The question facing any incumbent in a closely contested district is how to keep winning when you face elections every two years. For Rep. Susie Lee, the answer seems to be bipartisanship.
Two of Nevada’s members of Congress were among those who most often break ranks with their party, but they call it bipartisanship rather than betrayal.
Capitol Hill news source CQ Roll Call published an analysis last week that studied the votes of last year’s congressional session and determined House Republicans last year were the least unified party bloc in more than four decades. The analysis also found which members of Congress voted most often against their own party. Two Nevada Democrats — Sen. Jacky Rosen and Rep. Susie Lee — made the list.
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Lee was No. 12 among 20 Democratic representatives who broke ranks with their party the most often.
“One of the reasons I ran for Congress was I was frustrated with the hyper-partisanship and dysfunction in Washington,” Lee told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a phone interview.
As vice chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus as well as the Bipartisan Colorado River Caucus and co-chair of the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus, “I spend a lot of time trying to work across the aisle,” Lee said.
It seems that the issues of immigration and law enforcement are areas where Lee is the most likely to break ranks from the Democratic Party. She also backed a GOP resolution supporting Israel that was unpalatable to national Democrats because it lacked aid to Ukraine.
Another area of common ground is housing affordability. Las Vegas, Nevada is faced with an acute housing crisis due to being surrounded by federal lands. She has proposed accelerating appraisals of public lands for sale, a move backed by GOP Gov. Lombardo.
“Congresswoman Lee’s AACE Act will help eliminate federal red tape so we’re able to move more efficiently on new housing and infrastructure projects here in Nevada,” Lombardo said in a statement. “As we seek innovative housing solutions in our state and across the country, I’m pleased to endorse this bipartisan legislation.”
The act would permit the Department of Interior to contract with appraisers who are credentialed in any state to evaluate public land for potential transfer, rather than only being able to use appraisers credentialed in the state where the parcel of land is located. When federal land transactions are being considered, the department must first get the land appraised to ensure fair market value is being followed.
Bipartisanship and breaking ranks at key moments seem to have worked so far for Lee, given that she is a slight favorite for re-election in 2024. The hope for our side of the aisle is that her strategy keeps working because Nevada’s 3rd district is one we cannot afford to lose if we want to take back the House.
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Susie Lee for Nevada-3
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What’s the Big Idea?
THIS DISTRICT LEANS DEMOCRATIC, with a D+1 PVI
No district map, but it contains many of the suburbs of Las Vegas.
This district has a very short history, having only been in existence since it was created in the 2000 Census. It was originally meant to be a Republican-leaning swing seat, and that is how it acted for most of the first decade, with GW Bush narrowly winning in the district in 2004. The 2006 blue wave showed that this district was vulnerable to flipping, and 2008 proved too much for the GOP incumbent Rep. Jon Porter, as Rep. Dina Titus washed him away and Obama won 55-43, a high water mark for Democratic presidential candidates.
2010 proved too much for Titus, and Joe Heck, a “moderate” Republican began his Congressional career. He held the seat even though Obama narrowly won the district’s vote in 2012. Heck left to campaign for the Senate seat in 2016, and Jacky Rosen won the match to replace him even though Trump carried the district.
Lee first ran for Congress in 2016 for Nevada’s 4th Congressional district, taking a distant third in the Democratic primary. Undeterred by her poor showing that year, she ran again in 2018 when Jacky Rosen won the Senate seat that year. Lee overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary, then she beat Republican Danny Tarkanian and five other candidates in the general election. In 2020 she won a close contest while Biden narrowly flipped the district.
In re-apportionment, the neighboring 1st district was specifically weakened to shore up the Democratic lean of NV-03, creating lines that Biden’s 2020 campaign would have won 52.4% to 45.7%. In the 2022 midterm election, Susie Lee won 52% to 48%, about 10,000 votes.
In 2024, Lee winning Nevada’s 3rd district will need a combination of the remnant of the Harry Reid machine to turn out traditional Democrats, progressive organizations to GOTV for those who will respond, AND Lee's bipartisan reputation to attract swingy voters. This is the least-Democratic district in the state, thus Lee is the most vulnerable.
Here’s where the 3rd district race will be won.
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Paradise and Spring Valley: This is where many of the workers for the casinos live. These are the portions of the district that have voted blue consistently, and Rep. Susie Lee will have to hope the Reid machine turns out every Democratic voter in these areas to offset other locations.
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Enterprise: This suburb is further out from the city core, and is less Democratic than the two listed above. Lee will need to make sure that this area turns out voters in her favor, and that the suburb doesn’t flip to her GOP opponent, Drew Johnson.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we lose.
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Summerlin: While not the most GOP-leaning portion of Las Vegas, this area has many red precincts and is the likely source of much of the Republican vote. There are blue precincts in these neighborhoods as well, and it is important that Lee keeps the margin in this area respectable.
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Rural Nevada: While there aren’t many votes outside the urban core of Las Vegas in this district, the ones that do exist are Republican strongholds. Laughlin and other exurban precincts will likely be lopsidedly against her.
Rep. Susie Lee: A Measured Approach to Nevada Issues
Rep. Susie Lee is an experienced campaigner who has won three close elections now.
Rep. Susie Lee was born in Canton, Ohio in 1966. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University and made her way out to the Las Vegas area. Once there, she started the Inner-City Games (now the After-School All-Stars), which provides after-school activities for children. In 2010, she became president of Communities of Schools in Nevada, a dropout prevention organization. She has also served on numerous educational task forces for Clark County Schools.
