Rep. Dina Titus was NOT a happy camper when the new Congressional maps were enacted into law in 2021. Her district went from a safe seat to one where she would have to vigorously campaign every two years to hold.
“I totally got fucked by the Legislature on my district,” she said. “I’m sorry to say it like that, but I don’t know any other way to say it.”
Titus was referring to a shift of Democrats away from the first congressional district, historically an ironclad safe seat for Democrats, in order to strengthen their position in the state’s two swing districts.
She warned the three congressional seats held by Nevada Democrats are now at risk of turning Republican during the 2022 election cycle, under the new maps approved by the state lawmakers and the governor last month.
“You read that the Republicans are using gerrymandering to cut out Democratic seats, but they didn’t have to in this state,” she said. “We did it to ourselves.”
Luckily for our side, her predictions that the GOP would sweep all three swing seats did not come to pass. However, her point still stands. The Democratic Party gambled on winning all three seats in a midterm year that traditionally goes against the party in power and the Democrats won this round.
The question for Rep. Dina Titus is whether or not she is ready for round two in a potentially competitive seat.
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Rep. Dina Titus is one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the nation. She resides in a district that went from a safe seat to a competitive seat. Until 2022, she hadn’t run in a competitive seat since 2010. That’s why I’ve included her in a group of 26 incumbents or open-seat races we are defending. #SaveTheMajority Fund.
Dina Titus for Nevada-1
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What’s the Big Idea?
This district is in the Las Vegas area of Nevada.
THIS RACE IS LIKELY DEMOCRATIC, with a D+3 PVI
This district traditionally has been focused on the core of Las Vegas. It has been that way ever since Nevada started growing gangbusters and gained their second district a few decades back. The Las Vegas district usually leaned Democratic, while the rest of the state leaned Republican. The math got complicated when Nevada gained its 3rd and 4th districts, but it held true for the last decade.
What is new is that this district has abandoned parts of very blue Las Vegas and traveled out to the redder parts of the Las Vegas metropolitan area. This was done to try and shore up the other two Democratic incumbents in the 3rd and 4th districts. This could of course blow up in our face and allow the GOP to sweep all three districts, but I feel that we should be favored in all three of them this year.
Rep. Dina Titus has been in Congress before, and was drummed out by the 2010 red wave. The previous representative, Rep. Shelley Berkley, decided to run for Senate in 2012, and that opened up the 1st district. Titus easily won the primary and general election. She didn’t face any serious races in the 2010s, as this district was very secure.
2022 was a different story. She faced the same opponent she will face this year in Army Colonel Mark Robertson. Biden may have won this district by a 53.2% to 44.7% score, but the race for this district was closer than that. Titus won by a 51.6% to 46.0% margin, which equals about 12,500 votes. 224k people voted in the 2022 election, while 223k voted in the old 1st district in the 2020 election. It isn’t quite an apples to apple comparison, as the district changed significantly between the two elections.
Here’s where this race 1st district race will be won..
- Las Vegas: There are still quite a few precincts of the city left in this district, and all of them are the bluer areas of the city. It is critical that Titus get out as many votes as possible amongst the casino workers and other denizens of the city to offset other parts of the district.
- Inner Suburbs: The suburbs closer to Las Vegas are also fairly blue, and they will hopefully remain that way for Titus. It is critical for Titus to court these voters, as the transience of the metro area means she is new to many of the voters here.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we lose.
- Henderson: Trump won this important city by a small margin, and it is important that Titus keep this large suburb of Las Vegas as close to 50-50 as possible. This suburb could sink her campaign, or it could confirm her victory. It is that critical to her chances.
- Boulder City and the Rural Areas: The bottom sections of the district are quite red, and Titus cannot expect very many votes from these areas. There are enough voters here to tip the balance against her, so it is important to maintain the Biden margins here as well.
Rep. Dina Titus: A Canny Political Pro
Rep. Dina Titus has been running for office since the late 1980s. She knows how to win.
Rep. Dina Titus was born in Thomasville, Georgia in 1950 - making her yet another Las Vegas area transplant. Titus went to William and Mary College for her undergraduate degree and the University of Georgia for her master’s degree. She earned a PhD from Florida State University in political science. Titus would then become a professor of political science at UNLV, only retiring in 2011.
Titus would get elected to the Nevada State Senate in 1988 and serve in that legislative body for 20 years. She was elevated to Minority Leader in 1993 and continued in that capacity until getting elected to Congress for the first time in 2008. She ran for governor in 2006, but lost to Jim Gibbons by a 48%-44% result.
Her most well known bill in the Nevada Senate was an attempt at banning “universal default clauses” in credit cards. It was vetoed by Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons but the idea made it to Congress and eventually the credit card companies relented after sustained pressure. Titus has been strong on financial issues ever since.
Rep. Dina Titus has been a very loyal Democratic member of Congress while in office. For instance, she voted with Biden’s stated position on the issues 100% of the time during the 117th Congress. She is slightly right-of-center in the Democratic caucus according to her DW-Nominate score having voted the Democratic Party line 97% of the time in the 118th Congress.
Just like almost every other Democratic candidate, Titus is running on abortion access, the cost of living, firearm safety, and democracy. There is an abortion rights measure on the Nevada ballot in 2024 and Titus is supporting its passage. She is touting helping pass the Inflation Reduction Act which capped insulin prices and allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices as a blueprint to lower prices across the board.
