Cortez Masto had decamped for the afternoon inside the Prospector Hotel and Gambling Hall, holding court in a side room of Margarita’s Mexican Restaurant [in Ely, Nevada]. There, she set upon her task, floating from table to table, hearing the room out — and making her case.
“We are all in this together,” she told a crowd of roughly two dozen Republicans. “And that's my priority and whether you voted for me or not and showing up I'm talking to you and I'm gonna fight for you.”
It was a retail politics staple — the blue jeans senator, back from far-away Washington to parlay directly with her voters not on the tentpole issues of the day, but on the specifics, the nitty-gritty issues that tie people to the places they live.
But it was also notable in large part for its rarity, with rural politics long the purview of the GOP. Just after Cortez Masto finished her rural tour, the whole of the statewide Republican ticket took to the road for a tour of its own, including marching through a series of rural Labor Day parades.
The handful of votes Cortez Masto might secure out of the trip will likely exist on the margins of the margins — more likely than anything to be overshadowed by turnout trends in Las Vegas and Clark County, where a supermajority of Nevadans live.
But those margins could still prove pivotal in an election that remains within the polling margin of error, with a strong — or weak — rural performance changing the dynamics in urban Clark or Washoe counties.* * *[D]espite a 7 percentage point net favorability statewide, Cortez Masto remains underwater in the rurals, where her favorability is a net negative 43 points. In the inverse, though Suffolk found Laxalt at a negative 7 points net favorability statewide, his rural numbers sat at a net positive 41 points.
Still, Cortez Masto remains marginally more popular than President Joe Biden per Suffolk’s numbers, which had the president sitting at a negative 49 point net favorability in counties outside Clark and Washoe.
Among some in the GOP, a public show of support for the Democrat
First elected to replace the retiring Sen. Harry Reid in 2016, Cortez Masto has spent 2022 locked in one of the tightest Senate contests in the country against Laxalt. Alongside similarly competitive races in Arizona and Georgia, Nevada could decide the critical battle for control of the Senate through the remainder of Biden’s first term in office.
Stopping first in Ely, Cortez Masto spent the better part of a week winding around Nevada highways, meeting with Republicans (and some Democrats) in Elko and Winnemucca and Fallon. The events were as friendly a crowd as Cortez Masto would likely get outside Nevada’s two major metros — often small, invite-only and tightly controlled.
Still, the trip occurred in the midst of Republicans, especially rural Republicans, throwing their endorsement behind the Democrat from Las Vegas. Since July, six Republicans have published op-eds backing Cortez Masto, including three ex-rural county commissioners, a high profile lobbyist and Reno’s chief of police.
First among them, and the only elected Republican to endorse while still in office, was Ely Mayor Nathan Robertson. A fifth-generation Nevadan in a family which “has been Republican since before Lincoln,” Robertson said he was supporting Cortez Masto because she took the time to “show up” for his community, even if “we won’t make or break her in the election.”
Solis further quotes Robertson:
The proof has just gotta be in the pudding. And these last six years, she's proven where her motivation lies and what she's willing to do, and that she's not willing to let party politics and bigger interests get in the way of making sure that all people in her state are taken care of.
Republicans who spoke to The Nevada Independent or backed the incumbent through newspaper op-eds have most often pointed to hyper-specific policy decisions that pushed them toward supporting Cortez Masto.
Writing in the Nevada Appeal, former Lyon County Commissioner Bob Hastings, a Republican, cited Cortez Masto’s push first to block an initial expansion of Naval Air Station Fallon because “it didn’t represent all stakeholders fairly” and praised a push to loop rural communities into talks with the Navy.
And in an op-ed published in the Elko Daily Free Press, former Winnemucca Mayor Di An Putnam lauded the senator for blocking a federal mining tax backed by Democrats — a move that drew sharp criticism from environmentalists and her fellow Democrats. Putnam wrote that it was “clear she puts Nevada and our country over her party.”
Putnam continued:
When Democrats wanted to impose new mining taxes, Catherine single-handedly prevented them from passing to protect this industry that is so critical to our communities. There are countless jobs, families, and businesses that are supported by our mining industry. She stuck her neck out for them, even when Democrats were attacking her for it.”
Robertson, similarly, pointed to the pandemic, when he was able to get on the phone with Cortez Masto “when I had trouble getting through to anybody in Carson City,” and praised her for securing millions in federal aid dollars for Ely.
Later, Robertson is quoted again about Nevada's distinctiveness:
Nevada is not your regular midwestern state, this isn’t Iowa. We’re a unique place with a unique culture with unique communities and having someone who knows how to navigate that is worth a lot.Then Solis' story continues:
Cortez Masto’s institutional knowledge of the state’s sprawling rural interior has long been a feature of her political career. In a 2019 interview, she told The Nevada Independent that she had urged her staff at the attorney general’s office to hop in the van and travel out to Elko and Winnemucca and beyond.“We’re going to go to them,” she said at the time, referring to conversations with her staff. “I want you to see Nevada.”
One Republican woman who lives in "unspecified Lander County" (population 5700) said
A lot of us that live out here feel like our voices really aren't heard very much. And, I mean, part of me understands that because we're not the big voting base. But, you know, we're Nevadans, too and we have a stake in things.
The Nevada Independent is a statewide non-profit website. You'll have to read the rest of the story to learn more about her father's history of fishing in rural Nevada, including the Elko area.
And this is from a Georgia radio station WABE on the fight for the rural and suburban vote. Sadly, no transcript is available so I can't cut and paste an excerpt, but please give it a listen.
1 comment:
In recent years, Nevada has become a new swing state, with several presidential candidates devoting more time in the state than in other more evenly split states. But it has been consistently blue in the past 4 presidential elections, and at one point the state legislature's two chambers were the only ones in the country that were majority women, with both chambers controlled by Democrats. So to me, Nevada has slowly moved toward a more progressive streak, and I think part of that stems from the more libertarian roots in the state. Moreover, when Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, she was the first Democrat to flip Washoe County, i.e., Reno. This was a major defeat for Republicans, as the northern urban stronghold had finally flipped, essentially spelling doom for conservatives. However, the northern part of the state from Reno up has remained red. Of Nevada's 4 congressional districts, the only one that has remained in Republican hands for the past 4 elections has been the one where the major population centers are Winnemucca, Elko, Battle Mountain, and Wendover. These areas are dominated by the mining, farming, and ranching industries. So, with Cortez Masto's push to penetrate the conservative strongholds, the Republican message is beginning to dwindle as she navigates the stakeholders in these industries, and time will tell as to how long Republicans can maintain control in the more rural parts of the state.
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