For all the talk of how Donald Trump might affect Republicans down-ballot this November, Nevada representative Joe Heck says his effort to turn Harry Reid’s Senate seat red is what will determine party control of the upper chamber come 2017.
“The fate of the Senate majority will come down to this race,” Heck told Politico. “The national leadership of both sides of the aisle understand.”
The race to replace Reid, who is retiring, has already attracted a load of attention and cash from top brass in the GOP and Democratic party. That stands to ramp up even further after next Tuesday’s primary election, when it’s expected that Nevada voters will choose Heck and former state attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto to face off in November.
Politico has more:
The early prognostication indicates he and Cortez Masto will need every vote they can get. The Cook Political Report and Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report have the race pegged as a toss-up. FiveThirtyEight, which aims for statistical precision, lists the Democrat as an ever-so-slight favorite of 51 percent.
Then there’s the recent precedent. Reid’s last race was a six-point victory in 2010 against a flawed challenger. In 2012, the appointed senator Dean Heller won reelection by roughly 12,000 votes and 1.2 percentage points.
Changing demographics in the Year of Trump, campaign nailbiters in the last two Senate elections, and a near-dead heat at the start of this one: Sounds like a barnburner. And given that it’s for the outgoing Senate minority leader’s seat, which Republicans coveted six years ago, this is one of the sweetest pots on ballots across the country in 2016.
With the GOP defending turf in toss-up states like Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the Nevada race might be the one Republicans need to flip to maintain Senate control. Right now, it looks like a flip of the coin.
Read more at Politico.
