Primary elections are over.

Which candidates came out on top, and how might they fare against Nevada's incumbents in November?

A look ahead to the general election is this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Primaries have passed, and now November's general election races are set in the race for Nevada Governor.

Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak will face Republican Joe Lombardo.

In the race for Senate which could determine party control of the Senate, Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto will face Republican Adam Laxalt.

In the Congressional races in District 1, Democratic incumbent Dina Titus will face Republican Mark Robertson; in Northern Nevada, Republican incumbent Mark Amodei will face Democrat Elizabeth Mercedes Krause in District 2; in Congressional District 3, Democratic incumbent Susie Lee will go up against Republican April Becker; and in Congressional District 4, Democratic incumbent Steven Horsford is set to face Republican Sam Peters.

For a complete look at results, go to our website vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

And joining us to discuss the results and what lies ahead are Colton Lochhead, political reporter for The Las Vegas Review Journal; Jessica Hill, political reporter for The Las Vegas Sun; David Damore, Chair of the Department of Political Science at UNLV; and Dan Lee, assistant professor of political science at UNLV.

Thank you all so much for joining us.

I want to start off with of all the races that we just mentioned, there is only one that is not considered a toss up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and that is the Congressional District 2 incumbent Republican Mark Amodei.

All the others are considered either side could win.

So for each of you, and I will start with you because you have actually written for The Cook Political Report, who do you think of the incumbents is most likely to lose their seat?

(David Damore) Well, obviously the top tickets are going to get the attention, but I think that congressional districts are so scrambled with redistricting.

And you look at that District 1, which traditionally had been a very Democratic seat, core of Las Vegas, now stretches out into Anthem all the way out to Boulder City.

So there's a lot of new turf for Dina Titus to campaign on, and not particularly as friendly as it was for her.

So I think she's going to have her work cut out for her.

I mean, the advantage is she actually got a first time candidate.

She'll have the resources, but it's going to be a very tough race for someone since she's been in that seat and has never really had to compete, in November.

-She's going up against Mark Robertson, Colton.

Who do you think is most likely to lose their seat?

(Colton Lochhead) I think looking at the governor race, it's just with Lombardo, the more moderate Republican, Lombardo getting through the Republican primary, now going up against Sisolak, I think that's the matchup that Democrats and Sisolak's campaign were really hoping to avoid at all costs.

And so I think that's the one that's going to be, I think, probably the tightest race statewide.

I think it's going to be one that is going to be obviously very watched nationally, locally.

But it's one that is just given the dynamics, the economic headwinds or the economic issues, inflation, gas prices, I think that's going to be-- it's just a lot of issues that Sisolak gonna have to overcome in that race.

-Jessica.

(Jessica Hill) I think Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has it out for her this time.

It's gonna be a pretty tight race with Adam Laxalt.

I know Roll Call put her in like the top 10 most vulnerable senators in the country.

And especially with you know, Joe Biden's low approval ratings, all those reflect on her as well.

And those are going to be attacking points for the Republicans and for Adam Laxalt.

-Dan.

(Dan Lee) Really, you could pick any of these races.

I'll jump on the gubernatorial race.

With all the issues that are going on right now, like with inflation, gas prices, but just all the pent up, you know, dissatisfaction with how Sisolak dealt with COVID.

So a lot of people didn't think we should have shut down for as long as we did.

So now this is their chance to, for Republicans to get them out of office.

And on top of that, as mentioned, I think Lombardo being a more moderate candidate with more name recognition down in Clark County, there are things that work in his favor, and this is gonna give Sisolak a tough chance at reelection.

-I want to ask you more about the race for governor, but before we talk about Lombardo and Sisolak, we have Joey Gilbert who is refusing to concede that he has lost the primary to Joe Lombardo.

Where does that stand?

I know, Jessica, you've been doing some reporting on this.

-Yes, I talked with his campaign manager, and they were saying that he's not quite sure what Joey Gilbert wants to do.

But he's taking some time to grieve over his loss and will probably get back to us within the next couple of days about what his next steps are; however, Colton mentioned this earlier, where, you know, Joe Gilbert has followed through on his threats in the past to file lawsuits.

So we should see what happens with that.

-Okay.

So there could be a serious threat.

What are you thinking, David?

-I think it's where our politics are, right?

I didn't win, therefore, it's rigged.

