RENO, Nev. (AP) — Retired Army Capt. Sam Brown is hoping a slow endorsement from former President Donald Trump will lend a hand him win Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary and give him the momentum needed for a victory in the general election, where Republicans see one of their best chances to win a seat in the narrowly divided chamber.
The winner of Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary will face incumbent Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen in a bitter race for the Senate seat in one of the swing states.
Rosen, a moderate Democrat in her first term defending her seat in a state that could also play a key role in the presidential race, is one of Republicans’ top targets in 2024. Democrats are defending far more Senate seats than Republicans this year, including open seats in the swing states of Michigan and Arizona, as well as seats held by incumbent Democrats in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as Nevada.
Republicans also hope to win seats in the reliably red states of Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, which are currently held by Democrats.
Brown, a Purple Heart recipient who was wounded in action in Afghanistan, has long been considered the Republican frontrunner in the highly competitive primary field since he announced his candidacy last summer, less than a year after he was unable to challenge Nevada’s other Democratic senator in the primary in the swing state in the west of the country.
He was heavily courted by Republicans in Washington, DC, and received the support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee as soon as he announced his candidacy.
Republicans at the federal level are deliberately trying to avoid a repeat of their lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats exceeded expectations and maintained their narrow majority in the Senate.
Before he can face Rosen, who is facing two token Democratic challengers in the primary, Brown must overcome a enormous number of primary opponents who have criticized him for staying away from debates and portrayed him as a handpicked candidate of the establishment. The criticism is reminiscent of the campaign themes Brown raised two years ago, when he was seen as an incendiary candidate against former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. Laxalt won the Republican primary but lost to Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
Among the 12 Republican candidates this year is Trump’s former ambassador to Iceland, dermatologist Jeff Gunter, who describes himself as “110 percent pro-Trump” and has sharply criticized Brown as the establishment’s choice.
Also in the race is Jim Marchant, who ran for Secretary of State in 2022 on the basis of election denial. This was done because of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Marchant gained national notoriety in 2022 as the organizer of a coalition of 17 GOP candidates who falsely challenged the election results. All elected officials in Nevada since 2006, he said, were “installed by the deep state cabal.”
Brown, who was nearly killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb that also disfigured his face, made military service central to his message this campaign, just as he did during his unsuccessful 2022 Senate campaign.
During campaign appearances, he often recounted the explosion and the dozens of surgeries that followed, praising the leadership skills he had learned in the Army and the Christian faith that sustained him during his recovery.
Trump’s endorsement on Sunday gave even more momentum to a candidate who already had a sizable fundraising lead over his opponents. Trump has repeatedly said he liked many of the candidates in the race and had been hinting at the endorsement for weeks before officially announcing his support for Brown.
