Former President Donald Trump will return to Nevada on Sunday to rally supporters in Las Vegas as anticipation builds for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee to make an endorsement in the state’s Senate Republican primary.
GOP voters will select one from a crowded field of 12 Republican candidates on Tuesday to take on Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) in a race that could determine control of the Senate. All eyes are on whether Trump will offer his seal of approval to the front-runner: former Army Capt. Sam Brown.
Brown endorsed Trump in January and has been courting the former president’s endorsement for months. Brown’s wait may finally soon be over.
“A Trump endorsement will unify the party and energize the GOP base,” Republican strategist John Feehery told the Washington Examiner. “It’s Trump’s party now. Running against is unwise. Running away from him is unworkable.”
Brown is backed by Gov. Joe Lombardo (R-NV) and the Senate GOP’s campaign arm. Its chairman, Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), has teased a Trump endorsement is on the horizon for the establishment-backed candidate.
Trump is outperforming GOP Senate candidates in several swing states, including Nevada, presenting the opportunity for Republicans trailing Democratic incumbents to get a boost from the former president’s coattails.
But a Trump endorsement may not necessarily be attractive to general election voters, warned GOP strategist Rick Tyler, who’s worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
“The trick of the campaign is always, ‘How do I connect with those people who haven’t made up their mind yet?’” Tyler told the Washington Examiner. “Hitting them with a MAGA litmus test and loyalty test is absurd to me.”
Brown’s biggest primary opponents include former Trump Ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter and former Nevada Assemblyman Jim Marchant. Trump name-checked all three during a January rally in Vegas but declined to make an endorsement.
“These are three great candidates,” Trump told rallygoers. “It will be a very good race. We’ll see what happens.”
The impact of a Trump endorsement just days before the primary would be blunted to some degree. Nearly 68,000 of the Silver State’s roughly 574,000 registered Republicans had already cast ballots during early primary voting as of Wednesday, according to the Nevada secretary of state’s office.
Recent head-to-head polling shows Rosen with an average lead over Brown of less than 5 percentage points. Nonpartisan election forecaster the Cook Political Report shifted the race in April from “lean Democrat” to a “toss-up.”
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Brown had nearly $2.5 million cash on hand as of May 22, according to the most recent data available from the Federal Election Commission. That’s compared to Gunter’s $337,000 and Marchant’s less than $60,000.
Rosen had more than $10.2 million in the bank.