You know, we've seen this certainly in the general election, but to have it happened in primary, and the irony of Michael McDonald, the chair of the state, but we don't need this in the Republican Party after he had been sort of going back to 2020.

This had been a big part of their-- -Explain that further for people who are unaware of what his involvement in 2020-- -Yeah.

So obviously, Nevada is one of the states that had this sort of stand-in electors and all the lawsuits that all got thrown out.

But they had been big proponents of that, and now they're seeing this in their own party.

It's a very interesting dynamic that all of a sudden in a Republican primary when Republican voters are voting, it's fine.

But when we bring in those Democrats and those non partisans, watch out.

-So Mr. McDonald is saying, I'm disappointed in hearing that Joey Gilbert is making these claims of election fraud.

But then you got guys like Adam Laxalt, and that is what he's been campaigning upon is that the 2020 elections were fraudulent, yet how can he say that he won if this is the same exact election system?

Dan?

-Right.

Well, this case in his election, Democrats weren't allowed to vote in his primary.

So you know, in that case it doesn't play as much of a factor for this specific race.

But yeah, going into the fall.

Yeah, it's gonna raise questions.

So if he loses, he has something in his back pocket to go towards and call into question those results and bring any litigation.

But if he wins, then he'll say yeah, I probably would have won by more if there wasn't fraud, but you know, I went against all odds.

We were talking earlier.

And so either way, I think it's an issue that he's going to bring up to mobilize his base.

That's certainly the strategy that is used during the primaries, and expect him-- and like Republican candidates all around the country are using this fall.

-How big of an issue is election fraud to Nevada voters from those you've spoken with, Jessica?

-From the people I've spoken with, it might not be so much fraud in that they think that the election was stolen.

But on the ground like going to polls, I've talked to people who said that they've had problems going to polls.

One person I talked with on Tuesday said when they went last year, someone was following them around.

And then they said, Oh, look, it's another Trump supporter.

And the woman I talked to was worried about that.

She said that we deserved privacy when we go vote.

And so while they don't necessarily think that the election was stolen, they do see problems in just the system and the process that they do want to see changed.

So when Republicans bring up election reform, they can get behind that because they've seen it with their own eyes.

How prevalent that is, I don't know.

I don't think it's super prevalent, but there are, you know, real people who are experiencing some problems that they want to see fixed.

-Of the Nevada Republican candidates, Joe Lombardo, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff, he has been the one that has not gone along that line of claiming election fraud in 2020.

What does that signify to you, Colton?

Why has he not gone for that?

Did he not need to?

Is it not an important issue to voters?

-I think that's kind of what it is.

I think it's just for him.

He didn't feel the need to go that far.

I mean, I believe he's one of the few statewide Republicans that have called Joe Biden a legitimately elected President.

And so he's acknowledged that 2020 was a fair election, and it doesn't seem to have really cost him anything in the primaries.

He was able to-- he moved right on some issues, and he started to move right, and he's still talking about some of the stuff Jessica was talking about, about election integrity issues, what they consider, you know, kind of like, tightening up the process.

But for him, it just didn't seem like it was something that he wanted to really touch.

It was something that-- there is kind of a, I don't want to say it's a fissure, but there is almost like two sects of the Republican Party now, ones that want to move past that and ones that still, like Joe Gilbert and Joe Gilbert supporters that are going to continue to question the integrity and whether there's fraud or not.

And I think he was more banking that.

There was enough support or people that were moving past that, to get him elected at this point.

-Is that a good move by Lombardo to distance himself from that and then perhaps appeal to Democratic voters who are maybe on the edge of whether they want to go with Steve Sisolak or maybe Lombardo?

-And all the non partisan, let's not forget about them who did not really have to say this, but that's now the biggest what, 29% of our electorate now is non partisan, the fastest growing part of that there.

It will be interesting to see when we get to the fall when they're doing joint campaign appearances, right, how that dynamic plays out there when you bring out these sort of firebrands who are going to make these claims and Lombardo is on the stage with them.

I'm interested to see how he does that dance.

He danced very well in the primary, didn't go to any of the events, till the very end, didn't give us anything concrete what he's actually going to do.

So now the focus is going to be on him and moderating those forces within the party as well as trying to go after Sisolak.

