Introductory reading-in on Nevada
Let's get there
key events
from A selective political bibliography of Nevada (up until January)
Oct 15 2018, CBS KLAS TV reported to be holding back Danielle P. allegation against Laxalt (Stern, Grant, "Nevada TV station refuses to air shocking rape allegation against Adam Laxalt. He’s the GOP gubernatorial candidate", theSternFacts.com, Oct 15, 2018, https://thesternfacts.com/nevada-tv-station-refuses-to-air-shocking-rape-allegation-against-a-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-c1e7bd5da4b8)
June 17 2020 Andrew Lynam, Stephen Parshall, William Loomis indicted as boogaloo movement militants plotting to cause violence at BLM protests and firebomb a power station & US ranger station (German, Jeff, “Boogaloo informant reveals how he helped FBI infiltrate Las Vegas group”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jul 7, 2020, https://www.reviewjournal.com/investigations/boogaloo-informant-reveals-how-he-helped-fbi-infiltrate-las-vegas-group-2069071/)
January 11 2021 fight between Michele Fiore and Victoria Seaman; video later deleted (German, Jeff, “City Hall video of fight between 2 feuding councilwomen likely deleted”, Las Vegas Review Journal, Oct 11, 2021, https://www.reviewjournal.com/investigations/city-hall-video-of-fight-between-2-feuding-councilwomen-likely-deleted-2457300/)
May 25 2021 Clark County Republican Party meeting disrupted by Proud Boys; NV residents Rudy Clai, Matt Anthony and Paul Laramie (“Republican Chamber of Commerce”) reported to be critical figures in disruption (Appleton, Rory, “Activists with ties to Proud Boys may seek leadership of Clark County GOP”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 21, 2021, https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/activists-with-ties-to-proud-boys-may-seek-leadership-of-clark-county-gop-2360444/)
July 25 2021 Clark County Republican Party central committee meeting disrupted by Proud Boys, police are called in; Paul Laramie reported present. Matt Anthony Yankley reported involved (Smith, John L., “Republican Rumble: The ‘storming’ of a county GOP meeting”, Nevada Independent, Jul 25, 2021, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/republican-rumble-the-storming-of-a-county-gop-meeting)
March 10 2021 Judith Whitmer & DSA takes over Nevada State Democratic Party; Nevada Democrats move $450k in Senate campaign funds to Washington to prevent use by new party, and party staffers quit en masse (Gillan, Jeff, “Progressives now helm Nevada Democratic Party”, News3LV.com, Mar 10, 2021, https://news3lv.com/news/local/progressives-now-helm-nv-democratic-party)
April 6 2021, North Las Vegas mayor John Lee switches party affiliation (News 3 Staff, “North LV Mayor John Lee switches party affiliation to Republican”, News3LV.com, Apr 6, 2021, https://news3lv.com/news/local/north-las-vegas-mayor-john-lee-switches-to-republican-party)
June 3 2021, Mail-in voting for all registered voters signed into law (Choi, Joseph, “Nevada governor signs bill permanently expanding mail-in voting to all registered voters”, The Hill, June 3, 2021, https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/556729-nevada-governor-signs-bill-permanently-expanding-mail-in-voting-to-all?rl=1)
Sep 7 2021, Fiore & Seaman issue statements; feud escalates (German, Jeff, “Seaman accuses Fiore of bullying and assaulting her at City Hall”, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sep 7, 2021, https://www.reviewjournal.com/investigations/seaman-accuses-fiore-of-bullying-and-assaulting-her-at-city-hall-2435123/)
Sep 22 2021, Dean Heller, declared gubernatorial candidate, refuses to state Biden won election (Seitz-Wald, Alex, “Dean Heller, running for governor of Nevada, refuses to say Joe Biden won presidency”, NBC News, Sep 22, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/dean-heller-running-governor-nevada-refuses-say-joe-biden-won-n1279869)
Oct 15 2021, Laxalt testifies as to $10k donation from Parnas & Fruman (Klasfeld, Adam, “Nevada’s Former Attorney General and Current Senate Hopeful Describes Pressing Ex-Giuliani Associate Lev Parnas for Money”, Oct 15, 2021, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/independent-poll-sisolak-cortez-masto-hold-slim-leads-over-likely-gop-opponents)
Nov 7 2021, Nevada State Democratic Party reported to be in substantial internal conflict; Nevada Democratic Victory reported to lack access to state party’s voter file (Otterbein, Holly, “Democrats sweat midterm fallout from Nevada party crack-up”, Politico, Nov 7, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/07/nevada-democrats-harry-reid-machine-and-pro-sanders-forces-519919)
