* Two new entrants in Nevada’s GOP primary for U.S. Senate next year will be throwing their hats in the ring this week.
* Dr. Jeff Gunter – a former ambassador under President Trump – officially announced his candidacy today on NewsMax. And Tony Grady, who came in second in the GOP primary for lieutenant governor last year, will be making his announcement tomorrow in Las Vegas.
* The pair will join Sam Brown, Mitch McConnell’s and the establishment’s anointed candidate in the race, and Jim Marchant, a serial losing candidate who continues beating the “election fraud” drum without any proof.
* And a passel of other candidates who haven’t reached the level of credibility and viability yet.
* Who exactly are Democrats hurting by cutting funding to Nevada’s Opportunity Scholarship program? School choice champ Valeria Gurr has the answer…
“62% of scholarship recipients are minority or mixed race, with 26% of the students reporting themselves as Latino/Hispanic, 14% African American, and 14% as mixed race. The average household income of students participating in the program is less than $57,000 per year.”
* I spoke with a Hispanic mom at Gov. Lombardo’s press conference last Thursday. She’s switched her party affiliation to the GOP over this issue.
* I also spoke with a black woman who told me she’d always been a registered Democrat because that’s simply the default registration for the vast majority of blacks in the U.S.
* But this Opportunity Scholarship brouhaha got her to re-thinking her party affiliation and she re-registered as a Republican at the press conference.
* Step by step. Inch by inch. Slowly we’re turning the tide.
* Gov. Lombardo has proposed using unspent COVID money to restore the funding cut by Democrats in the 2023 legislative session. The Interim Finance Committee (IFC) will vote for or against the proposal at its meeting on Wednesday.
* The teachers union and its accomplices are all over social media claiming the cuts to the program aren’t really cuts even though the money approved by the Legislature for Opportunity Scholarships this coming school year has been cut from around $11 million to around $6.6 million.
* But that didn’t stop Nevada Republican National Committeewoman Sigal Chattah from siding with the lefties on Twitter today. She wrote…
“If there is even a scintilla of truth to this thread, it demonstrates the reckless abandon by which NV lobbyists and administrators misrepresent and continue to lie to Nevadans.”
* Of course, anyone with a brain the size of a scarecrow’s knows the union and the Democrats are absolutely lying through their teeth on this. But the Chattah Box couldn’t stop herself from taking another shot at the Lombardo administration and giving the left aid-and-comfort by re-posting their propaganda.
* As for the lobbyists she’s talking about, she’s not talking about high-priced, professional corporate lobbyists. She’s referring to citizen lobbyists who fought for school choice the entire session – including increased funding for Opportunity Scholarships.
* Citizen lobbyists such as Valeria Gurr of the Federation for Children and Erin Phillips of Power2Parent. They, and others, fought tirelessly for expanded Opportunity Scholarships and, unlike Chattah, were in the arena slugging it out, not sitting in the cheap seats eating peanuts and watching the parade go by.
* Over the last two months, Chattah has sued Republican Gov. Lombardo for signing a bill protecting election workers, attacked the GOP legislators who unanimously voted for the bill, criticized Golden Knights fans for showing up on the Strip to celebrate winning the Stanley Cup, and has now dissed a pair of citizen “mama bears” who champion school choice.
* The Nevada GOP must be so proud.
* Which reminds me: A resolution was introduced last month by a member of the Nye County Republican Party to censure Chattah for suing the governor over the election worker protection bill.
* A vote on the resolution was tabled to give Chattah an opportunity to respond. Nevertheless, the resolution infuriated Nevada GOP leaders who have pressured the Nye GOP chair to quash it rather than allowing members to vote on it.
* In response, Chairman Eric Murphy announced last Thursday that all future resolutions must be submitted to him directly at least two weeks prior to being offered to the elected members of the Central Committee so they can be reviewed by a new star chamber-like “Resolution Committee.”
* The new committee will then make a “recommendation” to the membership on whether it thinks the resolution should be approved or rejected. Another way to think about it is: “prior restraint.”
* While Chairman Murphy characterizes the new committee as a “gateway,” the reality is that all gateways have a gatekeeper focused on keeping outsiders outside. So while the chairman assures that all resolutions will still be brought to the body as a whole for action, this is clearly an effort to chill speech party leaders don’t like.
* I’m old enough to remember when Republicans championed free speech and open debate rather than try to stifle it.
* Two months ago, former President Donald Trump criticized his former press secretary, Kayleigh McEneny, for supposedly getting his poll numbers in Iowa wrong during a FOX News interview. She reported he was up by 25 points, while Trump said it was actually 34 points.
* Trump called McEnany “milktoast” and said FOX should only use “real stars.”
* An Emerson poll in mid-May actually showed Trump up by 42 points in Iowa. But now it seems, at worst, McEnany was just a little ahead of her time. A new New York Times/Siena College poll shows Trump’s lead in Iowa has shrunk to 24 points, 44-20%.
* That’s still a big lead, but DeSantis has another six months to go to chip away at it before the first votes are cast.
* Days after indicating he would not participate in the first GOP presidential debate, Trump yesterday sent out a fundraising email asking supporters if he should or not. So I guess the decision hasn’t been finalized yet after all.
* Trump did write, however, that he thinks “it’s sort of foolish for me to go to the Republican debate.” So maybe asking his supporters’ opinion is just a fundraising gimmick.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“President Trump and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to reject electoral votes, and chaos would have ensued. To keep faith with the oath that I made to the American people and to Almighty God, I did my duty that day.” – Former Vice President Mike Pence on his actions the day of the January 6 protest in DC
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views, and founder of CampaignDoctor.com. You can sign up for his conservative, Nevada-focused e-newsletter at MuthsTruths.com. His views are his own.