Nevada Senate Race May Be Decided in Reno and Washoe County

Unlike election 2016, the 2018 Nevada Senate race of incumbent Republican Dean Heller vs. challenger Democrat Jacky Rosen may come down to Reno and Washoe County:

When Catherine Cortez Masto became the first Latina elected to the United States Senate, some of Nevada’s political class called her “the senator from Clark County.” Her victory map from November 2016 looked like a cupful of water at the tip of an upturned gas can. Clark was the only county Cortez Masto won. It’s home to the Las Vegas Valley, 2.2 million people, and 70 percent of the state’s electorate. By running up the score in Clark, she did enough to overcome losses in rural counties and a narrow defeat in Washoe County, which encompasses Reno. ...

Libertarians, voters concerned about gun rights and federal land use, evangelical Christians, Mormons, and the business community are [Heller's] bedrock support. ...

[Rosen] may need “The [former Nevada Senator Harry] Reid Machine,” the coalition of union members, their families, and former campaign aides to Harry Reid who are actively canvassing in Reno and Las Vegas, to outdo itself. ...

The race may come down to the margin in “The Biggest Little City in the World”—Reno and its suburbs. Cortez Masto lost Washoe County, but by falling within 2 percentage points there, she kept intact the statewide lead she built in Clark County. This might explain why Heller has spent significant money claiming Rosen is in thrall to the ultimate Washoe County and Interior West boogeyman: California.

“That plays to the libertarian strand in Nevada,” says David Fott, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s the fact that California is overwhelmingly Democratic, hostile to libertarianism, with high taxes, high cost of living, what some people have left California to escape.”

How to Win Nevada, by Dan Hernandez, POLITICO, October 27, 2018.