Races in Nevada's general election are now set.

Which politicians appear most at risk of losing their seats in the Silver State, plus... [motorcycle revving] Laughlin and Bullhead City celebrate the long awaited opening of a new bridge.

What it means to those who live there and what's the state of transportation infrastructure in Southern Nevada, that's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

A new bridge connecting Laughlin to Bullhead City is finally open.

What difference it's expected to make and what other major transportation projects are Nevadans still waiting on, that's ahead.

But we begin with elections.

With the primaries behind us, we look to the general election, where U.S.

Senator and Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen will face Republican Army veteran Sam Brown.

Meanwhile, all incumbents in Nevada's Congressional races won their primaries, meaning U.S. Representative and Democratic incumbent Dina Titus will face Republican and retired U.S. Army Colonel Mark Robertson in District 1.

In District 2, U.S. Representative and Republican incumbent Mark Amodei will face Independent Greg Kidd, since no Democrats ran in that primary.

In District 3, U.S. Representative and Democratic incumbent Susie Lee will face Republican Drew Johnson.

He's a policy analyst.

And in District 4, U.S. Representative and Democratic incumbent Steven Horsford will face Republican and former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee.

And finally, in the race for Las Vegas mayor, former U.S. Representative Shelly Berkley is set to face Las Vegas City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman in November.

Joining us now to provide insight into these races and more is David Damore, Executive Director of the Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West and a political science professor at UNLV.

David, welcome.

You have followed Nevada politics closely for how many years?

(David Damore) I moved here in 2000, so quite a while.

[laughter] -So then of the primary results of what's going to happen in the general election, what stands out to you in Nevada?

-I think this sort of lack of surprises was the thing that stood out to me.

I mean, it seemed that all the people who were expected to move forward did.

On the other hand, you have a lot of open races, particularly in the state legislature, which you know will, regardless of the outcomes in November, will lead to a lot of new people coming to Carson City there.

So that was the thing that stood out to me.

You have at the top the ticket, obviously, Sam Brown, speculation about was he winning, was he not.

No.

He crushed it.

So that was fairly straightforward there.

And then as we work down the federal races, you have a rematch in District 1.

District 3, which has traditionally been very competitive, it's unclear how competitive that will be come November.

And I think the most interesting one is, of course, District 4, where you're going to have Steven Horsford against John Lee.

They formally served together as Democrats in the state legislature about a decade ago, and then Horsford has been back in that seat for a while.

We saw Lee switch party, run for governor, not do particularly well in the Republican primary, and now he's going to win that seat as a Republican.

I think that's an interesting race just to follow, given the dynamics there.

-Them knowing each other for so long.

How did the funding for these races compare between what was put into the Senate race versus the House races?

-I mean, you had the Senate race was a nationalized race, right?

You had very early the Republican establishment in Nevada, but more importantly in DC, targeting Sam Brown's our guy.

So that money's going to flow to them and also then tend to choke off money to other people.

So that makes it harder to-- for them to fundraise.

They saw a lot of those candidates tipping the toe, I'm going to put my own money in, and then maybe not so much there.

So that, I think that was the sort of telltale sign.

And then late on Sunday, the President, former President Trump, endorses him.

Not much of a difference maker there in terms of the outcome there, but just sort of shows that the entire establishment Republican Party was behind Sam Brown.

-What about how well they funded the House races, and I'm talking about Republicans.

-Yeah, that's tricky, right?

I think this has been an underwhelming cycle for recruitment for Republicans.

And, you know, traditionally, those seats have been very competitive-- -In Nevada?

-In Nevada.

Those have been often to attract some of the highest levels of spending.

And outside, you've already seen some of the super PACs suggesting they're not going to play on the Republican side in Nevada House races here.

So that's going to create an interesting dynamic.

A lot of money coming in for the Presidential race.

A lot of money will come for the Senate race, but it's unclear how much money will be there for the House races.

-Would that be because they don't find it-- -They don't find it particularly competitive there, particularly compelling candidates.

You know, last in 2022, you had good opportunities in all those districts and what was probably a little more favorable environment for Republicans, and they lost all those seats.

-Okay.

At last check, about 16% of Nevada's 2 million active registered voters participated in this primary.

What does that indicate about the participation come November?

-I think you got to divorce the two, right?

I mean, there wasn't, you know, outside of the Senate race, that was the only sort of statewide race of interest that would sort of draw attention to that.

