The most endangered Senate Democrat portrayed her Republican opponent as an election-denying extremist, defying national headwinds in a race that stayed tight until the end.
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Senator Catherine Cortez Masto also promoted her own record, including bipartisan legislation Democrats had passed.
WASHINGTON — For months, it appeared that historical precedent and stiff political headwinds could doom Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election bid in Nevada, with voters in her state facing some of the highest gas prices in the country and a national landscape seemingly stacked against the Democratic Party.
Instead, Ms. Cortez Masto, the first and only Latina senator, defied political gravity and prevailed on Saturday night, securing a second term and sealing Democrats’ control of the Senate, and handing President Biden a critical guardrail against Republicans, should they win the House.
She did it, Ms. Cortez Masto said on Monday, in large part by defining her opponent, the former Republican attorney general Adam Laxalt, who bolstered former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Nevada, as an election-denying extremist. She tied Mr. Laxalt, who rallied with the former president outside Reno in the final days of the campaign, to Mr. Trump, betting that the hangover of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol would turn voters against him.
“I would not underestimate the emotional power that that had on so many people across this country,” Ms. Cortez Masto said of the Jan. 6 violence, during an interview.
She portrayed Mr. Laxalt as a son of privilege who wanted to curtail abortion. He had called Roe v. Wade a “joke.” And Ms. Cortez Masto went out to the state’s rural districts and solicited support from Republican officials, as well as from 14 members of Mr. Laxalt’s own family, who endorsed her.
The first-term Democrat also promoted her own record, including bipartisan legislation Democrats had passed with her help to deliver relief to hospitality workers hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and to cap monthly costs for insulin.
She spoke to The New York Times about her strategy, the nationwide repudiation of election denialism and what she hopes Democrats will accomplish in the next Congress with a razor-thin majority in the Senate.
Understand the Outcomes of the 2022 Midterm Elections
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What we know. It seemed as if the conditions were ripe for a red wave in the 2022 midterms, but in the end Republicans generated no more than a red ripple, leading to an improbable, still-undecided election. Here’s what the results tell us so far:
Biden beat the odds. President Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, avoiding the losses his predecessors endured and maintaining the Democrats’ narrow hold on the Senate, which provides him with a critical guardrail against Republicans should they win the House.
G.O.P. faces a reckoning. A thin Republican majority in the House appears likely, but a poor midterms showing has the party wrestling with what went wrong: Was it bad candidates, bad messaging or the electoral anchor that appeared to be dragging the G.O.P. down, Donald J. Trump?
Trump under fire. Mr. Trump has faced unusual public attacks from within the G.O.P. after a string of losses by his handpicked candidates. There are also signs of an effort to inch the party away from the former president ahead of his expected announcement of a third White House bid.
Abortion mattered. In the first major election since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion rights broke through, as Democrats seized on the issue to hold off a red wave. In all five states where abortion-related questions were on the ballot, voters chose to protect access or reject further limits on it.
Voters rejected election deniers. Every 2020 election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls this year. Voters roundly rejected extreme partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.
Ticket-splitters made a comeback. While ticket-splitting has declined substantially in recent elections, some voters seemed more inclined to support candidates of different parties this year, emphasizing candidate quality over partisan identity.
The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
To what do you attribute your win? What are your big takeaways from the cycle?
In Nevada, they’re always competitive races, so you don’t take anything for granted. But part of it is just getting out and talking to people. And letting them know who you are, learning about them. Making sure that they understand that you get their background, you get what their challenges are, and you’re willing to fight for those.
I can relate to the stories of so many families that are here, because of the way I grew up. And I think that makes a difference when you are talking to people asking for their votes, talking to them about their challenges and that you’re willing to fight for them. Because I know this community was good to my family, and I think every other family should have that same opportunity.
ImageSupporters of Ms. Cortez Masto at a campaign event in Henderson, Nev., last week.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Was there one or two particular issues that really ended up resonating with voters at the end of the day?
Part of it is just listening to Nevada, and those conversations made it very clear to me that it’s not just the kitchen-table issues. I was hearing about the repeal of Roe v. Wade in a state that is proudly pro-choice, and hearing their concerns about what happened on Jan. 6, and the fact that my opponent and the former defeated president continues to peddle conspiracies and big lies about a stolen election.
I do think it is important to be able to say, “Yeah, not only do I get it, I was there Jan. 6, I remember what happened,” but be able to relate to them in a way that they understand that — not only did I get it, but I was willing to still continue to work with and fight with them and find those solutions and defend them.
The reason why the bipartisan infrastructure package was so important to me was because it had in there things that Nevadans needed and wanted, from [broadband] connectivity, to addressing the wildfires that are hotter and longer, to the drought that we’re dealing with.
This cycle, we saw across the country a repudiation of people who peddled the lie of a stolen election. Say more about what you were hearing from voters about their concerns, and how you thought about talking about it.
Every Nevadan that talked to me about that issue had an experience of their own watching it happen on TV, in front of them. I would not underestimate the emotional power that that had on so many people across this country, including those Nevadans that I talked to that told me their stories how they felt watching the Capitol being overrun.
So that was something that to them was emotional, and just as important, and a day that they will never forget. And I do think it is something that resonated with so many people in Nevada because we had not only President Trump, the king of the election deniers. But we had Adam Laxalt, who was the co-chair of his campaign, who went around after that presidential election claiming the election was stolen. He was the face of it, right?
He was going around the state claiming that, if he loses, he was going to do an investigation or check to see if there was some sort of fraud. And I do think people were paying attention to that. They were connecting the dots between that election denialism and what happened on Jan. 6, because it fueled that mob.
We’re still waiting to see what the House is going to look like, but with a narrow Senate majority, what’s at the top of your priority list for this coming Congress?
We have to continue lowering costs for families that I see here in Nevada. Unfortunately, our gas prices are some of the highest in the nation. It means that Big Oil needs to come to the table and work with us to lower those costs. It is ensuring that we are helping our families afford housing here in the state of Nevada. The housing prices are too high.
The other area for me that I have not stopped fighting on — and I will continue to — is immigration reform. It is time that Dreamers, T.P.S. [Temporary Protected Status] recipients, our essential workers and farm workers — that we put them on a pathway to citizenship.
I know that we can secure our borders because that’s something I’ve done since I’ve been attorney general to address the drug trafficking and human trafficking and weapons trafficking on the border.
We can continue to put resources there to make sure we’re doing everything we can to address those issues, and also fix a broken immigration system that treats people with dignity. We can do both, and so I haven’t given up on that. To me that is still just as important.
Source: nytimes.com
