Republican Senator Dean Heller is in a tough spot.
He's the only Republican up for re-election in 2018 in a state Hillary Clinton carried last year.
And Democrats have put a target on his back – they want to win that seat.
That may explain why Heller came out against the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, last week – even though the GOP is pushing for party unity on the matter.
DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS:
Has Heller truly changed his mind or is this a political calculation?
Whether it's a political calculation or not – I try not to look into people's hearts – but certainly, there was a political calculation that went into it, especially when he's standing there with Brian Sandoval. [He's] tethered himself to the governor who is the most popular elected official, the most popular Republican Nevada has seen in a long time.
I don't know if I would call it a u-turn, but Heller has handled this so badly that he needed Sandoval's help. He said he wanted to get to a yes. He's for repealing Obamacare, but then suddenly, it hit him like an epiphany – "Wait a second, phasing out Medicaid could be a real problem in the state where the governor was the first Republican to expand Medicaid, putting hundreds of thousands of people on the healthcare rolls."
If there was a political calculus here, Heller probably made the right one, unless he's worried about a primary challenge that may come out of this now.
Is Heller in a worse position now after going back on what he said about repealing and replacing Obamacare?
There is a super PAC on the right running ads now trying to get him to go back. The Democrats are totally hypocritical on this: They said they wanted him to do this, he decides to do it and they still attack him. That's because there is a Senate race in the background, quickly coming to the foreground with Democrat Jacky Rosen all but announcing last week.
He got himself into this by trying to have it both ways. And when you try to have it both ways – please the base and please the middle – you're going to catch yourself in a vice. That's what happened to Dean Heller.
It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. There are some Democrats that believe he is just play acting and he's going to come back to a yes. But based on what he said at that press conference [...] he didn't just talk about Medicaid. He talked about tens of millions of Americans – 22 million now in the latest Congressional Budget Office estimate. He lamented that many people getting kicked off [...] He also essentially said that the people who were saying this will lower your premiums are lying. How do you possibly go back to a yes after saying all those things, I don't see it.
Clark County Commission chair Steve Sisolak announced he's running for governor. Any ideas on who he will face?
Well, Adam Laxalt, the Republican Attorney General, is certainly running even though he hasn't announced. Again, assuming nothing happens, I think he's going to file next March. There are a couple of other names thinking about running: Steve Cloobeck, the former head of Diamond Resorts – he sold that company for a lot of money. He's told people he's willing to get in and seed his campaign with as much $5 million. He's an immediate factor.
Chris Giunchigliani, Steve Sisolak's colleague, is thinking about running for governor. There is a Facebook campaign trying to recruit her. I don't think she thought about it before there was this kind of organic campaign. Many people will say she started that on her own – I don't think so. I think she thinks of herself as more of a real progressive Democrat than Steve Sisolak, who is more of a business, middle of the road Democrat. I think she causes a problem for him in a primary, which is low turnout and in which she has the base, probably.
What do you think Michele Fiore is going to bring to the Las Vegas City Council?
What she brings to almost every situation, which is chaos. She thrives on chaos. I think she'll drive [Mayor] Carolyn Goodman crazy, because she is expert at two things: one is seeking attention and getting attention. And secondly, she knows how to rally people. She is very good at retail politics. That is how she ended up winning a race against a person with the same last name as the person who was term limited, Steve Ross. She beat Kelly Ross who was thought to be a favorite in that race.
We will see if she ends up taking the job a little more seriously than I think she took her job in the Legislature, where she got involved in all kinds of issues that only caused her problems.
Jon Ralston, editor and founder, The Nevada Independent