One thing I thought was interesting about that was just how poorly he did in the rural parts of the state.

And I think that's something that should be a concern of the Republicans because they count on those voters coming out, but they're not excited about having two Clark County gubernatorial candidates, both UNLV graduates.

I think that's a very interesting dynamic, the first time we've ever had that in the state here.

So that was something I think to be watched because if this sort of enthusiasm for Lombardo in the rurals isn't there, that's something that should be of concern to that campaign.

-Is it possible that Steve Sisolak is going to win some of the rural counties?

-He won't win them?

This is a matter of the margin, right?

It's usually 2 to 1 out there and with higher levels of voter participation.

They have the highest level of turnout to have with voter registration out there.

But you dampen that, and then it makes the work much harder for the Republican Party in Clark County to cut those margins.

-We're you going to add something?

-Just kind of what he was talking about, what Dave was talking about.

With Lombardo support, I think he only won three counties, Lombardo?

-It wasn't Washoe.

-It wasn't Washoe.

He won Clark, Nye, and Lincoln, so the three southern counties.

And then the rest of the state was Gilbert.

So that's kind of one of the more kind of in the weeds takeaway of that race is, you know, what does that mean for turnout among Republicans in the rurals come November, and whether or not the Senate race will be enough to overcome that.

-Dan.

-Yeah.

Jumping on that, I think we might see Lombardo kind of just piggyback on Laxalt's campaign.

Let Laxalt energize that base, get them out to the polls, get the rural vote, Republicans out to the polls, and once they're in the polls, who are they going to vote for?

They're gonna, you know, especially in this era of negative negative partisanship where people's partisanship, you know, who they identify with and what explains their voting behavior, so driven by their dislike of the other party, right?

So they certainly dislike Sisolak.

So they're going to by default vote for Lombardo.

So in the grand scheme of things.

-Or none, Dan.

Or none.

-Really.

-Perhaps, but I don't know.

In this day and age of, given the dissatisfaction from Republicans against Sisolak, it seems like they will take anything again as an alternative.

So, I mean, I've kind of like pictured, like, what's the fall campaign going to look like with Lombardo?

And the smart thing might be to just do his own thing, just let everything happen around him, piggyback off of the Laxalt campaign, bring out those core supporters.

And then still Lomarbo can somewhat win some more of those undecided Independent voters and maybe even draw some Democratic voters who are unhappy with how things are going.

And I can envision, we don't often see split outcome elections where we would typically think is higher of partisanship, straight ticket voting, Republicans are gonna win both the Governor and the Senate, or vice versa.

But I can envision where potentially, you know, Lombardo could win the gubernatorial race but then Cortez-Masto winning the Senate.

-2010 all over again, right?

-Yeah.

-It feels like it little bit.

-What was going on around that time, 2010?

-I mean, same type of headwinds for Democrats.

Bad environment, Tea Party wave comes in, right?

And you have Harry Reid essentially meddle in the Republican primary to get Sharron Angle on the ballot.

Brian Sandoval crushes his son in the gubernatorial race, but Reid ends up narrowly winning.

And historically-- I mean, it's only been recently when we've aligned-- we've always had a long history of those sort of split outcomes in Nevada.

So it is interesting.

The other part I think the wildcard is how many new people are voting, right?

So many people moved to the state with COVID.

So you look at last time Cortez-Masto and some of these people were on the ballot, it's a very different electorate.

Every two years the electorate ebbs and flows here, new people coming in, and this rise in nonpartisan that's going to be a very interesting fall.

-Would that benefit Democrats perhaps if there are so many people coming from California?

-It depends which Californians we're getting, right?

I think there's also a split a little bit.

I think you saw Washoe in 2020 go much bluer, and Trump cut some of the margin down here.

I'm interested in this, you know?

Do you have more liberals' vote moving into the northern part of the state and more conservative Republicans from the Inland Empire coming here?

So I think it will be interesting.

And of course, Nevada has a history of going with the National flow as well, which scares the bejesus out of the Democrats.

-Dan, you had mentioned Lombardo maybe relying on Laxalt to energize the population up north.

But when we were talking ahead of the show in the green room, energized is not how you would describe Laxalt or Lombardo as far as rallying and speaking in person.

How do you think they stand to fare against their opponents who are much more accustomed to being up in front of big crowds.

-I think they definitely need to step it up with energizing.

