10:55 a.m. on Nov. 13: In Las Vegas speech, Cortez Masto declares victory in Senate race
Flanked by the heads of more than a dozen major unions and organizing groups, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto declared victory in a Las Vegas speech early Sunday, a coda to media calls of the race in her favor over Republican challenger Adam Laxalt following vote count updates late Saturday.
In roughly 12-minutes of remarks that thanked a bevy of different groups — from organized labor to her family to her campaign staff and consultants — Cortez Masto subtly acknowledged the narrow margin of her win, which stood at just under 0.7 percent as of Sunday morning.
“We’ve known this was going to be a tough campaign,” Cortez Masto said. “But all of you are Nevadans, and I know what it takes to deliver for my home state. So when the national pundits said I couldn’t win, I knew Nevada would prove them wrong.”
The senator — now elected to her second term after first succeeding longtime Democratic Sen. Harry Reid in 2016 — also cast her victory as a rejection by Nevada of “far-right” Republican candidates, despite the narrow margins in her own race and the victory of Republican gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo.
“Nevada has rejected the far-right politicians working to divide us,” she said. “We rejected their conspiracies, their attacks on our workers and their efforts to restrict our freedoms.”
Separately, Cortez Masto also pledged to block any attempts to create a federal abortion ban, echoing a key tenet of her campaign message.
“So when Republicans try to force through a federal abortion ban, I’m going to stop them,” she said, though such attempts appear unlikely in the face of another Democratic Senate majority through the next two years.
Laxalt has not yet publicly acknowledged the result of the race, last tweeting on Saturday morning that high Democratic margins in late-counted urban votes had “narrowed our victory window.”
— Jacob Solis
6:21 p.m. on Nov. 12: Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto defeats Adam Laxalt in key Senate contest
The Nevada Independent has called Nevada’s U.S. Senate race for incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who held on to her seat over Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.
The win for Cortez Masto, first elected to the Senate in 2016 after serving for eight years as state attorney general, maintains Democratic control of the Senate after the party won close, competitive races in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Laxalt, who also previously served as the state attorney general, worked for several years in the private legal sector for a Washington, D.C.-based law firm following an unsuccessful gubernatorial run in 2018. He quickly found the backing of both former President Donald Trump and the establishment wing of the Republican Party, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Hammered by Laxalt on economic issues and her support of an unpopular Biden White House, Cortez Masto campaigned in large part on a defense of abortion access in Congress, as well as criticism of Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
To read the full article, visit the Nevada Independent website. This story was written by the Nevada Independent Staff for the Nevada Independent and shared with Noticiero Móvil.