We’ve been waiting months for last week’s primaries in Nevada because we feel, and have been stressing for a while now, that Nevada is likely the most important state in the 2022 midterms. With the June 14 primaries now settled in the Silver State, we’re bringing you a series of to-the-point, insightful, expansive, and connected pieces on what you should know about the Nevada elections and why they matter so much this cycle.

Nevada Senate Race | Nevada Congressional Races | Nevada Governor’s Race | Nevada’s Executive Branch | The Nevada Republican Party | Nevada and the 21st Century Democratic Party

In 2010 Republican Brian Sandoval, a former judge, was elected governor of Nevada. Unusually for a Republican, he won every county in the state – including Clark County, the Democratic-leaning home of Las Vegas. He defeated Democrat Rory Reid, and if that last name rings a bell, that’s because he was the son of one of the most famous figures in Nevada, Democratic Senator (and then-Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid. This was notable for several key reasons:

1. Sandoval defeated the (unpopular) incumbent Republican governor, Jim Gibbons, in the primary in 2010. This demonstrated an ability to course-correct and prioritize electability by the Nevada Republican Party.
   
   
2. In 2010, Sandoval may have impressively won every county, but he only got about 53% of the statewide vote against Rory Reid. In 2014, however, Sandoval won almost 71% of the vote – a higher share than any other incumbent governor in the country during that midterm, demonstrating a more sustainable Republican win in a less Republican-leaning year.
   
   
3. Sandoval was a moderate Republican. He appealed to Democrats by being amenable on issues such as the right to choose, Obamacare, climate change, and immigration. After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away in 2016, Harry Reid (then Senate Minority Leader) advocated for Barack Obama to appoint Sandoval to the vacancy on the court. Sandoval politely declined, but given how partisan things had become by 2016, this is incredibly telling as to his popularity and broad-based appeal.
   
   

Look forward just three years after Sandoval would leave the governor’s office and the standard bearers for the Nevada Republican Party stand in stark contrast. Immediately after the primary, we touched on the GOP’s nominees for governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, and more. Many of them believe the 2020 election was stolen, many are zealous firearm touters, and a couple have been under fire for racist remarks. Generally speaking, this should put the Nevada GOP at a disadvantage like it did in 2010 when they nominated Nevada Assemblywoman Sharron Angle to challenge incumbent Senator Harry Reid.

Angle’s positions on abortion (she said that, even in cases of rape or incest, that abortion would be against God’s “plan”), “transitioning out” social security, loosely implying “we need to… take Harry Reid out” while talking about firearms, and more turned swaths of Republican voters off. Reid ended up winning a final term by 6% in a midterm year that led to the shellacking of Democrats across the board, with a choir of prominent Nevada Republicans having endorsed and backed him. In 2012, Republicans elected Dean Heller, who had been appointed by Sandoval to the Senate after the resignation of Republican John Ensign in 2011, to a full term. Heller, a former Nevada assemblyman, secretary of state, and then congressman, was no moderate, but he did ultimately support limited abortion access, the normalization of relations with Cuba, and even became the first Republican Senator to say President Obama should be able to nominate a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia following his passing (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously refused to allow Obama’s nominee to receive a hearing or vote). 2012 was a year that favored Democrats, and Obama won by about a 7% margin in the Silver State; but Heller held on and received a margin over 1% against Democratic nominee, Nevada Representative Shelley Berkley.

In 2018 however, Heller was incredibly vulnerable. He was the only Republican up for reelection in a state that Hillary Clinton had carried just two years prior, and in the 115th Congress (the last in which he’d serve) he was the second-most-disproportionately pro-Trump Senator relative to the more moderate partisan lean of his state, voting with the president almost 92% of the time,  behind only Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner (Gardner would go down two years later by a pretty big margin). Sure enough, Heller went down by about 5% to Democratic Representative Jacky Rosen. 

But Democrats narrowly swept against many other Republican candidates in Nevada that cycle too. Sandoval was term-limited and the more conservative Adam Laxalt lost the governorship to Clark County Commission Chair Steve Sisolak 49%-45%. Tellingly, Heller and Laxalt, probably the two most conservative statewide candidates in Nevada in 2018, lost by the largest margins while more moderate Republicans either held on or narrowly lost in the other races in a year that was already heavily leaning in Democrats’ favor. Democrat Aaron Ford narrowly bested the more conventionally conservative Republican Wes Duncan in a very tight race for attorney general, 47%-47%. Incumbent Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske held on to her office 49%-48% against Democrat Nelson Araujo, but Democrat Zach Conine bested Republican Bob Beers 48%-47% to become state treasurer.  

2022 is leaning towards their party, so it is the statewide Republican nominees’ elections to lose. But as Republicans have a slate of far more extreme candidates running than they did in 2018, many of the races they could lose may become elections against them, rather than for any particular Democratic incumbent. Perhaps the moderate Sandoval’s popularity in the swing state should have been a clue to them: no matter what happens this cycle, Republicans in Nevada will need to moderate to sustainably win.