From The Daily Beast:
It’s no secret that Nevada's Republican Senate nominee Adam Laxalt is behind on fundraising. But while he’s chest-thumping in public and forecasting the state will swing red, he’s simultaneously griping that his Democratic opponent isn’t having the same problem attracting donors.
In audio obtained by The Daily Beast from a July luncheon with the Southern Hills Republican Women, Laxalt, amid the sounds of clinking cutlery, said, “The Democrats have unlimited money, they have unlimited money. You think we have it bad here? Masto has, she just did $10 million she has to spend, we have $2 million. She’s on TV now because she has money and we don’t.”
“In Georgia, it’s $20 million to $3 million. In Ohio, it’s $12 million to $1 million,” Laxalt told the attendees, who paid between $36 and $41 to hear candidates speak at Dragon Ridge Country Club in Henderson, Nevada, according to an Eventbrite for the event.
But Laxalt wasn’t done complaining.
On the Sebastian Gorka show in August, Laxalt suggested “big tech” is censoring his fundraising emails, blocking him from being as well-funded as Cortez Masto.
“What we’re seeing out of big tech, and everybody knows Hunter Biden, and all the political censorship, but even the campaign world right now… Over 90 percent of our fundraising emails are being sent to junk,” he said. “The Democrats, none of their emails gets sent to junk, right? And so doesn’t take a genius to know why our fundraising on the small dollars is slower and theirs is bigger.”
In a Fox News interview in August, Laxalt insisted Democrats have “all the money in the world,” but added that he doesn’t think it will help Cortez Masto cross the finish line.
In another Fox News interview in August, he suggested reports that Democrats could have an edge in Senate contests after the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a form of “voter and donor suppression.”
By the numbers, Laxalt has plenty to complain about. While Democrats don’t have unlimited money, they’ve been leading Republicans in a number of high-profile Senate races, including in Nevada. Incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has raised more than $29 million, while Laxalt has raised just over $7 million, according to the campaign-finance tracking-site Open Secrets.
That’s difficult news for candidates like Laxalt in Nevada, who could help tip control of the Senate is he manages to upset Cortez Masto. National Republican operatives have been bullish about his success, pointing to his experience as the state’s attorney general, high name ID and MAGA-faithful brand could amp up voters this November.
Not to mention both his father, Pete Domenici (R-NM)—and grandfather, Paul Laxalt (R-NV)—were U.S. senators.
Laxalt certainly isn’t wrong to complain about how much he sucks at this. The Democrats are already on the air hammering him on this:
Senate Democrats’ campaign arm on Tuesday released its first general election television ad targeting Adam Laxalt in Nevada, slamming the Republican Senate nominee for his abortion stance.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) said the ad, titled “Historic,” is part of its $8.4 million ad reservation in Nevada this fall.
“Adam Laxalt praised the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade,” the ad begins, also noting that Laxalt called Roe v. Wade a “joke” in June and described the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights later that month as “a historic victory.”
Abortion is protected in Nevada through 24 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions after that point for cases where the mother’s health or life is in danger. The law cannot be repealed without a ballot measure being posed directly to voters.
“Laxalt supported overturning Nevada’s abortion protections,” the ad, which was first reported by Politico Playbook, continues. “He’d let states outlaw it, even for victims of rape and incest. Adam Laxalt’s not for us.”
Abortion isn’t just a big issue in the Nevada Senate race:
In post-Roe v. Wade America, states and the federal government are left to navigate the legal ramifications of the Supreme Court overturning a 50-year legal precedent. As reproductive health centers, medical professionals, and legislatures that support abortion rights cope with the uncertainty, Republicans and motivated anti-abortion rights activists are pushing for a national ban.
Nevada U.S. Rep. Susie Lee, fellow Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak and experts from UNLV Boyd School of Law outlined the ramifications a national ban would have in Nevada during a Thursday roundtable discussion.
More than 60% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in some circumstances. Nevadans voted to protect abortion rights in 1990.
The panel Thursday warned a national ban would trump state laws and stressed the importance of voting in this year’s midterm elections.
“This would ultimately overturn the will of the people of Nevada,” Lee said.