Jan 4 2022, Independent voters reported to be switching registration to Republican over Democrat at 2.5 : 1 ratios (Ralston, John, “UPDATE: Indies are switching more to GOP than Democratic Party”, The Nevada Independent, Jan 4, 2022, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/many-more-dems-switching-parties-than-republicans-during-last-three-months)
Jan 21 2022, Key figure in Nevada police officer union Rick McCann criticizes Laxalt for fundraising off voter fraud claims (Charns, David, “Former head of Nevada law enforcement union slams Laxalt for fundraising off voter fraud claims”, 8 News Now, Jan 21, 2022, https://www.8newsnow.com/news/politics/former-head-of-nevada-law-enforcement-union-slams-laxalt-for-fundraising-off-voter-fraud-claims/)
Jan 23 2022, Multiple state election officials (5/17) reported to be departing or retiring (Golonka, Sean, “Election official departures rising amid burnout, angry voters, new requirements”, The Nevada Independent, Jan 23 2022, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/election-official-departures-rising-amid-burnout-angry-voters-new-requirements)
analysis
Titus is likely to opt for a risk-averse political strategy; Susie Lee and Jacky Rosen are likely successors; Nevada Democratic Victory is the critical Democratic mover in-state (Jackson, Hugh, “Only in District 1”, Nevada Current, Dec 19, 2021, https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2021/12/19/only-in-district-1/)
Polling looked close in October and is very likely worse; Laxalt is presumptive SEN nominee and Heller is presumptive gubernatorial; notably, 85% of Big Lie adherents preferred Laxalt (Mueller, Tabitha & Golonka, Sean, “Independent Poll: Sisolak, Cortez Masto hold slim leads over likely GOP opponents”, The Nevada Independent, Oct 3, 2021, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/independent-poll-sisolak-cortez-masto-hold-slim-leads-over-likely-gop-opponents)
Polling in November showed Laxalt holding slight lead (Trafalgar Group, “Nevada Statewide Survey”, thetrafalgargroup.org, Nov 2021, https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/TRF-Nevada-22-Sen-Poll-Report.pdf)
updates
primary results analysis:
NV-2 redistricting doesn't change much, that was a hard-red district before and it's still the same way despite absorbing some of Carson City outskirts
NV-1 didn't change much, despite concerns that incorporating more of Clark County would add more R voters
NV-3 looks problematic, voter turnout numbers shouldn't be that close; Biden won Nevada by ~3 pts so seeing 25.7k D voters in the primary vs. 23k R voters voters in NV-3 is a signal; redistricting intentionally made this district competitive
NV-4 is a lot of the lower-density northern areas that pool together a lot of very small (5k, 15k) R constituencies in low-pop counties; this was a 16k margin in 2020, currently has a Dem incumbent
Facebook ad library gives a hint of some feedback on narratives that Susie Lee has deployed in NV-3: she's run this ad in three tranches, about $100 each, consistently hitting more men than women except in the 55-64 and older demos
Some of her donations might be coming from out of state, judging by the way that this ad calling Becker a conspiracy theorist is hitting out of state; note also, they're reaching a lot more men than women with these consistently.
Becker appears to be shotgunning it somewhat more, narratively, looking at her ads, she goes after inflation, "dark-money PACs" in another ad, Pelosi in yet another.
Zoom in on NV-3 old (L) vs NV-3 new (R)
Clark County is where 80% of the state lives; it's hard to get a demographic fix on new CD-3 (on free sites at least) but we can get a pretty good approximation by looking at demographics for Clark.
This is more diverse than the rest of Nevada, it has an unusually large number of Asians (~10% is high considering Asians are 5.7% nationally).
The Latinx folks you're looking at are Mexican, the Asians are predominantly Filipino.
NV-3 it's hard to see a partisan-identity based voter-turnout narrative that doesn't overlap with Susie Lee's existing messaging; the smart play might be simply to amplify and build on what she's doing with Spanish-speaking audiences in the same area. Whoever's running her comms is smart, but they probably don't speak Spanish and almost definitely don't speak Tagalog. Given potential religious views (Catholicism) abortion might not be the issue with them, though.
Zoom in to the city by city level: Henderson moved to NV-1 in the redistricting; prior to that, it was a source of a lot of R votes in NV-2.
As with Clark County at large, it has a lot more Latinx people, and those are predominantly nation-of-origin: Mexico.
Compare this to Enterprise; this is where all the Filipinos are, for 20% of a town to be Asian in origin is slightly unusual nationwide, never mind NV. 74k people in NV speak Tagalog, figure this is where a lot of that is.