(Headline USA) Retired Army Capt. Sam Brown lost Nevada’s 2022 GOP Senate primary to the state’s former attorney general, Adam Laxalt, a known entity who had previously run unsuccessfully for governor.
But after Laxalt once again fell short in his bid against incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, it is now Brown’s time to shine. The grassroots, word-of-mouth buzz that helped fuel his sudden rise just two years ago will again be needed to help him oust first-term Sen. Jacky Rosen in a race Republicans have targeted nationally as one of their best chances to knock off an incumbent Democrat.
Brown, filed his formal candidacy Thursday, but the Purple Heart recipient has been considered the early GOP front-runner in a crowded primary field since he announced he was running last summer—less than a year after he lost his bid to challenge Nevada’s other Democratic senator in the western battleground state.
“The Biden administration and Democrat leadership in the Senate have not served Nevadans well,” Brown said at a rally outside the state capitol in Carson City after he and his wife, Amy, submitted his filing papers at the secretary of state’s office. “This is a movement of `We the People’ and we are going to put people over politics.”
Last time, Cortez Masto went on to defeat Laxalt by just 8,000 votes in the western battleground state—the closest Senate race in the nation in 2022. The extraordinarily suspicious circumstances came down to some mail-in ballots discovered at the last minute in Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas.
This time around, although the laws concerning mail-in voting remain on the books, Republicans seem to have wisened up to Democrats’ schemes. Gov. Joe Lombardo, the former sheriff of Clark County, is a Republican, although Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, responsible for overseeing the elections, is a Democrat.
Nonetheless, the climate would seem overall to favor Republicans, including the likely coattail effect from supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who far outpaces incumbent President Joe Biden in the enthusiasm gap.
And then there is Brown himself, whose personal story makes him stand out and easy to justify supporting for any who may find themselves on the fence politically.
Brown, who was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan that scarred his face, has made national security a priority in his campaign again this time around while painting Rosen as a loyalist to President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders.
“Joe Biden and Jacky Rosen had their chance, and they’ve destroyed the American Dream,” he tweeted Thursday.
Laxalt won ex-President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the 2022 race and called Brown a carpetbagger who moved to Nevada after he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Texas state Legislature in 2014.
Brown’s GOP primary opponents include Jim Marchant, a former state Assembly member who lost the 2022 race for Nevada secretary of state to Aguilar, and Tony Grady, an Air Force veteran and former candidate for lieutenant governor.
Marchant and Grady were among seven Republicans seeking the nomination who faced off at a debate in Reno in January and spent much of the time criticizing Brown for refusing to participate. They have characterized him as an “establishment” candidate.
Rosen formally filed her candidacy earlier this month and has not drawn any well-known opposition for the Democratic nomination. She was a first-term congresswoman from a Las Vegas-area district when she defeated GOP Sen. Dean Heller in 2018.
Nevada State Democratic Party spokesperson Katharine Kurz said Thursday that Brown was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s handpicked candidate in “one of the messiest and most crowded Republican Senate primaries in the country.”
“MAGA extremist Sam Brown is a self-serving politician who puts the interests of his party leaders in Washington, out-of-state billionaires, and special interests over what’s best for hardworking Nevadans,” she said in a statement.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