It comes as no shock that Lee is a very powerful voice on education issues on Capitol Hill. Her bicameral Keep Our PACT Act would fully fund IDEA (a special education program) and Title I (for high-poverty locations) for the next ten years. Lee also wishes to expand after-school programs and wraparound services to help students beyond the classroom.
Lee also is working on reducing the cost of higher education. The bipartisan Earn to Learn Act would establish a matched-savings program to help low-income students and adult learners pay for tuition, books, fees, and other education-related expenses. She also introduced the Pell Grant Sustainability Act to ensure the Pell Grants' value keeps pace with costs.
Lee is on the House Appropriations Committee which is one of the most powerful committees in Congress. She is also on the Natural Resources Committee - an important one for Nevada. This combination allows for some powerful grant and funding opportunities for the state. For instance, Lee’s bipartisan work on water management data is second to none. She worked to get federal grants to help conserve water for Lake Mead and the Las Vegas Wash. She also got a water recycling measure passed as a part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Rep. Susie Lee is strong on other issues that Nevadans care about. A complete list of her stances on the issues can be found on her official House website.
Drew Johnson: Koch Brothers and Trump Puppet
Drew Johnson sounds moderate on his campaign website, but don’t be fooled.
Drew Johnson was born in 1979 in Johnson City, Tennessee. He graduated from Belmont University with a degree in political science. He went to work for the Koch Brothers at various think tanks as a policy writer and investigative journalist. He has also been a columnist for The Washington Times. He ran for the Clark County Commission in 2022, narrowly losing a chance for a first elected office.
He is seen as more libertarian than the current crop of MAGA acolytes, and it is unknown how this could affect the campaign. As a product of the Koch Brothers network, his stances on certain issues are abhorrent. As an example, Johnson also holds views on Social Security that are out of step with Americans. In a now-deleted tweet, Johnson agreed with raising the retirement age of the program.
As a former member of the Koch empire, it is natural that Johnson would heavily criticize threats to Big Oil. He advocates for increased natural gas usage, despite it being at a record already. He claims that green energy is “unreliable, heavily subsidized, and unbelievably expensive”.
Finally, Johnson sticks to the Taxpayers Protection Pledge, which isn’t surprising considering that he used to work for that organization. The goal of that pledge is to recruit legislators who reject all tax increases, and Johnson is of that mold. He is a likely vote to extend the budget-busting Trump Tax Scam despite all his blathering about the debt.
The Koch Brothers network has become persona non grata in the age of Trump, so Johnson has found a new leader to emulate. Johnson is all in on Trump. He claims to be “proud to be the first political candidate to support Trump in 2024!”. Johnson would likely jettison any previous libertarian stances on issues to bend the knee to Trump.
There are plenty of other horrid stances in his record, as the DCCC opposition page highlights. His own issues page sounds rather moderate, but it is missing quite a few big issues (like abortion rights) where he is out of step with voters.
How Can You Help?
It is volunteering that will make or break our chances in Nevada. Lee has practically won the fundraising race, with a healthy $2.18M in cash-on-hand which is significantly more than Drew Johnson. Johnson may have to win without help from national groups.
With both parties increasingly homing in on seats in New York and California, Republicans with knowledge of the races also said they expect less national GOP investment in the Nevada House races compared with last cycle.
Congressional Leadership Fund, the Kevin McCarthy-backed (R-CA) super PAC that pumped more than $6 million into Lee’s race last cycle, has yet to announce its initial spending, despite having done so by this point last year.
That may not necessarily translate to lower spending totals — given the costly and crowded Las Vegas media market and the fact that fundraising only increases every cycle.
But between competing for ad space and air time with the presidential race and the U.S. Senate race — not to mention the frustrating results from last cycle in a midterm historically linked to big losses by the incumbent president’s party — Lee, Titus and Horsford are likely not going to be as significant of a target for Republican leadership as last cycle.
Lee is taking nothing for granted though, as she has reserved $3M in airtime for political ads in the fall. The House Majority PAC has also reserved $6.8M for ads in the Las Vegas area, though it is conceivable that some of that money could be used to prop up Nevada’s 1st and 4th districts.
The Reid machine still exists and does its part to create the Democratic firewall to win the state. However, the political calculus of the state is changing once again. The GOP has almost caught up in voter registration after being in a hole for the past couple of decades. The Democratic Party has to increasingly rely on Independent voters - a risky proposition.
Las Vegas is home to a large transient population, meaning each election is a challenge. Voter contact lists are always in need of updating, and door-knocking is a major key to reach voters. Phone banking is also important for voter outreach - especially now that it is summer and it is too hot to canvass effectively. Lee has created an event for phone banking this Wednesday and no doubt will have more in the future. They are virtual, so anyone can sign up for a shift.
https://www.mobilize.us/leeforcongress/event/642164/
If you live in the Las Vegas area and wish to sign up to volunteer on a more permanent basis for Rep. Susie Lee, I’ve included a link to do so at the top and the bottom of this article.
Rep. Susie Lee is no stranger to close elections, having endured two of them so far. So long as she keeps up the bipartisan nature of her representation and sits on the House Appropriations Committee, she will be tough to beat. According to Daily Kos Elections, she currently sits at tied for 23rd most vulnerable Democratic seat of flipping. Others see her as not as vulnerable, but given Trump’s polling strength in Nevada, this seat could flip. The good news is she has held a Trump-won district before.
Drew Johnson certainly has some views that are out of step in the modern GOP. He’s pretending to be a moderate option by avoiding giving stances on hot-button issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. He claims to be more libertarian-aligned than MAGA, but when push comes to shove he will fold just like every other “principled Republican”.
The question will be whether or not Rep. Susie Lee can hold this House seat despite being in a perpetual swing state.
Susie Lee for Nevada-3
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