Early polls showed ex-Assemblywoman Lucy Flores with the most support in the June Democratic primary to face Republican freshman Cresent Hardy in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, but she always had one huge problem. While Flores had a measure of name recognition from her unsuccessful 2014 bid for lieutenant governor, she had little money, and she would have had a tough time holding on to that lead once state Sen. Ruben Kihuen and nonprofit president Susie Lee started spending.
But that was before Bernie Sanders sent out a fundraising email on Flores’s behalf to his massive list. Eight days later, Flores’ campaign announced that she had taken in a monster $428,000 in April alone. By contrast, Flores raised a grand total of $376,000 from May of last year through the end of March. Flores didn’t say how much cash she had in the bank after Sanders turned on the after-Berners, but it’s certainly a lot more than the $159,000 she had in the bank on March 31.
But despite this new munificence, Flores still needs a lot to go right for her to prevail in the primary. Kihuen had $424,000 on-hand at the end of March, and he’s backed by Sen. Harry Reid and many labor groups, while Lee has $624,000 in the bank and has the ability to do more self-funding. However, Flores’s chances suddenly look a whole lot better than they did just two weeks ago. And no matter who he faces, Hardy himself has a tough task ahead if he wants to win re-election in this 54-44 Obama seat in the northern part of the Las Vegas area, though he has $761,000 in the bank and won’t need to spend anything on a primary. Daily Kos Elections rates the general election as a Tossup.