As she faces a hard-right opponent, a Nevada senator hopes that history will repeat itself.
Adam Laxalt is running against Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. She was trained by Harry Reid, who beat a Tea Party opponent in 2010 and has Trump’s support. The political climate is also good for Republicans.
In 2010, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada won re-election against a candidate backed by the Tea Party, despite a “deep red wave” of votes and bad predictions about the rest of his career. He was a powerful Democrat with a well-known name, a fighting spirit, and a state political machine that had been building for a long time.
Twelve years later, his replacement in Congress, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, is running for re-election against the Trump wing of the Republican Party in November. But Ms. Cortez Masto isn’t as well-known as her predecessor and mentor in the Senate. The so-called Reid Machine isn’t as strong as it was when he was in office, and the national political scene for Democrats is getting even tougher.
“When you add it all up, this is why Nevada’s Senate race is one of the most competitive in the country,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who works in the state.
Former state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto easily won the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary election. But she is still one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators this midterm season. She is getting ready for a general election against Adam Laxalt, a Republican who agrees with Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election will be stolen.
In a high-profile race, she faces problems on the local, national, and personal levels. State voting trends favor Republicans, the national climate is bad for Democratic incumbents, and she tends to stay out of the spotlight and work behind the scenes.
But she and her supporters point to her hard-fought victories in the past, most recently in 2016 when she beat her Republican opponent by 2 percentage points to become the first Latina elected to the Senate.
In an interview in February, Cortez Masto said, “I’ve always been in tough races.”
In Nevada, a powerful network of experienced operatives, field organizers, and volunteers is still a major force in the state’s politics. This network has helped the Democrats win important elections for years. There are now more progressive groups in it. But the loss of Mr. Reid, who died of pancreatic cancer in December 2021, has been hard to bear.
During the 2020 election, President Biden won Nevada by only 2 percentage points. Now, Ms. Cortez Masto will have to deal with how unpopular the president is and how unhappy voters are with the economy. Nevada was one of the states hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. The state’s huge hotel and entertainment industries depend heavily on tourists. High unemployment rates and rising living costs have given Republicans a constant way to attack Democrats on crime, jobs, and inflation.
“In November, voters will see the prices at the pump and inflation when they go to the grocery store, and they will know that Catherine Cortez Masto is to blame,” said Jeremy Hughes, a Republican who worked on Dean Heller’s campaign.
Who votes will be a big part of who wins the election. Mr. Reid’s political machine was very important for bringing together groups of Latino and working-class voters from different races. But big drops in the number of Democrats voting in Nevada’s midterm elections have given Republicans an edge in recent elections. The state’s population is also very mobile, which makes it hard for political candidates and elected officials to get their names out there.
“The challenge for everyone on the ballot in Nevada is getting people to the polls,” said Representative Dina Titus, a Democrat who is trying hard to keep her Las Vegas seat this year.
Mr. Laxalt has mostly focused on getting his core group of voters to the polls by making them angry about things like undocumented immigrants, the economy, and widespread school closures and restrictions. He has already started to attack Ms. Cortez Masto because he thinks she is a weak incumbent, which is in line with the policies of the Biden administration.
Mr. Laxalt is the grandson of a former senator from Nevada and the son of a former senator from New Mexico. He was co-chairman of the 2020 Trump campaign in Nevada and led Mr. Trump’s efforts to change the 2020 election in the state. Both Mr. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, two of the most popular people in the Republican Party, backed him.
In a memo released the day after Tuesday’s primary, Ms. Cortez Masto’s campaign manager, Scott Fairchild, called Mr. Laxalt a corrupt politician and a “anti-abortion extremist” who was only interested in spreading Mr. Trump’s “big lie.” Her supporters think he’s not a good candidate because he lost his bid for governor in 2018 and tried to stop a federal investigation into his wealthy donors, including the Koch brothers, when he was attorney general.
Mr. Laxalt has criticized Ms. Cortez Masto on crime, inflation, and immigration at campaign rallies, in interviews with Fox News, and on conservative podcasts. He has also tried to link her to Joe Biden’s policies in the past. In a statement, John Burke, who is in charge of communications for the Laxalt campaign, said that criticism from his Democratic opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto, was a distraction from her role in the “current economic disaster.”
He said, “Our state wants change, and Nevadans know they can’t get it with her.”
Even though Nevada’s political climate has changed, many Democrats still see Mr. Reid’s successful 2010 campaign for a fifth term against Sharron Angle, a former state lawmaker who pushed claims of voter fraud and harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric long before Mr. Trump did, as a playbook for Ms. Cortez Masto.
Then, as now, national pundits and strategists were talking about how low the chances of the Democratic incumbent were. After the 2008 recession, Democrats in Nevada had to deal with a tough economy, just like they do now. The Republican primary was won by the candidate who was the most conservative, just like it is now.
“Harry Reid was a one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-generation politician,” said Andres Ramirez, who worked on Reid’s 2010 re-election campaign. “But Catherine Cortez Masto is a powerhouse in her own right.”
Latino voters were a big reason why Mr. Reid beat Ms. Angle. Both Mr. Laxalt and Ms. Cortez Masto have been trying to win over Latino voters.
Polls done by Future Majority and America’s Future Majority Fund, two Democratic groups, show that Ms. Cortez Masto has the upper hand for now. In May, a survey of 600 Latino voters in Nevada found that people who speak Spanish liked the senator more than people who didn’t, and that “America First” candidates were very unpopular.
Kristian Ramos, a political consultant and former Reid staffer who worked on the polls, said that the results showed Ms. Cortez Masto “has a chance to build a solid base of support.”
Tuesday, many Latino voters who spoke Spanish were quick to show their support for Ms. Cortez Masto at polling places all over Las Vegas.
Oneida Villaseor, 45, who cleans houses for a living, said that she voted for Cortez Masto because her citizenship class teacher spoke very highly of her and told us a lot about how she fights hard for Hispanics and women. “I wanted to vote for her as soon as I was old enough to do so.”
Matt Guild, 65, a retired electrician, saw her in a very different way as he stood outside a community center in West Las Vegas. He linked the senator to the national policies of the Biden administration, which he said were not in line with his conservative values.
“She will definitely have to fight,” he said.
