Ron DeSantis joins longtime friend Adam Laxalt at Las Vegas ‘Rise Up’ rally
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis campaigned in Las Vegas for his friend and former roommate Adam Laxalt on Wednesday, the first time DeSantis has traveled outside of his home state as governor in public support of a fellow Republican.
Laxalt and DeSantis spoke to more than 1,000 people at Stoney’s Rockin’ Country, as Laxalt continued to turn up the heat on his Senate campaign. The former Nevada Attorney General appeared with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last week, and on Wednesday shared the stage with DeSantis, who spent most of his speech discussing various issues in Florida before directly touting Laxalt.
“You need to elect people that aren’t just going to tell you what you want to hear,” he said. “Because every single person that runs as a Republican in these primaries, they all say the same thing. And yet so many of these Republicans, when they get into office, they don’t do anything.”
Adding “in times like these, there is no substitute for courage,” DeSantis said Wednesday was the first time as governor he had traveled outside Florida to appear with a candidate.
Laxalt had spoken first, with an attack on his likely opponent, incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada.
“She didn’t speak against all the anti-cop legislation here in the state of Nevada, and it made us all sick to our stomach to see all those lies about those that put their lives on the line to keep our community safe every single day,” he said. “Nevada deserves better. Nevada deserves someone that will break from the radical left and stand with our state when we need courage.”
Laxalt went on to say Cortez Masto “abandoned law enforcement when they needed her most.”
Cortez Masto’s team fired back in a statement, calling Laxalt a “sleazy politician Nevadans can’t trust.”
“Catherine has always stood with Nevada law enforcement, working closely with our officers as Attorney General, passing a bill signed into law by Trump to combat law enforcement suicide and most recently securing a historic, bipartisan investment in Nevada’s local police departments that Adam Laxalt opposes,” Cortez Masto campaign spokesman Josh Marcus-Blank said in a statement.
That refers to the latest funding bill that was signed last month, which included $674.5 million in grants for local police departments and $3 million that the senator has said she helped secure for the construction of a training facility for Las Vegas police and $950,000 for Clark County School District’s mental health services.
As has been the case recently, Laxalt spent a portion of his speech talking about rising gas prices and inflation, attacking President Joe Biden and lamenting the fact that Hawaii has lower gas prices than Nevada.
DeSantis and Laxalt, who met when they were naval officers and roommates about 17 years ago, both attacked Democrats for “open-border” policies and stressed the importance of the Nevada Senate election.
Both the Cook Political Reporter and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics have Nevada’s Senate race rated as a toss-up.
Laxalt still has to get through a primary election against Army veteran and small-business owner Sam Brown. But he did not mention Brown on Wednesday and instead had words for Cortez Masto, Biden and other Democrats.
Contact Jonah Dylan at jdylan@reviewjournal.com. Follow @TheJonahDylan on Twitter.