You know, the Democrats didn't necessarily have to campaign.

The incumbents put much effort into their primaries there.

And then, of course, as we know, the Nonpartisans don't have much incentive to go, right, outside of voting for your judges and your school board races and your regents.

-I'm glad you brought that up, because that is the argument that some people are making in favor of Ballot Question 3, which would implement open primaries and ranked-choice voting.

Open primaries would allow those Nonpartisans to finally participate.

There are more Nonpartisans in Nevada than there are Democrats and then there are Republicans.

Is that a legit argument for the approval of this ballot measure?

-I mean, it is in the sense that two things going on there to sort of get people out engaged in the process there, and that, of course, is going to sort of determine the types of campaigns we'll see.

If you have to focus on your party base, that's going to be one type of campaign.

If a broader electorate you have to appeal to in the primary, that's a different set of messaging.

Makes your race probably more expensive there.

But one of the arguments for the open primary is just something too much polarization in politics, that all these candidates have to do is, in a low turnout election and, particularly, in a safe Republican or safe Democratic district, you appeal to that base of your party and, you know, you win your election in November.

And that, I think, is the major driver for this, not just in Nevada, but we're seeing this across the country.

-In Nevada, though, it appears that there has been some significant funding from out-of-state donors, a lot more than in other states, other races.

What do you attribute this to?

And that's a reason that opponents say you need to be wary of this because of all those out-of-state funders.

-I think Nevada is attractive for a lot of out-of-state groups, right?

You have essentially two media markets, you get 90% of the population.

So you don't, you know, it's very concentrated population.

They're less expensive than some of the other larger states to essentially run a campaign here.

We've seen this, you know, going back to recreational use of marijuana, right?

That came from outside the state.

We've seen some of these other initiatives that have been pushed have come from from outside the state.

So it's not that uncommon here.

What I think is interesting about the dynamic of Question 3 is, do we see an opposition campaign emerge?

Because this is essentially the parties and their allies-- organized labor on the Democratic side, business groups and other interest groups-- they're going to oppose this.

Do they work together to try to defeat this come November, or do they have bigger priorities in terms of the candidate races there?

-That's what's so fascinating about this is that there is opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.

And then in favor of it, there is, there are funders that are Democrats and Republicans as well.

-Yeah.

That's an interesting dynamic, again.

We're going to-- it'll be a fairly crowded ballot initiative for us.

We often don't get a lot of attention and that compared to California or some of the other western states, but you have potential for interesting ballot questions this time around.

-Let's move now to the race for President.

Former President Donald Trump chose Las Vegas as the site of his first rally post-conviction.

His campaign held the rally at Sunset Park, where one of his supporters told us that the guilty verdict for falsifying business records only served to further motivate her to vote for Trump.

The issues top of mind for her and other supporters that we spoke with were inflation, immigration, and foreign policy.

-To redo the economy and get us back to where incomes can equal the inflation.

And inflation rates are up whatever number, arbitrary numbers, to 20%, 22% --food, gas, energy-- but people's incomes are going up 2% a year, 3% a year.

-I feel like the biggest problem for me is the borders.

Like I really-- and the money that's being spent on other countries instead of our own country.

And so that's really been a thing for me, because we have had so much crime and so much homeless.

I live specifically in a neighborhood where there's homeless people everywhere camping out.

-I really appreciate how he tries to put America first, rather than playing politics.

So it's not about politics.

Put America first.

Make sure that American's interests are kept instead of just focusing on how to make politics work.

-Make things more affordable, like easier to buy like a house, easier just to live in general.

Right now, everything is super high.

And, yeah, so you would just have to be really smart with your money, because with interest rates and, like, all that stuff is pretty crazy right now.

So it's hard to, it's hard to live.

-That last guy, his name was Steve.

This will be his first election he gets to vote in.

So let's start with that inflation issue.

How much of an impact can a President really have on bringing it down?

-It's really tricky, right, because we're an interconnected global economy here, right?

We saw that during COVID with the supply chain issues there.

If you look at the policy choice the Presidents make, there's only a couple of them, who you appoint to the Federal Reserve.

But the Federal Reserve is independent.

They set the rates.

There's been a lot of pressure to lower them.

They've been sort of saying, Well, maybe we will; maybe we won't.

We saw Canada recently did lower theirs.

