Ripple or blue wave? This race will test Democratic strength in November

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• The contest in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District should be a shoo-in for Republicans.
• But a problematic candidate, inflation and Trump’s unpopularity give Democrats not-far-fetched hopes for a massive upset.

The high desert is not typically a place you look for a wave. But in the vast expanse between the Sierra Nevada and Utah border, a not-exactly-wide-open race for Congress is testing whether a blue wave, should one come November, is ankle-high or something more akin to a political tsunami.

Nevada’s 2nd District has been represented by just four lawmakers since its creation more than 40 years ago. All those representatives have been Republicans.

November’s contest should be another shoo-in for the GOP and its nominee, David Flippo. The district, which takes in northern Nevada, is overwhelmingly white and rural, which makes it solidly conservative. In 2024, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by a decisive 56% to 42%; only Washoe County, home to Reno, kept things that close. Trump won other portions of the district by 50 percentage points or more.

But inflation, Trump’s sagging approval rating and other factors — northern resentment toward southern Nevada, where Flippo lived until fairly recently, the refusal of the incumbent to support his party’s nominee — offer Democrats the not-entirely-far-fetched hope of a major upset.

Aaron Mahan, who’s spent decades as a server on and off the Strip, says inflation and Trump’s pugnacious immigration and foreign policies have chased tourists away. He’s feeling it in his wallet.

“It will be an interesting summer and fall,” Mark Amodei, who has represented the district for 15 years, wrote on social media after the June primary. “But I believe it’s fair to say that CD-2, for the first time in its history, isn’t a Republican guarantee.”

That’s just about the kindest thing the congressman has had to say about his would-be successor.

All of which make the sprawling district in Nevada’s rough and rocky Great Basin an improbable political bellwether. A win on such forbidding terrain would almost certainly mean a nationwide Democratic gain of 30 or more seats in November; they need to flip just three to take control of the House.

Flippo, 63, a 25-year Air Force veteran and Trump stalwart, arrived in the district from Las Vegas. He ran for Congress there in 2024, losing in the Republican primary. He was preparing for a second try in the Democratic-leaning 4th District when Amodei unexpectedly announced his retirement in February. So Flippo hightailed it north to run in the far more hospitable 2nd District.

He took on the favored candidate of Amodei and others in the GOP establishment, James Settelmeyer, a former minority leader of the state Senate. Backed by a constellation of MAGA celebrities, Flippo waged a fiercely negative campaign, accusing “Tampon Jim” of voting to put menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms and coddling undocumented immigrants, among other distortions. With Trump’s endorsement, Flippo handily defeated Settelmeyer and 11 other primary opponents.

“”Absolutely scurrilous campaign against ... one of the nicest guys around,” Amodei said afterward, on the program “Nevada Newsmakers.” “The voters are never wrong. But guess what? Mark Amodei’s not endorsing [Flippo.] I wish him all the best. No way. No, thank you.”

Apart from his exceedingly short-term residency in the district, questions have also been raised about Flippo’s opaque finances. He has lent his campaign more than $1.6 million and failed to provide the personal disclosure information required of federal candidates. There is also no record of Flippo filing the required statement during his 2024 campaign, according to the Washington news outlet NOTUS.

In addition, it reported that Flippo was fired from a job in the financial services industry after his company accused him of violating policies and regulations.

So, a carpetbagger with a sketchy history.

Flippo’s main opponent is Teresa Benitez-Thompson, 48, a longtime Reno resident, former member of the state Assembly and a relatively moderate Democrat. Those credentials also buoy Democratic hopes. The party’s congressional campaign committee has, for the first time in decades, added Nevada’s 2nd District to its target list, though it remains to be seen how much time and money national Democrats commit to the race.

To prevail, Benitez-Thompson would have to defy political gravity, which is to say overcome the reflexive partisanship that has typified politics in this age of deep voter polarization.

In the last two midterm elections, according to the Pew Research Center, more than 90% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters supported GOP candidates for the House. In other words, the kind of crossover voters that Benitez-Thompson needs to win have become rare indeed.

““Trump is a huge liability for Republicans; there is no question that the GOP is going to have huge turnout problems, meaning that in a lot of races, Democrats are going to greatly exceed expectations,” the veteran election handicapper Charlie Cook wrote in a recent midterm analysis. “But converting Republican voters to actually back a Democrat — even for a day — is so much harder now.”

Jon Ralston, one of Nevada’s leading political savants, agreed.

The former Senate majority leader tried multiple times to have Jon Ralston fired before finally succeeding. Reid then turned to the veteran journalist to write his biography.

