The state is making national news as Nevada's senior U.S.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto was one of just two Democrats who voted with Republicans to avoid a government shutdown.

Meanwhile, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo announced he intends on calling a special legislative session to, quote, finish what the legislature left unfinished.

Here to unpack that and the significance of Senator Catherine Cortez Masto's vote is David Damore, Professor of Political Science at UNLV and Executive Director of the Lincy Institute & Brookings Mountain West.

David, welcome back to Nevada Week.

-Thank you.

-What do you make of Catherine Cortez Masto breaking from Democrats?

(David Damore) Interesting, right?

So she, you know, fancies herself as sort of a moderate, pragmatic senator.

In wanting to keep the government going, you've heard some talk, Well, if I voted for this, maybe this keeps Nevada out of the cross hairs of the Trump administration there.

It's a bit of a free vote for her, because it wasn't going to pass.

So she can say, Look, I'm willing to make a deal if you want if there's enough here to make a deal on.

So it's very sort of consistent with the history of Nevada senators, right, the pathway to successful tenure, Nevada senators sort of moderate problem solver?

I think that's how she's sort of presenting herself, as she did when she ran for re-election back in 2022.

-But if it did benefit her, then you would think Senator Jacky Rosen would do the same.

-She did.

But they're responding to different cues, different electoral cycles there.

So, you know, you would have thought-- -What do you mean by "different electoral cycles"?

-Well, Rosen just had her election, and so she's got six more years, right?

She knew she wouldn't be up till 2030.

Cortez Masto is getting there.

2028 would be when she's on the ballot there.

I think there's just a lot of sort of mix there, and sometimes it's not the worst thing in the world to stand up against your base as a politician.

-Is that a good strategy right now?

-By the time we get to the her election cycle, I think most this will be forgotten on this.

You know, we voters have very short memory there on this.

But in the meantime, she can sort of position herself as being sort of pragmatic problem solver, willing to sort of reach across the aisle, that type of messaging.

-So it was her and fellow Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, along with an Independent Angus King of Maine.

As we speak, it's Wednesday, October 8.

And by the time this airs on Thursday, the government could be reopened, perhaps temporarily.

Wishful thinking, you think?

-You know, there doesn't seem to be much urgency to get it done here.

I think you see both sides trying to sort of position themselves as who's winning the shutdown, as opposed to who's resolving the shutdown there.

Early polling suggests that the blame is going to the Republicans, which you might expect, right?

They have unified control of the federal government, so they're trying to obviously say, No, it's the Democrats here.

The Democrats are holding their ground.

I think this is something that's been frustrating for their base, is that they haven't really had a strategy in this, in Trump's second term here, so now at least they're sort of coalescing around the subsidies for healthcare payments.

-And that is why they are not voting with Republicans, minus Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who says that had she not voted for this, she is putting more power into the hands of President Trump.

Does that make sense to you?

-Some level, I suppose.

He's obviously had a lot of threats about, you know, firing lots of people, using this as an opportunity to reduce the federal workforce there.

There's now been floating this idea of, I don't have to pay people the furloughs, even though he signed a law in 2019 saying that there would be back pay for these people here.

I think there's, there's a lot of blustering and a lot of bluff.

I think the analysis suggests what he's suggesting, is it legal?

Even if they do it, you have to go through the legal process to get that remedy.

-Okay.

What do you make of the special session and the timing of it, amid all of this going on within the federal government?

-Kind of the worst kept secret, right?

They've been talking about this for quite some time.

The governor came out and said, Yes, there will be a special session.

No date.

No idea what the agenda is.

I think there's some idea of what's going to be on there.

I think right now you probably have a feeding fest at the governor's office with lobbyists trying to say, Get my bills on there that didn't get through the session last time there.

I think, clearly, the crime bill, which went down on the last evening of the session there, I think he'd like to get that back.

-And that was his bill.

-His bill.

-Is that kind of probably a sore spot for him, having been the former sheriff here in Las Vegas, not getting his crime bill passed?

What does that do for his clout?

-Well, it's an interesting political calculation, right?

Because if it goes through the special session and it passes, then it sort of takes it off the table.

It's an election issue, right?

Otherwise, you can sort of blame the Democrats for being sort of weak on crime, the traditional Republican message there.

That's part of the equation there.

I think hopefully cyber security gets back on there.

Right after the attack we had, they sort of shut down.

There was a bill last session that didn't get very far.

Maybe that one gets resurrected there.

I think there's some notion that with some of the change at the federal government, a lot of the administrative costs for some of the programs, SNAP, are getting pushed down to the state.

That wasn't in the budget, so they've got to find the money to cover that moving forward.

-Right.

And originally, when we were talking about a potential special session, it was about changes to Medicaid at the federal level.

I'm not hearing any talk of that.

-If you read the bill, they kicked it down after the midterms by no-- [laughter] Those cuts don't go into effect until the next legislative session for Nevada, so they-- -The State does not have to do it this year.

- --kind of kick those cuts after the midterm.

Not shockingly, that's how that bill was written there.

So I think the next session that would come up, presumably, if that doesn't get changed in between.

-And so a special session is 15 days, correct?

-Well, it's as long as it can take.

-Really?

-Sometimes they're, you know, a half hour, right?

If you've seen those ones after, after, when they don't quite finish on the, on the last day of the legislative session.

Sometimes they can linger a little bit there.

The concern for lawmakers is the blockout for the fundraising.

So there's a blockout before and after the fundraising, so that plays into this, and it's one of the reasons why the legislators don't particularly like these special sessions, because they don't have any control over what's on the agenda; whereas, during a regular session, they can pick and choose what they want to focus on here.

-And it prevents them from fundraising?

-Yes, it prevents them from fundraising.

-How many-- -The governor, as well.

-How many bills, then, would be practical for a special session?

-You know, they're all a little bit different.

So if you look at some of the recent ones, they were, you know, the Tesla one, the Faraday one, right, the stadium one?

Those were very, very sort of narrowly focused just on those.

This seems a little more open ended.

Obviously, the governor will have to decide what gets in and what does not when he makes, when the proclamation comes out.

So this is a real power for the governor in terms of the agenda setting, what he thinks are the priorities.

And obviously you have some interesting dynamics here, right?

You have two vacancies on the Republican side, so those need to be filled, presumably.

You had two resignations there, so Republicans are down a couple of votes.

So you need to get that taken care of, get those seats filled.

So you have this weird thing where people will get appointed just to go to the special session.

[laughter] -And perhaps they will be also considering the film tax credit bill.

We haven't talked about that.

Do you think that's getting on this agenda?

-There's a big push.

There's, obviously, organized laborers got a PAC.

They're putting a lot of money into this on that.

So I-- This goes to the second point, and that is that no bill is going to get on this, the docket that's not going to pass, right?

So all the sort of vote counting has to be done beforehand.

And if it's not there, then I don't think it gets there.

But if it is there, we'll see.

And then we'll see how that plays out.

-Okay.

That would be the bill to expand the film tax credit.

-Yes, significantly.

-Significantly, in order to bring some film studios to-- -Presumably, if AI doesn't take them all over.

[laughter] -Oh, David Damore!

Okay.

Thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.