So that's, maybe that sort of tips the iceberg a little bit here.

The other is how much money you put out there.

And I think that the criticism you're going to hear of the President's policy is he's put too much money out into the economy coming out of COVID.

-COVID relief.

-Also, you know, IIJA, IRA, some of the big legislation has also put a lot of money out there.

But this is nothing unique to U.S.

If you look globally, this is occurring, right?

All of our trading partners are dealing with inflation as well.

So, you know, this is, also, you know, it, the inflation affects people differently depending upon their income, right?

So if you are at the top of the, sort of, income ladder, right, it's a little bit of a nuisance, but you're able still to sort of make ends meet, not worry too much about it.

You've probably gotten raises as well.

Whereas, if you're in the lower parts, in the middle part of the income distribution, it's going to hit you much harder.

Every time you grocery store, you see prices going up or so much higher than you're used to expecting.

Gas is sort of fluctuated down a little bit now, but it's four-- $4 is now sort of the norm, right, in Southern Nevada; whereas, it used to be $3.

So those sort of things.

And of course, once you get your electricity bill or your gas bill, those have gone up as well.

So there is this sort of interesting moment in our economy where the macro signals are all very good.

The stock market is doing well.

But for the person, the average person in Nevada, they're not seeing it.

I think that's one thing.

I think for the Republicans, they want to make this a referendum on the economy.

That's what they want to do coming November.

-When some argue that President Biden put too much money into the economy, which caused inflation, we should acknowledge that former President Trump approved COVID funding as well.

-Yeah.

I mean, we've been under-- the federal government's been on a spending bender since about 2020 on this.

At the same time, you've reduced taxes as well.

The taxes put in early in Trump's administration will expire come 2025.

But right now, right, you're running huge deficits as well, which would make driving up the cost of borrowing for the federal government.

-Okay.

So at the Las Vegas rally, former President Trump appealed to workers in Nevada's large hospitality sector who rely on tips.

Let's listen to them, and then I'll have you respond.

-So this is the first time I've said this.

And for those hotel workers and people that get tips, you're going to be very happy, because when I get to Office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips.

[cheers and applause] We're not going to do it, and we're going to do that right away, first thing in Office, because it's been a point of contention for years and years.

-Real quick, this is how the culinary union responded, in part, quote, Relief is definitely needed for tip earners, but Nevada workers are smart enough to know the difference between real solutions and wild campaign promises from a convicted felon, end quote.

The campaign promise, could former President Trump actually pull that off?

-It'd be really tough to do.

He can't do it unilaterally.

This would require legislation from Congress.

As I mentioned a moment ago that the current tax policy is going, set to expire in 2025.

You're going to have a feeding frenzy of lobbyists trying to ensure that their, that their, their constituents and their groups get beneficial treatment in there.

So how much, how organized are tipped workers going to be in that competition for, essentially, favorable treatment in the tax code there?

You know, usually what you would see if the campaign was serious about this idea is they would have a briefing paper they would roll out, right?

This is the number of Nevadan families who would be impacted favorably by this, right?

You would have a press conference with affected people being, This is a great policy.

We didn't see any of that there.

So putting, putting that aside, the other part of this is once you reduce the tax burden on some people, you're increasing it on everybody else.

So everybody else who has all income reported to the, to the IRS is going to be paying, shouldering a bigger part of the tax burden there.

The other part here is that there has been long negotiations over tip compliance policies that are implemented across and, you know, across sectors here that rely on tips here.

So you would be undoing all of that.

So it would be a heavy sort of regulatory lift.

But at the end of day, it has to come through Congress.

-About the border, where you heard plenty of voters at the rally talk about their concern about immigration and some of the crime that is associated with it, how big of an issue is this to Nevada voters?

Can you give us any context on now versus past elections?

-Nevada is an interesting case in the immigration because certainly you do have a hard core conservative anti-immigrant component of the Nevada electorate.

Even in the Latino electorate you see that as well.

But if we sort of look in Nevada, Nevada has a high share what we call "mixed families."

That is families that some people may be residents, some are not.

And then you look at our economy, you look at construction, some of the trades, some of the restaurants, some of that is really dependent on a lot of immigrant labor that may or may not be authorized here.

So it doesn't play the same way, I think, in the border states than it does here.

Certainly it appeals to a segment of the electorate here, but I don't think it resonates quite so loudly.

