Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, up for re-election this year, is serving her first term as senator after previously serving as Nevada’s attorney general. Now she has drawn opponent Adam Laxalt, who also served as the state’s attorney general and now wants her seat.
The race appears to be a close one. According to RealClearPolitics, citing six polls, Masto leads in four of them and Laxalt leads in two others.
Neither candidate, in any of the polls, is ahead by double digits.
Kirk Lippold lived in Nevada many years, where he once ran for Congress and knows the political landscape. He says Laxalt could pull off a narrow 51%-49% win in November thanks to energized Republican voters and independent voters.
“At the end of the day, come this fall, people are going to be looking at their pocketbooks with seven to nine percent inflation and wages continuing to fall behind on a monthly basis,” he predicts. “And they're going to say, We can't afford to have these Democrats. So I think when it comes to Nevada, Adam's going to have a very tough fight but I think he's going to pull it off."
Laxalt ran for Nevada governor in 2018, narrowly losing to Democrat candidate Steve Sisolak 49%-45%. Only about 40,000 votes separated them.
A year earlier, Masto won her U.S. Senate seat in a 47%-44% win over Joe Heck, a U.S. congressman. Approximately 26,900 votes separated that race.
In the current U.S. Senate race, the Masto-Laxalt contest is considered a “toss-up” by RealClearPolitics along with seven other Senate races across the country.
