NV-02: On Tuesday, tea partying ex-Nevada Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who is best known for losing the legendary 2010 U.S. Senate race to Democrat Harry Reid, announced that she would challenge GOP Rep. Mark Amodei in the primary for the 2nd Congressional District. Trump carried this northern Nevada seat 52-40, but Angle could give Team Blue an opening if she upsets Amodei. However, Angle lost last year’s Senate primary to party favorite Joe Heck by a brutal 65-23 margin, so that’s a massive if. Angle is running as a Trump ally but Amodei served as Trump’s state chairman, so she’ll likely have a tough time portraying the incumbent as insufficiently pro-Donald. Amodei is considering leaving this seat behind to run for state attorney general and Angle would almost certainly have a better shot in a crowded open seat race, but she doesn’t seem to have many allies left even in Nevada’s far-right political community.
Still, even if this bid goes as badly for Angle as her last campaign did, we’ll always have our many memories of the former assemblywoman. Angle ran for the last version of this House district in 2006 and almost took the GOP nod, losing the open seat race to now-Sen. Dean Heller just 36-35. Angle rose to national prominence four years later when she rallied support from influential tea party groups won the primary to face then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who appeared to be one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats in the nation.
However, Angle’s career soon took off in the wrong direction. Angle made a ton of avoidable mistakes during her Senate campaign, including (but not limited to) telling several Hispanic students that "some of you look a little more Asian to me;" suggesting that Sharia law rather than the U.S. Constitution applied in the cities of Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas (a place that hasn’t existed in decades); and falsely saying that terrorists had come to the U.S. through Canada. Angle lost 50-45 but a few months later, she flirted with running for president. Angle soon faded into obscurity and tried to revive her political career last year when she launched her Senate bid at the last minute. But Angle raised almost no money and attracted no major outside help, and she got flattened by Joe Heck.