body, her own health care, and her own family,” Rosen said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “But now, we’re seeing a clear, coordinated attempt by anti-choice politicians to roll back the clock on the rights of American women, control what happens to their bodies, and strike down reproductive freedom.”

Courting the Black vote

Gov. Steve Sisolak’s campaign is launching a Black Advisory Council to support outreach efforts and advise the governor on key issues facing the Black community, according to a statement from the campaign. Democratic Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno and Commissioner William McCurdy II are co-chairing the council.

“Sisolak is a governor for all Nevadans and knows that when you support the Black community, you create a rising tide that uplifts every community,” the co-chairs said in a joint statement. “As co-chairs on his reelection’s Black Advisory Council, we look forward to working with the governor to ensure he continues delivering results for every family.”

His campaign pointed to his passing of anti-discrimination legislation like the Crown Act, which makes it illegal for schools and workplaces to discriminate because of hair style, funding education, supporting small-business owners and strengthening voting rights as examples of his support for the Black community.

Countdown

Days until early voting begins: 13

Days to primary: 29