SPARKS, Nev. \u2014 Ed Lawson, the longtime mayor of this small desert city of about 110,000 just outside Reno, said he has never voted for a Democrat. That will change next month when he plans to vote for Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) over her Republican challenger, Sam Brown.<\/p>\n
\u201cSam Brown doesn\u2019t get it,\u201d Lawson said in an interview. \u201cHe certainly hasn\u2019t ever come talk to us and ask us what we need in Sparks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown, a military veteran and Purple Heart recipient, is the latest Republican trying to break the party\u2019s dozen-year drought on winning a U.S. Senate race here. His campaign was considered a prime pickup opportunity for the GOP, which needs to win a net of two seats to reclaim the Senate majority.<\/p>\n
But Brown has been unable to close the polling gap with Rosen, an incumbent with a well-funded campaign that Brown, who is neither independently wealthy nor a prolific fundraiser, has not matched. He has also failed to generate excitement among conservative voters, even in the more rural parts of the state where Republicans typically win overwhelmingly, with some citing his unfamiliarity with state issues. Brown\u2019s staff recently turned over, a sign of turmoil in the campaign. And he has skipped basic campaign rituals, such as reaching out to local Republican leaders like Lawson.<\/p>\n
Rosen, who\u2019s still relatively new to politics after Sen. Harry M. Reid (D), who died in 2021, handpicked her to run for Senate in 2018 following a single House term representing parts of Las Vegas, is leading in public polling averages by 8.5 percentage points. Republican internal polling, according to people familiar with the standings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal findings, shows Brown down by about 7 percentage points \u2014 a difficult gap to close with less than three weeks before Election Day.<\/p>\n
Members of Brown\u2019s campaign, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the figure is closer to 5 percentage points and that he can make up the difference by getting former president Donald Trump\u2019s supporters to vote for him. The campaign insists Brown still has a path to victory.<\/p>\n
Democratic presidential candidates won Nevada in the last two elections, and Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight lead in the state over Trump. But Republicans have won statewide recently, electing a GOP governor in 2022.<\/p>\n
Republicans working to win the Senate majority are taking stock of the Nevada race. With limited resources and Brown polling further behind than Republicans in other races, they are turning their attention to more competitive campaigns, including those in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.<\/p>\n
Brown is working to appeal to more Trump voters, like Kaci Capurro, who recently attended a Republican Women of Reno event to hear the Senate candidate speak. Capurro, a Reno resident who wore a Trump T-shirt to the event, said she\u2019ll \u201cof course\u201d vote for Brown, citing his Christian values.<\/p>\n
Brown will need to remain competitive in his county of Washoe to be victorious the state. Even with polls showing him trailing, Brown said in an interview that his campaign goal remains the same: \u201cRegardless of where the polls are, what I\u2019m doing in this campaign is \u2026 getting out and talking to folks face-to-face.\u201d<\/p>\n
His personal story is central to his candidacy. In 2008, Brown deployed to Afghanistan as a U.S. Army officer when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. He suffered third-degree burns on nearly a third of his body, including his face, and underwent more than 30 surgeries during a three-year recovery.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an experience he shares regularly during campaign stops. He found purpose in that moment of desperation, he said, and now, at his wife\u2019s persuasion, wants \u201cto serve others as [God] has called us to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Voters in Nevada say they\u2019re moved by what happened to Brown on the battlefield but suggest it\u2019s not enough to carry a campaign. George Taylor, a Republican from Reno, has knocked on hundreds of doors to persuade people to vote for Brown. Still, he said Brown relies too much on his biography and isn\u2019t doing enough to aggressively push back against Rosen on issues related to the border or transgender women in sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t make this campaign about \u2026 background or nobility,\u201d Taylor, 65, said. \u201cHe has a more interesting background than [Rosen] does, but that\u2019s not what voters care about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown talks about Rosen and the border during his campaign events, blaming her for failing to address the issue as a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. But Brown does not engage in aggressive personal attacks, and his mild-mannered demeanor is far from the bombastic style of Trump that some Republican voters now demand.<\/p>\n
Nathan Robertson, a Republican and the mayor of Ely, a small town with about 4,000 residents in eastern Nevada, also plans to back Rosen. The senator always picks up the phone when he calls, he said, and visits the town every year despite Ely being extremely isolated, with the closest cities of Reno and Las Vegas each more than 200 miles away. Rosen has also helped secure federal funding for the small mining town, he said.<\/p>\n
Robertson had not heard from Brown since he began running for Senate this cycle and he\u2019s not convinced Brown understands enough about Nevadans\u2019 challenges to represent them in Washington. Brown, who moved to the state in 2018 and lives in Reno, also ran for Senate in 2022, losing in the primary to fellow Republican Adam Laxalt. Eight years earlier, he lost a Republican primary in Texas for the state\u2019s House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cNevadans want to elect someone who they know knows their state, who knows their communities and who has some track record,\u201d Robertson said.<\/p>\n
