Summers-Armstrong fights Republican challenge in lopsided district

First-term Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong, D-Las Vegas, will face political newcomer Kathryn “Kat” Rios in her reelection bid for the Assembly District 6 seat.

Summers-Armstrong, a former long-time management analyst with the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, first won the seat in 2020 after succeeding Democrat William McCurdy II.

“I love my community and I think that there’s continued work that needs to be done,” she said of her re-election bid. “We did some good things in the 81st legislative session and there’s more work so I’m hopeful that the community will agree that I’m doing a good job.”

One of those “good things” achieved in the last legislative session was Assembly Bill 256, Summers-Armstrong said. The bill, which received bipartisan support in both chambers, provides Medicaid coverage for doulas, assistants who support women during and after childbirth.

In the upcoming session, Summers-Armstrong said she’d focus her efforts on increasing permanent funding for affordable housing.

“We have a crisis in our community when it comes to affordable housing,” the Democrat said. “We know that there’s money coming to the state from national sources because of ARPA and other funding. I would like to see as recognized that this is a problem that has been systemic or in our community for many years.”

Summers-Armstrong’s other legislative priorities include increasing access to health care and making sure “that the justice system works for all.”

“I’m probably never going to be what someone might consider a traditional politician. I will always be an advocate at heart. But I think what I am learning is how to be a better advocate,” she said.

‘Underdog’ running

A self-dubbed “underdog,” Rios said she first got involved in politics because of “the media’s coverage of everything that happened in 2020.”

“There was this moment at the beginning of 2020 with the whole shutdown where I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone and everything that was being reported was incorrect,” she said. “At the last moment, the last day to file, my district still had nobody signed up to file Republican. So I filed.”

Rios, who is a caretaker for a woman she lives with, said she’d want to address homelessness if elected.

She pointed to the demolition of Station Casinos properties, including Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho, as missed opportunities to help those experiencing homelessness in Las Vegas.

“I think that we should be helping the underprivileged people or maybe the people that are working but they’re displaced right now because of the rent hikes or whatever. We need to be working to keep these people in their jobs and safe and I don’t see how tearing down these two casinos are helpful to anybody but the casino owners,” Rios said.

Rios also named education as a policy area she’s interested in and said “gender identity or race” shouldn’t be discussed in schools.

The political newcomer knows she’s an “underdog” in the district, which voted 80 percent for Summers-Armstrong against her Republican opponent in 2020.

“I am definitely the underdog. I live in a very blue district and I have not raised as much money as my opponent. But I think I’ve been more involved,” she said. (As of August, there are nearly six times as many active registered Democrats than Republicans in the district.)

“I think I can bring the perspective of the people that are affected by the rules, and I think that I’m not already in the situation to have already built up biases or made relationships that could eventually lead to corrupt decisions. I have an open mind and a different way of thinking about things,” Rios said.

Contact Taylor R. Avery at TAvery@reviewjournal.com. Follow @travery98 on Twitter.