RENO, Nev. (AP) – Retired Army Captain Sam Brown hopes a late endorsement from former President Donald Trump will propel him to victory in the Republican Senate primary on Tuesday and give him the momentum he needs to win a general election race which Republicans see as one of their best chances to gain a seat in the closely divided House.
The winner of Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen in a tight race for the Senate.
Rosen, a first-term moderate defending her seat in a state that could also play a major role in the presidential race, is one of Republicans’ top targets in 2024. Democrats are defending far more Senate seats than Republicans this year, including open swing-state seats in Michigan and Arizona and seats held by incumbent Democrats in the competitive states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as Nevada.
Republicans also hope to win seats currently held by Democrats in reliably red Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.
Brown, a Purple Heart recipient who was wounded while serving in Afghanistan, has long been considered the Republican Party’s frontrunner in a crowded primary field since announcing his candidacy last summer, less than a year after he launched his bid had lost to challenge Nevada’s other forces. Democratic senator in the western battleground state.
He was heavily recruited by Republicans in Washington, D.C. and received the support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee as soon as he announced his bid.
National Republicans have been deliberate in their effort to avoid a repeat of their lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats exceeded expectations and clung to their weak Senate majority.
Before he can take on Rosen, who faces a symbolic Democratic primary opposition from two challengers, Brown must fend off a crowded field of primary opponents who have taken him to task for skipping debates and portraying him as the carefully chosen candidate of the establishment. The criticism echoes the campaign themes Brown raised two years ago when he was seen as the insurgent candidate against Nevada’s former attorney general. Adam Laxalt. Laxalt won the Republican Party primary, but lost to Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
This year’s 12 Republican candidates also include Trump’s former ambassador to Iceland, dermatologist Jeff Gunter, who has portrayed himself as “110% pro-Trump” and criticized Brown as the establishment’s choice.
Also entering the race is Jim Marchant, who ran for secretary of state in 2022 on a platform of election denial fueled by Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential race was stolen. Marchant rose to national prominence in 2022 as an organizer of a coalition of 17 Republican candidates who falsely questioned the election results. All Nevada elected officials since 2006, he says, have been “installed by the deep state cabal.”
Brown, who was nearly killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb that scarred his face, made military service central to his message this campaign cycle, just as he did during his failed 2022 Senate campaign.
During campaign stops, he has often talked about the explosion and the dozens of operations that followed, touting the leadership skills he learned in the military and the Christian faith that sustained him during his recovery.
Trump’s endorsement on Sunday gave even more support to a candidate who already had a substantial fundraising lead over his opponents. Trump repeatedly said he liked many of the candidates in the race and had teased the endorsement for weeks before officially announcing his support for Brown.
