Democrats control the Senate and Cortez Masto wins Nevada – The Mercury News

NICHOLAS RICCARDI and KEN RITTER (Associated Press)

LAS VEGAS (AP) – Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto won the second term election on Saturday, representing the state of Nevada, defeating Republican Adam Laxalt to take party control of the House for the following two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Following Democrat Senator Mark Kelly’s victory in Arizona on Friday, Democrats now have a 50-49 lead within the Senate. The party will retain control of the House, whatever the conduct of the second round of Georgia’s elections next month, because of the decisive vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Democratic power within the Senate is a blow to the Republican high hopes of taking control of Congress in a mid-term election that tends to favor the party over power. It was still unclear which party would control the House of Representatives because the counting continued in razor-sharp races in California and several other other states.

Cortez Masto, the primary Latin American within the Senate, was named the weakest Democrat senator within the mid-term elections, and the Republican Party had high hopes for a seat reversal. But despite the influx of promoting spending from national GOP groups, Cortez Masto managed to secure her candidacy for re-election.

Counting votes in Nevada took several days, partly due to the postal voting system created by the state legislature in 2020, which requires counties to just accept postmarked ballots in the event that they arrive as much as 4 days later. Laxalt had an early lead, which dwindled after the delayed votes that got here from the state population centers in Las Vegas and Reno.

Cortez Masto, the state’s former attorney general for 2 terms, focused her senate campaign on the growing threat of access to abortion nationwide and worked on a court for Spanish-speaking residents of the state and hourly wage earners, pointing to her support for a everlasting path to citizenship for the Dreamers. ”They usually frequently visit union halls and work groups.

Her collection far exceeded Laxalt. In keeping with OpenSecrets, she spent nearly $ 47 million and had over $ 6 million readily available by mid-October. Laxalt spent nearly $ 13 million and at the identical time had about $ 3 million left.

Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018, focused most of his campaign on rising inflation and a troubled economy, attempting to tie voter financial problems to Democratic politics in Congress and Biden.

Former President Donald Trump, who has lost Nevada twice to the White House, has come to the state twice to rally for Laxalt and other Republican candidates.

The Democrats fought an uphill battle given the country’s troubled economy, and Nevada exemplified the party’s challenges. The state is some of the diverse within the country, with its largely working population often living paycheck to paycheck and battling each inflation and aftershocks following the closure of Las Vegas’ tourist-driven economy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

About three-quarters of Nevada voters said the country was headed within the flawed direction, and around 5 in 10 identified the economy because the primary problem facing the country, in response to an AP VoteCast survey of two,100 state voters.

Voters assessed the economy negatively, and VoteCast found nearly 8 out of 10 people saying that economic conditions weren’t either good or bad. Only about 2 in 10 people rate the economy as excellent or good. And around a 3rd of voters said their families were struggling financially.

But that did not necessarily translate to anger at President Joe Biden or his party. About half considered inflation an important problem facing the US, but they split equally on whether or not they consider that higher prices are as a result of Biden’s policies or aspects beyond his control.