LAS VEGAS — Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt joined Latino voters for dueling campaign events here Thursday, battling over a community that holds the key to this closely fought Nevada contest, and with it the Senate majority.
Struggling politically amid a building Republican wave, Cortez Masto sought to shore up her reelection prospects with some home cooking at a Mexican restaurant and bakery in a middle-class neighborhood on the east side of Las Vegas. For an hour, the senator mingled intimately with a packed house of patrons and supporters, many of them small business owners, hearing concerns about skyrocketing grocery prices and high gas prices while posing for pictures and exchanging hugs.
“What I know, my community, is I want it to continue to succeed. These are the entrepreneurs, this is the business that you’re at right now,” Cortez Masto, who hails from the west side of Las Vegas, now the Latino core of the city, told reporters before departing. “I’m third-generation, I was born and raised in this community. It is important for me to continue to fight for them.”
The voters Cortez Masto was talking about include Pamela Garduno, a 35-year-old restaurant manager who showed up for some pastries and conversation with a Democratic incumbent she is wholeheartedly backing for a second term. Garduno rejected suggestions that Cortez Masto could see a significant reduction in Latino support and be ousted by Laxalt.
But she acknowledged that most of the people in her community are focused on the very issues fueling the possibility for massive Republican gains in the midterm elections. “The economy, the prices of everything, the inflation, that’s the biggest concern right now,” she said.
A few hours later and nine miles to the south in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, Laxalt was wooing conservative Latinos during a summit on education reform on the grounds of a Christian church that also runs a parochial school.
Many of those in attendance who greeted the former Nevada attorney general with cheers while waving “Latinos con Laxalt” placards spoke limited to zero English. Indeed, the entire proceedings, focused on what the government can do to reduce the authority of teachers unions and school boards in public education and empower parents, were translated into Spanish in real-time by a second moderator, revealing the lengths Laxalt is going to drive up his support from Latinos here.
In a news conference with reporters afterward, the Republican accused Cortez Masto of abandoning Latinos only to show up again recently because of the midterm elections.
“You guys are all covering this, so I hope you’ll take a look back in time. She started doing this in the last, like, three weeks. The last six years, she left behind Latinos in this state. She did not represent them,” Laxalt said. “She wouldn’t have to be working so hard to try to regain this vote in the last weeks of this election if she represented that community. They’re very upset.”
The Cortez Masto campaign disputed Laxalt’s claim, pointing to more than a dozen events focused on the Latino community since the spring, including the “Gran Fiesta Latina” in July that attracted more than 400 supporters.
Laxalt has led Cortez Masto narrowly in four of the last five polls, staking a 46.4% to 45.2% advantage in the RealClearPolitics average, and Republican strategists outside of Nevada now view this race as the surest path to 51 seats, and the Senate majority. The political environment for Democrats is particularly challenging, with President Joe Biden’s low job approval ratings, inflation that is higher than the national average, and anxiety about crime and a looming recession.
Republican insiders in Nevada are also confident, but more of the “cautiously optimistic” variety. The party has not won a presidential race here since 2004. The GOP has not won a Senate contest here since 2012. Much credit for that goes to a Democratic machine built by former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and Republicans are nervous it could thwart them yet again, despite the political tailwinds for their party. There’s also the matter of Laxalt’s vote-getting history.
The Republican, the grandson of Paul Laxalt, a GOP former governor and ex-senator in this state, has never garnered more than 46.2% of the vote in two statewide general elections. That was his total when he was elected attorney general in 2014, another midterm election that vaulted Republicans to power across the country in a red wave. In 2018, amid a Democratic wave, Laxalt lost his bid for governor, receiving 45.3% of the vote.
But the Nevada political machine Reid lorded over might not be what it was since he retired from the Senate in 2017 after 12 years as the chamber’s No. 1-ranking Democrat (he died in late December of last year). In figures filed with the Nevada secretary of state last month, Democrats led Republicans among registered voters here by just a little more than 50,000, a result of massive growth by the GOP.
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Among them are Latino voters like Lydia Dominguez, 33, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-conservative political activist. It’s voters like Dominguez, motivated to become politically active because of concerns about her children’s education during the coronavirus pandemic, who could power a Laxalt victory on Nov. 8.
Democrats, she said, “are focusing on all the wrong things. They’re focusing on abortion and they’re focusing on social equity, and they’re also focusing on gun laws. Those aren’t hot topics for Latinos.”
