LAS VEGAS — The U.S. Senate will get its first-ever Latina member in Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, who won a highly competitive race in Nevada to replace powerful longtime Sen. Harry Reid with help from a sophisticated ground operation aimed at driving Hispanic turnout.
Cortez Masto, 52, is a former two-term Nevada attorney general whose grandfather emigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico. Reid, 76, marshaled support and served as an aggressive attack dog on her behalf after he suffered a debilitating eye injury during a workout and opted not to seek a sixth term in Congress.
"Did Donald Trump excite my base here in Nevada? Absolutely," Cortez Masto said Monday. She focused much of her campaign on linking her Republican opponent, Rep. Joe Heck, to Trump.
"He wants to build a wall with Mexico. He calls Mexicans rapists and criminals. He's coming to the state of Nevada where 28 percent are Hispanic. The majority are from Mexico," Cortez Masto said. "That's my family."
While Republicans couldn't recruit their dream candidate, popular two-term Gov. Brian Sandoval, Cortez Masto faced a formidable foe in three-term congressman Heck, a doctor and brigadier general in the Army Reserves. The wonkish Heck, 55, showed a command of federal policy issues but came under fire from both sides of the political spectrum over his middling stance on Donald Trump.
Heck stood by the nominee until the recent release of a lewd audio recording from 2005, then pulled his endorsement and called for Trump to step down.
Democrats intensified their efforts to link Heck and the nominee after the un-endorsement. President Barack Obama excoriated Heck at a North Las Vegas rally in October, saying that after Heck backed Trump for months and benefited from his supporters' enthusiasm, disavowing him a month before the election is "too late! You don't get credit for that."
Some Trump devotees reacted angrily toward Heck's abandonment of the nominee and vowed not to vote for him, but the greater danger was seen to come from a wave of energized anti-Trump voters supporting a slate of Democrats. That dynamic was exacerbated by Democrats' well-oiled and unified turnout machine and a Republican operation divided into silos over Trump's candidacy.
Heck ruefully acknowledged that there was a limit to how much he can outperform Trump in Nevada. Hillary Clinton won the state after Democrats notched a six percentage point Democratic turnout lead in early voting.
Outside groups poured more than $90 million into the race, which is one of a few expected to decide which party controls the Senate. That powered wall-to-wall TV ads that sought to paint Cortez Masto as the most corrupt attorney general in Nevada history and highlight Heck votes to defund Planned Parenthood, as well as his mixed record on a program that waives deportation for young immigrants.
In this Thursday, June 2, 2016 file photo, U.S. Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., speaks during a roundtable event in Henderson, Nev.
Photo Credit: David Becker/AP
The Trump effect is also playing out further down the ticket in two swing district House races that are too close to call. Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy, who came to power in the conservative "red wave" of the 2014 election, was trying to hang on in the opposite conditions in a district with a double-digit Democratic registration advantage.
Hardy, 59, has the perks of incumbency but also a tendency toward verbal gaffes. Democrats supporting state Sen. Ruben Kihuen, 36, have attacked Hardy on his opposition to gun control measures and his prior support of Trump, even though Hardy unendorsed Trump at the same time as Heck.
Kihuen faced his own headwinds, including a barrage of ads suggesting the public relations firm that employs him gets sweetheart contracts and supports predatory payday loan companies. The company, Ramirez Group, is under a shadow after being subpoenaed in an FBI corruption investigation targeting Las Vegas City Councilman Ricki Barlow.
Democrats brought in the big guns to help Kihuen pull ahead. Former President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama and the ground-game machine of the Culinary Union are campaigning hard for Kihuen — a Mexican immigrant who would be the first Latino Nevada elects to the House.
And in Nevada's open 3rd Congressional District, frequent Republican candidate Danny Tarkanian is facing off against political newcomer and former synagogue leader Jacky Rosen. Polls offered widely divergent predictions of the outcome in the district, which has a narrow Democratic advantage.
Tarkanian has high name recognition from previous bids for office and his father, the late, legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian. The seat has also been held by Republican Rep. Joe Heck for the past three terms.
But Tarkanian has defied others in tight races by standing with his Trump endorsement. That's served as fodder for Rosen, a political blank slate who trumpets her opponent as a tea party radical too extreme for the relatively affluent, suburban swing district.
While the battles play out in the two competitive House districts, two other incumbents expect to easily win re-election. Democratic Rep. Dina Titus coasted to victory in her deep-blue urban Las Vegas district, while Republican Rep. Mark Amodei scored a broad triumph in his deep-red northern Nevada district.