So far Adam Laxalt, for example, has really relied on the people that have campaigned with him.

Colton and I were talking earlier about Ted Cruz recently came here, and he really did a great job rallying that crowd.

He had a really good sense of humor and was was really charismatic.

And when Adam Laxalt came out, he kind of has been saying a lot of things that he's been saying the entire campaign trail, pretty straightforward, and then he'd be off in like 15 minutes.

So I think that's definitely something that they're going to have to really step up and figure out how to appeal with energy to the voters.

-But I think that's actually something Republicans probably have as an advantage.

They have kind of stars across the country, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis.

They can bring in these people to kind of energize the base voters too.

Whereas Democrats, I'm not sure who they're going to bring in there.

I mean, are they going to want to bring in Joe Biden, or are they going to want to bring in any of these national Democrats to stump for them?

I'm not sure.

-Which is what they have done the past cycle.

-That's been getting, you know, if you could get Obama here, you know, I remember going down 2016 to some of the Obama rallies.

They were massive and they were huge, a lot of energy.

I don't know if you're gonna see something like that this time around.

-Do the Democrats want Joe Biden coming out and talking on their behalf?

-Probably not.

I mean, you can certainly see Kamala Harris, another westerner coming out.

That would make sense.

I mean, she's already done a couple events here.

But I think that's a great point, sort of who are those surrogates that the Democrats are gonna bring out?

Traditionally, they've had a really long roster.

They bring in some of the celebrities and so on and so forth to try to engage the electorate here.

It'll be a little bit of a challenge.

I think those candidates can find their stride.

I remember back in 2016, Catherine Cortez-Masto had the same sort of issue, very reserved, and all of a sudden you saw her on the campaign trail to sort of figure it out and really open up and get the energy and feel the engagement with the voters.

So it is possible that they sort of learn a little bit here.

But I think it is a concern from both sides of how they sort of manage those big events that I think people are expecting now that we're post COVID a little bit.

-Adam Laxalt certainly got some help in winning this primary when he got the backing of former President Donald Trump.

How big of a deal is Trump's support still for Nevada voters in your opinion, Dan?

-There's still a lot of support among Republicans nationwide and within Nevada for Trump.

I'd say that his endorsements though, and at least for the primary, it wasn't pivotal, right?

Here were already the front runners Lombardo and Laxalt.

And in terms of just kind of jumped aboard with those endorsements, especially like Lombardo where he doesn't necessarily share some of those policy positions, like views of election integrity.

So it's a little bit of a mirage as far as like, they won because of his endorsement.

But then as far as how those endorsements will work in the fall is going to help shore up the base, get them out to the polls.

But again, how's Lombardo going to use that endorsement as well, because he hasn't really jumped aboard on a lot of these issues.

I mean, even looking at all the other gubernatorial candidates want to send the National Guard to the border, but Lombardo didn't.

And even things with gun control.

So how is he going to use-- what's he going to use to reach out to conservative voters?

Maybe he just says yeah, I got this endorsement and doesn't really go into the details.

So he just kind of has it in his back pocket to help him along in the fall, but I'm not exactly sure how much it's going to actually help having Trump's endorsement.

-I always thought they were more about Trump than anything else, wanting to have a strong average.

Jessica and I talked a lot about this, that early on, he was picking Trumpian candidates who then were losing, and then he was pulling these endorsements and switching them here.

He'd just say, well wait, and go with-- Laxalt obviously was a big part of the 2020 campaign here, so that makes sense.

But you know, holding on to that gubernatorial campaign, and you had a lot of those candidates really wanting that endorsement who did not get it.

But I think the bigger effect was just sort of on the issue environment in those primaries, and I think's where you saw the real big impact.

-There was a WPA poll I think in May that interviewed different Republicans and how they identified, if they identified as a Trump Republican, a traditional Republican, a Tea Party Republican.

And more people identified as a Trump Republican.

So I think that really does show how big of a play Trump has in Nevada?

-And what does it show about the state of the Nevada Republican Party in that they endorsed different candidates than Trump endorsed?

Why are you smiling, Colton?

-This is something I was looking for, and I wrote it into most of my stories.

It just kind of shows that especially the Central Committee of the Republican Party, the voting group that made these endorsements, just really not reflective of what the Republican base is.