Lawson, the Sparks mayor, dismissed the idea of facing political backlash for backing Rosen. He was one of six elected Republicans previously censured by the Washoe Republican Party for supporting candidates not on the party\u2019s official endorsement list. He is most concerned about the lack of housing in his city, a crisis affecting the entire state that\u2019s only expected to worsen as new Tesla and Google factories led to population growth. Lawson has worked closely with Rosen on legislation that would allow the state to use federal land for housing development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s our survival as a city, and Jacky gets it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Washoe County, Nevada\u2019s second-most-populous, is home to about 20 percent of the electorate. Aside from needing strong support there, Brown must also win overwhelmingly in rural towns like Ely. An August New York Times\/Sienna College poll found that just 52 percent of voters in rural Nevada supported Brown, a huge gap from the 80 percent support Republican candidates usually win in rural Nevada.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may have missed somebody, but I\u2019ve done a pretty broad reach out across electives across the state,\u201d Brown said in response to a question about why he hadn\u2019t contacted Lawson, adding: \u201csometimes, you know, [I] miss a phone call or whatever. But look, at the end of the day when I\u2019m elected, everyone is going to have an open door.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days later, Brown called Lawson and told him that if elected, he\u2019d support the federal lands legislation that the Senate is considering.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s race started strong. He had the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and, just ahead of the June primary when it became clear he would easily win the party\u2019s nomination, he received an endorsement from Trump. He had a speaking role at the Republican National Convention in July where he talked about the injuries he received in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Since then though, Republicans dramatically scaled back funding in the state as they shift resources toward closer races. The National Republican Senatorial Committee pulled about $7.4 million worth of ads before reinvesting about $1 million at a much cheaper advertising rate, which allows for more ads with less money, with future investments possible. NRSC spokesman Mike Berg said Nevada remains a top pickup opportunity for Republicans \u201cand we will invest accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Nation, a political entity of the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC focused on getting Republicans elected to Congress, hasn\u2019t spent money advertising in the race since the first week of September because they settled on races they think Republicans have a better shot at winning, including Michigan and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Republicans working on congressional campaigns have fretted privately that the Trump campaign is not doing enough to contribute funds or voter contacts to help downballot GOP candidates. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the Republicans\u2019 concerns.<\/p>\n
At the Republican Women of Reno event, Brown said Trump\u2019s growing support among Latinos \u201copens a door for me, too.\u201d But at a Latino Americans for Trump event in Las Vegas, the speakers made no mention of Brown. And in one of Trump\u2019s offices in Las Vegas, Trump signs plaster the walls while the only indication that Brown is on the Nevada ballot were fliers on a small fold-up table in the back of the room.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s four-point policy platform is taken directly from Trump\u2019s plans, including a \u201cno taxes on tips\u201d proposal and plans to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits \u2014 issues that resonate with Nevada\u2019s large service-industry workforce and growing retiree population. To pay for the estimated $1.6 trillion 10-year price tag associated with those programs, Brown offered no specifics but said he\u2019d cut what he called reckless spending in Washington. He also said he\u2019d work to finish the border wall, fix the immigration system, improve veterans\u2019 health-care networks, and would oppose federal funding for abortion.<\/p>\n
Abortion politics are playing a major role in Nevada, where voters will weigh a ballot initiative to add a right to the procedure to the state\u2019s constitution. Nevada law allows abortions up until 24 weeks of pregnancy or to save the life of a mother after that point.<\/p>\n
Rosen, in a TV ad, warns Brown will \u201ctake away your rights\u201d and calls him a \u201cMAGA extremist,\u201d referring to Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again slogan. Her campaign, along with the Democratic super PAC WinSenate, has spent at least $75 million on television, radio and digital ads in the state this cycle, according to media advertising tracking firm AdImpact.<\/p>\n
Brown has been forced on his heels on the issue. He insists that he respects Nevada\u2019s existing abortion law and, following Trump\u2019s lead, said he would not support a national ban. He has talked openly about his wife having an abortion before they met, using it as a way to show that he understands women need to feel supported. But he refused to comment on the state\u2019s abortion ballot initiative.<\/p>\n
When asked if he would leave the initiative question blank on his ballot, he said, \u201cI hadn\u2019t even thought about that. That\u2019s an interesting question. So thanks for giving me something to ponder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bob Olson, a Trump supporter from Las Vegas who is also running for a state assembly seat, said Brown\u2019s campaign has \u201cno substance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt like putting your finger through smoke,\u201d he said. If he isn\u2019t able to vote for \u201cnone of the above,\u201d he\u2019ll vote for Rosen, he said.<\/p>\n
Brown has ramped up his campaigning since Labor Day, spending most of his time in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, the most populous region of the state and home to at least 70 percent of voters.<\/p>\n
Walking into a Walmart Supercenter in Reno on a recent morning at 7:30 a.m., Kathleen, 78, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used to protect her privacy, said she had just worked a night shift at a casino because her monthly Social Security checks \u201caren\u2019t enough\u201d to live on. She was a lifelong Democrat but changed her voter registration to Republican because of Trump.<\/p>\n
As for the Senate race? \u201cI go for the gals,\u201d she said, referring to Rosen and fellow Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who won reelection in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have proven themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SPARKS, Nev. \u2014 Ed Lawson, the longtime mayor of this small desert city of about 110,000 just outside Reno, said he has never voted for a Democrat. That will change next month when he plans to vote for Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) over her Republican challenger, Sam Brown. \u201cSam Brown doesn\u2019t get it,\u201d Lawson said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11240,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}