The Supreme Court’s ruling opened the floodgates for several legal uncertainties, including traveling across state borders, increased wait times, and whether reproductive services should be prioritized to residents, said Sylvia Lazos, a professor of law at UNLV Boyd School of Law.
A national ban would exacerbate these concerns as well as pose threats to the lives of women and families, impacting Black and Hispanic women the most.
In America, Black and Hispanic women account for the most abortions due to disparities in access to and utilization of contraceptives. Geographic barriers, financial access and moving can all limit the access to and use of contraceptives, according to a policy brief by the Guttmacher Institute.
“There’s going to be a whole generation of women who are going to have children that they’re not ready to have,” Lazos said.
It will impact their access to education, financial independence and their ability to leave relationships that are unhealthy for them, she said.
That’s if they survive childbirth.
A national ban would increase maternal mortality rates by 24% in the first year, with the largest increase in deaths for non-Hispanic Black people, by 39%, according to a University of Colorado study.
Speaking on the Governor’s race:
While Republican gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo has shied away from using abortion as a campaigning message, his campaign expense reports show he has been quietly supporting anti-abortion groups.
In the past, Lombardo did not respond to a Nevada Independent questionnaire on abortion sent to major candidates in late May and hasn’t publicly outlined what his beliefs are or what his plan would be, instead using a blanket statement that abortion in Nevada is already protected.
Earlier this year, Lombardo’s campaign sponsored an event for Nevada Right To Life, an anti-abortion group, and made a $1,500 payment to the group for special event fees.
Lombardo also paid more than $1,400 to Women’s Resource Medical Centers Of Southern Nevada (WRMCSN) related to special events. Lombardo’s campaign also paid another crisis pregnancy center — Living Grace Homes – about $300 for event fees, according to his second quarter report.
The name and mission of the centers can be misleading. According to findings by the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, “crisis pregnancy centers” are oftentimes run by organizations that seek to intercept women who might be considering terminating their pregnancy and persuade them that adoption or parenting is a better option.
WRMCSN is a faith-based nonprofit that aims to end the demand for abortions and offers free services, including pregnancy tests, prenatal care and counseling, “to women and couples who are making decisions about unintended pregnancies.” While the organization’s website shows abortion as an option along with adoption and parenting, it “does not recommend, provide, or refer for abortion.” WRMCSN also does not recommend, provide or refer patients to use contraceptives.
Similarly, Living Grace Homes’ website says it aims to “[help] young mothers grow into healthy, empowered, and productive women,” especially women between 14 to 24 years old.
Living Grace Homes is affiliated with Heartbeat International, a network of pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the United States, which openly “celebrates” the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, Senator Cortez Masto has been out campaigning across the state taking no voter for granted:
On a relatively cool summer’s day, four hours removed from the sweltering heat of Las Vegas, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto had a pitch for a room filled with Ely Republicans: First and foremost, “I am a Nevadan.”
Cortez Masto had decamped for the afternoon inside the Prospector Hotel and Gambling Hall, holding court in a side room of Margarita’s Mexican Restaurant. There, she set upon her task, floating from table to table, hearing the room out — and making her case.
“We are all in this together,” she told a crowd of roughly two dozen Republicans. “And that's my priority and whether you voted for me or not and showing up I'm talking to you and I'm gonna fight for you.”
It was a retail politics staple — the blue jeans senator, back from far-away Washington to parlay directly with her voters not on the tentpole issues of the day, but on the specifics, the nitty-gritty issues that tie people to the places they live.
But it was also notable in large part for its rarity, with rural politics long the purview of the GOP. Just after Cortez Masto finished her rural tour, the whole of the statewide Republican ticket took to the road for a tour of its own, including marching through a series of rural Labor Day parades.
The handful of votes Cortez Masto might secure out of the trip will likely exist on the margins of the margins — more likely than anything to be overshadowed by turnout trends in Las Vegas and Clark County, where a supermajority of Nevadans live.
But those margins could still prove pivotal in an election that remains within the polling margin of error, with a strong — or weak — rural performance changing the dynamics in urban Clark or Washoe counties.
Democracy and Health are on the ballot and we need to get ready to keep Nevada Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D. NV) and her fellow Nevada Democrats campaigns: