Donald Trump could sink Joe Heck in Nevada

So when Heck’s opponent in Nevada’s tossup Senate race, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, welcomes President Obama to the state this weekend to kick off the crucial early voting period, the Republican will be stuck rallying with Sen. Ted Cruz.

Obama won Nevada twice by convincing margins; Cruz finished third in February in the state’s GOP presidential nominating caucuses.

It’s an example of just how much Trump is complicating matters for down ballot Republicans like Heck, whose race could determine whether the GOP retains control of the Senate on Election Day.

The Republican nominee has been as competitive here as in any of the dozen or so battlegrounds expected to determine the presidential election. But Trump had always been of limited value to Heck.

And, that was even before Heck disavowed the New York businessman over revelations that he once bragged about using his celebrity to make unwanted sexual advances on women.

Since then, Trump’s position in Nevada has deteriorated, further threatening Heck.

Already weak with non-white voters, Trump’s support among suburban women has plummeted, GOP sources say. Nevada has a tradition of split ticket voting, but the stronger Clinton gets, the harder it becomes for Heck to out-perform his party’s nominee.

“Joe’s always won with coalitions that include Republicans, independents and Democrats — and that’s what it’s going to take to win statewide, especially this year.” Heck spokesman Brian Baluta said, during an interview with the Washington Examiner at the campaign’s Summerlin field office.

Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton led Trump by 4.2 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics.com average of recent public opinion polls. For Cortez Masto, 52, that translated into a 2.3 percentage point lead over Heck, 54, in the survey averages.

They’re battling for the seat being left open by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is retiring.

Heck can still defeat Cortez Masto. But to do so he’ll need to assemble a coalition of Trump loyalists, Republican moderates and some Clinton Democrats. Early voting in Nevada began Saturday, and come Monday morning, the Heck campaign will have a decent idea of its prognosis.

Republicans figure that Heck will be well positioned if the Democrats emerge from the weekend with early voting numbers in the mid 60,000s and no more than a 10 percent lead over the Republicans. Anything more, and Heck’s climb gets steeper.

Jon Ralston, a political analyst in Nevada, said that Clinton and Cortez Masto had the momentum heading into early voting. But he noted that in an interview with the Examiner’s “Examining Politics” podcast that Cortez Masto is underperforming Clinton with Hispanics, a good sign for Heck.

Clinton was garnering more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote in a recent survey. If Cortez Masto is only getting 54 percent of Hispanics this close to early voting, as she was in that same poll, Ralston said that “that still should give Heck some hope.”

Even before Trump ran into trouble in Nevada, Heck wasn’t relying on his coattails to pull him across the finish line.

The third-term congressman, an emergency room physician and military veteran, early on decided to build a parallel campaign operation wholly divorced from the top of the ticket.

Heck is running a separate field operation staffed by an army of 1,700 active volunteers, according to campaign officials.

In Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and is the state’s biggest population center, many of those volunteers are young and ethnically diverse. They’re not even necessarily Republicans, but were recruited based on Heck’s personal brand.

The Heck campaign also is using its own data analytics program. Heck is using i360, a company that is a part of the Koch Brothers umbrella of political groups, rather than the data program being run on Trump’s behalf by the Republican National Committee.

The Heck campaign has prioritized in-person voter contacts via knocking on doors, and according to officials, each of the 1,700 volunteers have their own, active, i360 walk-app accounts for their mobile devices.

The campaign said it surpassed 1 million voter contacts in mid August, with an emphasis on Hispanic and Asian voters. On average, Heck volunteers knock on up to 15,000 doors per week.

Heck’s congressional district is a multicultural melting pot that Obama won in 2012. That’s why Heck’s advisors are confident about their candidate’s ability to overcome the political challenges posed by running with Trump.

But they concede that Cortez Masto has certain advantages — namely a unified party. Conversely, Heck was hamstrung as to whom he could bring to Nevada this weekend to help him encourage Republicans to vote early.

Many obvious big names, House Speaker Paul Ryan or Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., to name two, are at odds with Trump and might anger his supporters. Trump wouldn’t have helped Heck much with the voters he needs the most even if he hadn’t yanked his endorsement.

Meanwhile, Cortez Masto (and Clinton) had singer Katy Perry headlining an early vote rally on Saturday at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Obama doing the same in Las Vegas on Sunday. Heck was to appear with Cruz on Saturday in Reno.

“We just don’t have the star power that the Democrats can bring in,” a Republican insider said.

Heck said that his decision to pull his endorsement of Trump was personal, explaining during his last debate with Cortez Masto that his wife was the victim of domestic abuse in a prior relationship.

It wasn’t without consequence. Trump loyalists flooded conservative talk radio in Nevada promising retribution, saying they would skip the Senate race or possibly even vote for the Democrat.

The Democrats are hoping to use the issue as a wedge.

On the one hand, they want to raise Heck’s previous support for Trump as a means to depress support for him among Democrats and independents. On the other hand, they are highlighting his break with Trump to try and discourage support for him among Republicans.

The Heck campaign conceded that the issue has been problematic.

Initially, the Republican’s older volunteers jumped ship and there were some doors slammed on get-out-the-vote volunteers when they attempted to reach out to voters who supported Trump.

But tempers cooled down, the older volunteers returned, and resistance to Heck that the campaign had encountered from Trump voters in the field began to recede, according to Luis Vega, the Heck campaign official in charge of field operations in Summerlin, an upscale Las Vegas suburb.

Baluta, Heck’s chief spokesman, said the Republican revolt against Heck over his position on Trump was “overblown to begin with. “Conservative talkers in the state are all saying it’s important to support Joe.”