GOP targets Cortez Masto with first ad of 2022 cycle

Republicans targeted Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto on Wednesday as part of a series of small national ads seeking to tie Democrats to teachers unions and the unions to schools not reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus officially opening the campaign season for the highest federal office on the state’s 2022 ballot.

The digital ad blames President Joe Biden’s administration for not sending kids back to school, then links Cortez Masto to “DC Democrats and the teachers unions” in text over a picture of the senator and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

A corresponding statement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee accused Cortez Masto of remaining silent on school reopening.

“In the face of overwhelming evidence, Sen. Cortez Masto refuses to take a stand against the union bosses and support reopening our schools,” NRSC Chair and Florida Sen. Rick Scott said in the statement. “The question every Nevadan should be asking is, ‘why does our Senator fight for teachers unions instead of our kids?’ ”

An attempt to reach Cortez Masto’s campaign through her Senate office for a response was not successful.

“Republicans mismanaged the response to this pandemic and still won’t give schools and teachers the resources and support they need to reopen safely, which is exactly what Democrats are working to do while GOP senators play political games,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Stewart Boss said in statement sent to the Review-Journal.

In Clark County, the nation’s fifth-largest school district and its teachers’ bargaining unit, the Clark County Education Association, have had a memorandum of agreement in place for a hybrid instruction model for pre-K through third grade students since December. The Clark County School District plans to bring these students back for a few days of in-person instruction each week beginning March 1.

During a CNN town hall on Tuesday, Biden pledged to have the majority of kindergarten through eighth grade students back in school for daily instruction within his first 100 days in office.

The Republicans declined to share specifics on how much was spent on the ad or where it would run, as many social media companies have cracked down on political advertising. NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline said it was a “small buy” that would be monitored as part of national strategy and did not name any specific platforms where it would appear.

Nevada’s Senate seats have long been battlegrounds in what is very much still a swing state.

Cortez Masto is likely to be formidable for any challenger, having led the Democratic Senate campaign arm into a narrow majority in 2020 and secured a spot in Schumer’s leadership — the only freshman to do so.

She began the year with more than $3 million in her campaign bank account and will have the total backing of state Democrats, who have captured nearly all of the statewide and federal offices up for grabs beginning with her election over Republican congressman Joe Heck in 2016.

As of Wednesday, no one has officially announced a bid to challenge her in 2022.

Contact Rory Appleton at rappleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0276. Follow @RoryDoesPhonics on Twitter.