Former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is running for U.S. Senate, meets people at a Fallon event Sunday night.
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Catherine Cortez Masto, made a meet and greet stop in Fallon on Sunday at a local pizza parlor to introduce himself and to talk about some of the issues.
Laxalt had been visiting the eastern part of Nevada before wrapping up his weekend stops at Fallon.
Laxalt announced his candidacy after the annual Basque Fry held in Gardnerville in August. In 2018, Laxalt faced Steve Sisolak in the race for governor, but he lost to the Clark County commissioner.
Cortez Masto won her first Senate term by defeating Congressman Joe Heck 48.6 percent to 43.9 percent. One of the key factors cited for Heck’s loss in 2016 is he didn’t support Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. On the other hand, Laxalt ran Trump’s 2020 Nevada campaign for re-election.
More than 40 people attended the one-hour event. Before and after his speech, Laxalt shook hands with the Fallon voters and answered questions.
Laxalt said he’s running for the U.S. Senate because he feels the radical left is a real and serious movement. He doesn’t feel the children of today will grow up in the same era as their parents when the country was moving in a more moderate direction. Based on several polls taken since the November election and more recently by a Civiqs survey, 58% of registered voters feel Nevada is moving on the wrong track as do 78% of independents.
Furthermore, Laxalt said movies, entertainment, big corporations, elites in Washington, D.C. — all combined with the media — are fostering a liberal narrative to cancel those in opposition.
Laxalt also talked about the media about its liberal narrative but said the smaller media outlets in the rural communities give a fairer assessment and reporting of the issues and candidacies.
Laxalt also said the U.S. Constitution was to create a government to put liberties first. He said he’s also afraid the American dream such as people owning businesses or homes will continue to evaporate.
Laxalt asked those in attendance to send him to the U.S. Senate. With the Senate equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, Laxalt said he would be the 51st Republican senator, a reference his party would then have the majority vote.
“We want to go there and fight for our values,” he said.
Laxalt asked if anyone in the audience knew of any major bills Cortez Masto has introduced as a senator or championed as an attorney general when she served from 2008-16. He said Cortez Masto votes along party lines 98% of the time. With the rioting in part of Nevada, the serious shooting of a Las Vegas police officer and a national defund the police movement emerging after George Floyd’s death in 2020, Laxalt said that happened on Cortez Masto’s watch.
“She could’ve taken to the mic and say stop. This is not who we are,” Laxalt said.
Laxalt said like any profession, there are bad policemen.
“But don’t disparage all the police,” he said.
Laxalt touched on the U.S.-Mexico border situation and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
“Our commander-in-chief was hell bent to meet a political deadline of a Sept. 11 (to withdraw from Afghanistan),” Laxalt said, adding as a result, 13 service members died because of the president’s plan.
Laxalt said after his remarks there is a difference between the first time he ran for public office in 2014 and now. When he trailed Ross Miller during the campaign, he had to bounce back from double-digit deficits to defeat the son of a former governor. Then, Laxalt said he didn’t have much of a record.
“I have a real base of real accomplishments,” he said, pointing to his tenure as attorney general. “We have to work hard to get people motivated and persuade them the direction of the state can be corrected.”
Laxalt didn’t dwell much on Nevada’s November election results after the 2020 races, except he said he would’ve handled the mail-in ballots differently by having a better procedure for crosschecking signatures. He also acknowledged about 15% of Republicans didn’t vote in November, which may have made a difference in the overall statewide results.
