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Brief
(Sam Brown campaign photo)
Nevada Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sam Brown went to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week to seek Trump’s endorsement, CNN reported Tuesday.
Brown, who lost the 2022 Nevada Senate Republican primary to Adam Laxalt, has been presumed the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 nomination, in large part because of early backing from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of U.S. Senate Republicans.
Last month, Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo endorsed Brown to be his party’s nominee to challenge Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen.
Other candidates in the Republican primary include notable 2020 election denier and conspiracy theorist Jim Marchant, who was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state in 2022, and Jeff Gunter, a wealthy dermatologist who has donated heavily to Trump and other Republican campaigns over the years, and served as ambassador to Iceland during Trump’s administration.
Though Trump has yet to endorse in the Nevada Republican Senate primary, his endorsements in Senate primaries in other battleground states have mostly corresponded with the NRSC’s preferred candidates. Republican Senate leadership and Trump both hope to clear paths for candidates they feel have the best chance to win, or at least avoid bitterly contested primaries that have bedeviled the party in Senate races across the nation by producing poor-quality candidates.
Trump however is also proud of boasting about the power of his endorsements. One notable example is the credit Trump has taken for Ron DeSantis winning the Republican nomination for Florida governor in 2018.
And this year, although the NRSC did not back a candidate in the Ohio Senate Republican primary, many long-established Ohio Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine and former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, endorsed state Sen. Matt Dolan. Trump instead endorsed businessman and ardent Trump loyalist Bernie Moreno, who went on to win the Ohio primary last month.
In-person early voting for the June 11 primary starts May 25.
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