Historically, when we've done polling on this, it seems to be much more in favor of more liberalizing immigration laws, pathways to citizenship and those kinds of ideas have resonated a lot in Nevada.

-As opposed to the signs that we saw there that said "Deport them all."

Okay.

We got to end on this topic.

But you're sticking around for our last topic, which is infrastructure in relation to transportation.

And for that, we're going to start at the Nevada/Arizona border.

While Laughlin and Bullhead City are in different states, they share a local economy, with Laughlin residents forced to do a lot of their shopping in Bullhead City and several Bullhead City residents working in Laughlin.

The two communities, separated by the Colorado River, now have a second bridge between them to facilitate traffic and help spur economic development.

Construction on the $60.6 million bridge started in 2021 even though federal funding for it was designated in the 1990s.

It was 1987 when the late Don Laughlin funded the construction of this bridge connecting Bullhead City to the town of Laughlin, named in the resort owner's honor.

More than 30 years later and about eight miles south, there's now a second bridge between the Nevada township and Arizona city called Silver Copper Crossing.

-Oh, the bridge is going to be the most wonderful thing if we don't have any shopping in Laughlin.

So all of our purchases have to be made in Bullhead City.

This bridge will enable us to get here much faster.

-For public transit, it means a lot.

We have our paratransit service, and it's basically serving all the disabled residents of Laughlin.

And they have a lot of life sustaining services that they receive in Bullhead.

-Four-three-two-one... [crowd cheers] -To celebrate the bridge opening, firefighters sprayed water cannons from boats in the Colorado River below while residents danced... [band playing] ...and, of course, drove... [motorcycles revving] ...across the 724-foot-long link between Laughlin and Bullhead City.

This celebration decades in the making, as it was the late U.S.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and the late U.S.

Senator John McCain of Arizona who pledged their support for this bridge back in the 1990s.

-The first two weeks I was in office, over five years ago now, I made a trip to Laughlin, visit with residents, and this was the first thing I heard about, because they've been promised this, frankly.

For over 20 years, they've been told that there would be a connection to these two thriving and growing areas.

And what the killer was, was it was funding.

-Michael Naft is a Clark County Commissioner whose district includes Laughlin.

-Our government moves slowly, but not typically this slowly.

I think there were a variety of factors that delayed this project.

There were certainly politics involved.

There were other kinds of decisions that had to be made along the way, but at the end of the day, what did it for me was, one, the need was great, the need for emergency access, if nothing else.

The fact that we only had one public bridge that connected these two major areas.

In the event of emergency, I need to be able to get my residents to the hospital.

The closest way is across the Colorado River.

And then you look at the future outlook, the economic development opportunities for the area.

-Was it your responsibility to get this done?

When there's federal funding that's impacting two states, who takes it upon themselves to get it done?

-Well, I think everything at the end of the day falls on us.

You know, we all have responsibility, shared responsibility.

But at the time the earmark was provided, it would have been enough to cover the full funding of the bridge.

That was the intention.

Meanwhile, all these years go by.

As you know, the cost of everything has gone up, and so that's why it required additional support from Clark County to actually get it done.

-And for Clark County taking the lead, locals say they're thankful... -I mean, it's going to really change my life better, because I don't want to keep wasting gas.

Instead of driving to that bridge, I'll be taking this bridge from now on.

-...and hopeful for the potential impact this infrastructure could have.

-My hopes are that more and more people are able to come not just Laughlin to Bullhead, but Bullhead to Laughlin also.

I'd like to hope there's some development in Laughlin also.

We could use it.

We're kind of stagnated.

I don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but we're just at a lull.

And the water situation has not helped a lot.

-As for why this bridge took so long to complete, the Associated Press said that the original site had to be thrown out in 2008 because there was a public park there that would have not allowed for the use of federal funding.

The AP says that it took Bullhead City several years to determine a new site, which Laughlin officials didn't like because of how far it was from the casinos and businesses.

Clark County, though, reportedly refused to back off its commitment, and so construction started in 2021.

I reached out to you when I heard about this.

1990s there's federal funding.

2024 it's finally opening?

Is this typical of transportation infrastructure projects?

-This seems a little long for the issues you talked about there, but, yeah, it takes a while.

It takes a while to plan them, to get all the environmental planning, all those sort of, those sort of barriers there.