I think it's reflective of them being even further to the right of the Republican Party within the state and really kind of towards those fringes.

That's why they endorsed Joey Gilbert.

And they endorsed the more grassroots candidates, the people that got significantly more small dollar donors.

And the question is what those small dollar donors and those candidates that are attracting those high amount of small dollar donors and kind of where they fit in.

Kind of almost like the Central Committee was more the anti-establishment part of the of the party, and for them to go against Trump was interesting to see, but it shows that there wasn't a whole lot of power there.

-Among all the issues that candidates are facing and that have been making national headlines, abortion, gun control, the economy of course, what is most important to Nevada voters.

I'll go around the table, and I'll start with you, Jessica.

-There was a survey done by NextGen not too long ago that looked at how young Nevada voters feel about things.

And the number one issue for them was strengthening the economy.

They wanted to see a rise in minimum wage.

They also wanted to see more progressive issues like canceling student loan debt.

But even though a lot of the younger voters are more progressive, they also no matter who's in office want to hold those people accountable according to this survey.

So it will be interesting to see who can kind of promise those things to young voters who also are pretty large in the base.

-Dan?

-Yeah.

I'd have to agree that the economy, inflation, just looking at gas prices going up.

But when you look at the campaigns, what they think the big issues are going to be, I think they're going to be drawing in a lot of these other things.

I don't know.

For instance, how much critical race theory is going to be brought up.

But that's stuff that Republicans around the country are bringing up into their campaigns just to almost cast out the net to just try to get more voters interested in the campaign.

So we might see a little bit of a disconnect where they're campaigning on this wider range of issues.

But really in the fall, it's just the performance of the economy, right?

And then that's tied to performance of the administration, who's in control.

So for Republicans, that's what is important for them.

And what their campaign should be focusing on is look, the economy's not doing well.

Look who's in power.

Let's vote for a change.

-Is that a good strategy?

-Yes, a classic.

You know, we have a lot of literature on this.

Yeah, it's a performance issue, and the incumbent party is, it's a very strange economy, right, because going all different directions here.

But I think at the end of the day, people go to the grocery store, they fill up their gas, they're trying to buy a house, or whatever it is, and they can't do it.

That's very frustrating.

And obviously I think education perennial issue for the Governor.

That's a perennial issue in Nevada or poorly performing.

Now you have a lot of safety issues in schools as well.

So I think those two issues are going to be the dominant issues in the gubernatorial race.

-So then we're talking about abortion, but really it's not going to-- -I mean in Nevada, you can't do anything about it.

The voters are the only ones who can do this, right?

So you have to get that on the ballot, and the voters have to do it because the legislature can't do it.

Nobody can do it because of the way our referendum process works.

-Would it be-- -There or some things.

There are other restrictions that can go on.

You know, mandatory waiting periods, things of that nature.

And that is something that Republicans are going to be kind of looking at.

And I think Democrats here are hoping to make the Supreme Court's decision on Roe, the Mississippi case.

They're hoping to make that a decision.

But whether or not that'll be a good enough glue to create a coalition of voters in the fall given gas prices, given inflation, given everything else that Dave just talked about with education, violence especially in Clark County, increases in violent crime, whether that'll be enough to kind of move voters, it's kind of hard to see that at this point.

-How important is the Latino vote in Nevada still, and when you're talking about that Senate race with Cortez-Masto, the first Latina in the Senate, is she guaranteed this vote?

-Not at all.

It's growing obviously.

Much of the Democratic success in the last decade was mobilizing Latino voters around immigration.

Democrats didn't deliver that issue.

The Trump campaign two years ago did a really good job of mobilizing the conservative element that had largely been latent in Nevada.

So you saw-- The thing about Nevada is despite all of our tension, it's a low participation state.

So you can grow the electorate here in all different segments of that.

So I think you saw Trump make a lot of inroads here, and it surprised me to tell you the truth on that.

So I don't think the Democrats should take it for granted because you're seeing a growing conservative turnout among that, and then Democrats really haven't delivered on some of the core issues that they've been promising for a decade.

-All right.

So early voting in Clark County for the general election starts October 22.

November 8 is election day.

Thank you all for joining us.

For a link to the Clark County Election website where you will find information about the general election, go to our website, vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter @vegaspbs.

As always, thank you for joining us for Nevada Week.

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