Shaky. Cookie. So what do you call someone who returned your campaign contributions, refused to endorse your candidacy, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his state’s governor to blast your health care policy, sat and giggled, excruciatingly, while you humiliated him (and, by extension, his state), and who then spent an entire year doing everything he could to placate and mollify and, well, suck up to you at every opportunity? If you’re Donald Trump, and the person in question is Dean Heller, you call him “shaky at first” but “one tough cookie.” Everyone in Nevada, in both parties, agrees Heller is shaky. No one in Nevada, in any party, would describe Heller as tough, unless they get paid to do that.
Turnout. Turnout. Turnout. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from a mostly substance-free weekend of political theater in Nevada was the display of Republican confidence in the premise that Democrats just won’t show up to vote in November. Republicans literally hugged Trump. Adam Laxalt tweeted a picture of himself grinning from ear-to-ear because he got to go for a ride with Trump in the fancy car. With a tone of disbelief, Trump told Nevada Republicans Saturday that Elizabeth Warren was in Nevada the same day, campaigning for Heller’s opponent, Rep. Jacky Rosen – as if a Nevada Democrat openly campaigning with Warren was somehow too implausible, too fantastic to imagine. But Warren rallying party activists at the state Democratic convention and campaigning for Rosen is standard operating procedure for a U.S. Senate race. Other prominent national Democrats will also come to the state to campaign for Rosen, because they’ll attract a crowd, some headlines, maybe even a buck or two. The Nevada Republican embrace of Trump is qualitatively different. Trump has become who they are and what they stand for. Heller, Laxalt, Danny Tarkanian et al will have their names on the ballot, but the Nevada GOP ticket is Trump. That is far more astonishing – and far more risky – than bringing national Democrats to Nevada to campaign for Rosen. But Republicans have made their bets. They’re all in, and they can’t back out now. And if they are as fine with that as they outwardly appear, it’s because they firmly believe that Nevada Democratic voters don’t show up for a midterm election.
Speaking of likely voters… Several hundred people who are very likely voters indeed turned out in triple-digit heat to protest Trump Saturday, especially over the family separation omnishambles, as Michael Lyle reports in the Current. Also in the Current, Jeniffer Solis found Warren reasoning with a critic of Democratic immigration policy.
Got paid sick leave? Solis is also leading the Current this morning with a report on just how nasty this past flu season was – especially for Nevada workers who get no paid sick leave. That is, by the way, perhaps as much as half the Nevada private sector workforce, by one estimate. But if you don’t trust that estimate, hey, just ask around. Paid sick leave can be awfully hard to come by in – what does the governor call it? – oh right: the New Nevada.
Pre-existing promises. Nevada Democratic National Committeewoman and NSHE Regent Allison Stephens has a guest op-ed in the Current urging Republicans to keep their promises and not let insurance companies blow off people with pre-existing conditions – of which there are more than you might think.
Nevada’s other voucher system. Nevada granted $195 million in “transferable tax credits” to Tesla, because Tesla just wouldn’t have come here otherwise (that last assertion is just a thing Nevada officials say; there is no evidence to back it up). Think of the credits as tax vouchers. The state gives Tesla the vouchers, then Tesla sells them (to the resort industry, mostly likely). Then when it’s time for whoever bought the vouchers to pay taxes, they give the state vouchers instead of, you know, money. It is horrible public policy that demeans the citizenry of Nevada and blows a hole in the state budget. But the voucher program will at least pad Tesla’s quarterly report, the LA Times reports.
ICYMI. If not for Trump etc. over the weekend, the story everyone would have been talking about was Friday’s fascinating/appalling piece in the Washington Post about Sandoval and Heller lobbying Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and using Trump-GOP tax policy to financially coddle people who don’t need financial coddling, including Tesla, in Storey County.
If only Sen. Dean “Tough Cookie” Heller were there to straighten out this mess. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto got turned away from a shelter in Brownsville, Texas that is holding kids who were separated form their families, report Luz Gray and Michelle Rindels, two Indy reporters who are at the border.
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