“Some of those rural Nevada voters would rather commit hara-kiri than vote for a Democrat,” Ralston said. (No, Japan’s ancient suicide ritual is not particularly associated with honor or custom in the cow counties, as Nevada’s lightly populated stretches are known. But you get the point.)

“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Ralston, founder and chief executive of the Nevada Independent news site, said of a Democratic upset. “But I remain skeptical.”

Here’s the thing, though, about wave elections — and, to be clear, your friendly political columnist is offering no predictions ahead of November. Like a massive ocean swell, which can bear all kinds of flotsam and jetsam ashore, a political wave that is big enough, broad enough and strong enough can carry all manner of unlikely candidates to victory.

Even in the bone-dry desert.

Perspectives

The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.

Ideas expressed in the piece

• The article argues that Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, a seat that has never elected a Democrat and has been firmly in Republican hands since the 1980s, has unexpectedly become a test of whether a broader Democratic “wave” might be forming in 2026.[2][3][7]
• It emphasizes that, under normal conditions, the district’s predominantly white, rural and conservative electorate — along with Donald Trump’s clear past margins there — would make the race a near lock for Republicans, yet rising prices, Trump’s weak approval ratings and regional resentment toward a Las Vegas transplant candidate have combined to crack the GOP’s usual advantage.[2][3][6]
• The article portrays Republican nominee David Flippo as a short-term resident of the district whose close alignment with Trump, hard-edged primary campaign and reliance on personal loans and outside conservative PACs have raised questions about both political durability and local roots.[1][2][8]
• It further notes that Flippo’s financial profile, including more than $1.6 million in loans to his own campaign and a donor base heavily concentrated outside the district, reinforces Democratic attempts to brand the Republican nominee as out of touch with northern Nevada voters.[6][8]
• At the same time, the article presents Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson as a well-known former state Assembly leader and current statewide official with deep Reno ties and moderate positioning, arguing that these local credentials, combined with recent fundraising parity and slightly higher cash on hand, have given Democrats a credible opening in territory long considered unwinnable.[2][6][8]
• It highlights that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has officially placed the seat on its target list for the first time in years, with party strategists publicly describing Flippo as a “weak” nominee and suggesting that voter anger over economic conditions could widen the path for Benitez-Thompson.[6][7]
• Nonetheless, the article underscores how intense partisan sorting limits any Democratic surge, citing data and commentary that Republican voters rarely cross party lines and that rural Nevadans remain deeply resistant to voting for Democrats even in unfavorable national environments for the GOP.[3][5][8]
• Finally, the article frames the contest as a potential national bellwether: it contends that if Democrats can overcome the district’s structural GOP edge, long history of Republican dominance and current ratings of “likely Republican,” that outcome would signal a much larger shift toward Democratic control of the House.[5][6][7]

Different views on the topic

• National election forecasters continue to rate Nevada’s 2nd District as “likely Republican,” projecting a comfortable GOP margin and assigning Democrats only low odds of victory, which contrasts with more optimistic wave-election scenarios.[5][8]
• Coverage from Nevada-based outlets stresses that no Democrat has ever carried the district and that major handicapping organizations still assume it will remain safely red, suggesting the structural partisan realities outweigh short-term headwinds for Republicans.[3][7][2]
• Some analyses challenge Democratic messaging about a “weak” Republican nominee by pointing to Flippo’s decisive primary win, his alignment with Trump in a district that has repeatedly supported the former president and the significant registration advantage Republicans hold over Democrats.[1][2][5]
• GOP-aligned strategists and consultants, cited in local reporting, argue that Flippo’s extensive self-funding, comparable or greater total receipts and strong backing from conservative PACs show a robust campaign apparatus capable of defining Benitez-Thompson as too liberal for the district.[2][8]
• While acknowledging a recent poll that shows Benitez-Thompson narrowly ahead, polling analysts and forecast models caution that a single survey does not override long-term partisan trends, noting the absence of a sustained series of competitive polls and maintaining projections of a Republican win.[4][5]
• The Race to the White House forecast and other national handicappers explicitly describe Benitez-Thompson’s chances as “outside” or long-shot, arguing that even if national Democrats gain House seats, the particular makeup of Nevada’s 2nd District makes a flip considerably less likely than in more suburban or diverse battlegrounds.[5][6]
• Opposing commentary also points out that, despite Democratic enthusiasm and targeted spending, prediction markets and campaign finance data still show Republicans favored, with some observers suggesting that Democratic hopes in the district are more symbolic — meant to signal broader momentum — than rooted in a realistic path to victory.[3][5][8]