Titus has been a gun safety champion ever since the deadliest mass shooting in history at the Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. She authored a bill banning bump stocks, and she constantly co-sponsors bills banning assault weapons and to conduct comprehensive background checks. She was saddened and outraged when the Supreme Court undid the Trump-era regulation in a 6-3 decision this year.
Climate change and the brutal Las Vegas heat need to be mitigated. The city reached 120 degrees this summer, which shattered the previous record high. The extreme heat prompted Rep. Dina Titus to propose a bill to update traditional FEMA protocols to better respond to extreme heat events through actions such as opening cooling centers. She also supports the Biden administration’s efforts to establish heat-related rules and mandatory breaks for workers in extreme heat.
Rep. Dina Titus sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House of Representatives. That allows her to push for a high-speed rail connection between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. She’s been angling to build this in the median of I-15 for 25 years, and now it seems that with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law it is close to becoming a reality. The hope is the line is open in time for the 2028 Olympic Games which are being held in Los Angeles.
The third rail of Nevada politics is the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Just like every other Nevada politician, Rep. Dina Titus stands strongly against doing this. Her opposition also comes with a strong knowledge of nuclear history as her campaign website says:
Dina is internationally known for her expertise in the history and policies related to nuclear power, weaponry, and waste – as well as her knowledge of the popular lore of "Atomic Culture." This unique area of study extends to a wide-ranging personal collection of atomic memorabilia. She appeared in the 2006 PBS documentary, “The American Experience: Las Vegas – an Unconventional History,” by acclaimed director Steven Ives, and is a favorite source on all things nuclear for the media. She was honored to give a guest lecture to the Los Alamos Historical Society and present an academic paper at the International War and Peace Conference at Sokendai University in Tokyo.
Another noble goal championed by Rep. Dina Titus is animal welfare. She reached across the aisle to Rep. Nehls on legislation to tighten regulations on animal testing by the NIH. She is attempting to protect the wild mustangs of the west from inhumane roundups. Finally, she has introduced legislation to make sure that animals are also taken care of in the event of a national disaster or an emergency.
It is clear that Rep. Dina Titus is a canny political pro that knows how to make the issues she champions into law.
Mark Robertson: A MAGA Radical
Mark Robertson is a MAGA extremist and an election denier who has been rejected before.
Mark Robertson was born in Orange, California. Robertson served in the U.S. Army from 1976 to 2019. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in 1984 and a graduate degree from City University of Seattle in 1997. His career experience includes working as an assistant professor of military science at UNLV, as a business owner, as a financial planner, and as a substitute teacher in the Clark County School District.
Robertson is one of Trump’s most ardent supporters in Nevada. He spent the 2022 election peddling Big Lie election-related conspiracy theories, although he claims his 2024 campaign “will be different” on that issue. He also was very quick to rush to Trump’s defense when the latter was convicted, stating that the conviction would be overturned on appeal.
Robertson is also a threat to seniors on fixed incomes. He supports a radical version of the balanced budget amendment that would almost certainly result in both Social Security and Medicare going on the chopping block. As a financial planner, Robertson worked for a company that got rich swindling seniors out of their retirement savings.
Women are also in danger if Robertson gets elected to Congress. He’s downplaying the issue this time around, but in 2022 he proudly proclaimed that he’s “pro-life”. He supported the Supreme Court when it made the Dobbs decision to rip abortion rights away from women. He advocated for Texas-style abortion bans in other states including Nevada.
Robertson is also radical when it comes to public education. He derides a “woke” curriculum that he claims is mandated by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC. He would eliminate the Department of Education and “return educational decisions to the local level”. He is a proponent of “parental rights” in education which seemingly only apply to conservative parents deciding the curriculum for every student. He also supports voucher schemes which rob public schools of critical tax dollars.
Mark Robertson is a MAGA radical that has been rejected by Nevada’s 1st district already. He will be rejected by the same voters once again in 2024.
How Can You Help?
It is volunteering that will make or break our chances in Nevada. Titus has practically won the fundraising race, with a healthy $1.36M in cash-on-hand which is significantly more than Mark Robertson. Robertson 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.
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 3rd and 4th districts. That fact is why I chose to write about the race despite it being rated as “Likely Democratic”. There’s outside money being spent here as a part of our strategy to defend our incumbents.
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.
The Titus campaign is just starting to kick into gear right before Labor Day. Their first phone bank was August 26th and now are scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am sure canvassing will follow once the heat dies down. Click on the “Volunteer” link at the top or bottom of the article to check for updates in campaign events on Mobilize.
Another option for Nevada is writing letters and postcards. Forward Blue is an organization that is focusing on underrepresented communities in places such as Nevada. Given the transience of the population in Las Vegas the mail may be the most reliable means of reaching some voters. Sign up to write postcards today!
Rep. Dina Titus should be okay for her re-election in 2024. There is polling backing up that assertion. According to The Downballot (formerly Daily Kos Elections), Titus sits in the 34th most vulnerable seat held by a Democratic candidate. That also is a sign that this district isn’t high on the target list.
Mark Robertson has to share a ballot with a bunch of far-right fringe candidates and the unique “none of these candidates” option in Nevada. Those choices will further siphon off critical votes he needs in order to win. Take solace in the fact that he was rejected in a midterm election and now has to face a Presidential electorate that will probably vote for MVP Harris at the top of the ticket.
This race is still happening in a potentially competitive seat, so we cannot rest on our laurels yet. The question for Rep. Dina Titus is whether or not she is ready for round two against Mark Robertson.
Dina Titus for Nevada-1
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