Nevada local Joe Heck is looking to steal away Harry Reid’s Senate seat from the Senate minority leader’s hand picked favorite Catherine Masto.
For thirty years, Senator Harry Reid has had a safe hold on his seat as a representative of the state of Nevada. As majority leader and later minority leader, he enjoyed a powerful seat in the federal government. Once Reid decided that he would retire and not run again, the field grew quickly.
The democratic field cleared easily. Harry Reid hand picked former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. On the Republican side, the race is much more populated. US. Congressman Joe Heck, instead of running for re-election in the US House of Representatives, chose to run for the Senate seat with the full backing of the Republican party elite.
Heck, however, isn’t running unopposed in the primary — there are eight others, including former Nevada assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who won the primary in 2010 and lost to Reid for that Senate election.
Angle, who gained support in the 2010 race as a tea party favorite, has praised Trump’s campaign. This contrasts sharply with the potential first-time Latina the Democrats have in Masto. Masto currently leads a campaign based on tying the republican challenger to Trump, an easy feat if the challenger is Sharron Angle.
Due to Reid’s national reputation, this race has strong national interest and funding. For a race that is so flush with cash, there are very few published polls that track the results or the potential head to head numbers. In a poll provided by Public Policy Polling, and ordered by the Masto campaign, Masto narrowly wins in a head to head with Heck by just one percentage point. In a head to head with Angle, that lead widens.
That could be a bit of misinformation on the part of the Masto campaign, but what is more likely is that the Senate race in Nevada is providing a test tube election for the presidential election in the fall. If Trump antagonizes Latino voters enough to leave the party, then the democratic candidate will do well, especially with her Mexican ancestry.
The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics officially has the Nevada Senate race as a toss-up. If, however, Trump doesn’t play as big a part in the election, then it is very likely that the Reid seat will be replaced by a republican.
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