And then there's such a backlog of need, right?

So in these things, you know, as Commissioner Naft discussed, every, you know, you budget them at one point in time, by the time you get to them, the funding, the amount of money you need, is increased dramatically there.

Then you've got to figure out how are we going to patch this together here?

So it's a real challenge.

And you know, we're at a disadvantage in the West, particularly in some of the newer parts of the West, the Sun Belt, that we don't have a lot of history of getting a lot of federal funding for this.

So, you know we were-- in Phoenix and Las Vegas during Federal Highway Act in the 1950s, they were seen as too small to create an interstate between them.

Now we're trying to remedy that, and it's-- -With the I-11.

-Exactly.

So we're sort of playing catch up there.

There's a lot of federal money on the table for bridge repair, right, but not so much-- it's unclear how much that's going to go for new bridges and those sort of issues.

-Which I was so surprised to learn that there is no funding for the I-11 in Arizona.

No funding!

I've been seeing that-- -The route hasn't been determined either.

So they're still determining that as well.

-But then, looking into some of what's happening in Clark County, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada told Clark County, You have sent me, like, a list of about $2 billion worth of projects that you do not have funding-- we do not have funding identified for.

This is-- okay.

Let's get into the funding aspect and worries you about this.

-Well, I think what makes this, this is an interesting project, right, is the connectivity between Arizona and Nevada.

And we know that in the next decades, more and more goods are going to be coming up through Arizona through Mexico.

Mexico is now our biggest trading partner.

That is one of the motivations for I-11.

Until you get that, you're going to have to sort of make these sort of piecemeal projects to sort of get that there.

But this, you know, our connectivity to Arizona and California is the key to our economic development here.

So that's where we're, where we're thinking about where do we put those assets.

And you're seeing this right now.

So NDOT is doing a planning study on the sort of area around Jean.

There's going to be development coming in there, and they're playing catch up.

They're thinking about, what is Brightline going to do when that comes in through there?

How does that change the corridor and all those sort of needs here?

So the studying is going on and then the planning and then, ultimately, finding that funding.

-Okay.

And how are these improvements and these roadways funded currently in Nevada?

-Yeah.

It depends what you're talking about, right?

So we're talking sort of within Clark County.

You're really looking at the RTC on that one there.

And their concern right now is going to be the fuel tax indexing, the local part of that is set to expire.

That needs to be renewed to be able to carry forward those projects there.

If you're talking about highways and bridges, you're generally talking about state and federal dollars there.

And the concern there, of course, is that those funding streams are based, of course, on the gas tax, which are not tied to inflation.

They are set, right?

And so what we see as we promote electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles and miles increases, the amount of funding to support the state highway fund, the federal highway fund, those are continuing to decrease.

No one has figured that out, how to square that there.

So you've seen, you know, a lot of the IIJA, for example, a lot of, Oh, transportation.

It's really trying to plug in a lot of those holes that, for a lot of projects in Nevada and elsewhere, that just don't have the funding.

-And quickly, the result of your study found that the lack of manufacturing in this region has such a negative impact on our transportation.

How are they related?

-Yeah.

So we-- GOED commissioned us, CBER, and the UNLV Transportation Research Center to do what became the Southern Nevada Regional Industrial Study.

It was supposed to look at how can we diversify the economy here, particularly through manufacturing.

We know we have a lot of logistics here as well, but we were really interested in the manufacturing piece.

And one of the problems Nevada has is there's we don't export things.

So everything that comes into Nevada comes on a truck, generally from Southern California.

And even though we have a train that runs right through the middle of town, it doesn't stop here, because there's nothing to pick up.

So we were thinking about how's a way we can bend the economic sort of curve to make this more appealing for rail.

And that means we have to produce big items that need to go elsewhere there.

And that would get a lot of the truck traffic potentially off of the I-15.

We know Brightway-- Brightline is going to alleviate some of that car traffic, but if you've driven the I-15, how many Amazon trucks do you see going back and forth from the ports and the warehouses in Southern California?

-They're driving right on through, leaving polution.

-Exactly.

And chewing up our roads and all those sort of issues there.

So we were trying to, looking at creative ways that we can diversify the economy but also leave some of the stress on the existing infrastructure.

-David Damore, I wish we had more time to discuss this, but we have run out of time.

Thank you for joining us.

And thank you for watching.

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