STEVE SEBELIUS: World of difference between Cortez Masto, Laxalt

Choosing between incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican Adam Laxalt shouldn’t be difficult: The two candidates are very different.

Although both are lawyers, both served as attorney general and both are descended from bold-face Nevada political names, Cortez Masto is a low-key workhorse, a policy wonk laboring behind the scenes.

Laxalt clearly has aspirations to the national stage and is no stranger to television studios, news conferences and rallies with top conservatives, including the man who named him co-chair of the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump.

And this is where the differences really become noticeable.

Laxalt was the face of Trump’s 2020 stolen election crusade, alleging illegal votes and flaws in vote-counting machines. He lent his voice repeatedly to these allegations in the aftermath of the 2020 election, but when those charges were tested in court, they were rejected. He didn’t admit Joe Biden was president until nearly a year later, although he now says Biden was legitimately elected. Trump has endorsed Laxalt for Senate.

Cortez Masto says Laxalt’s rhetoric led directly to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and blames him for failing to condemn it. “But not once did Adam Laxalt condemn what he saw there,” she said in an interview. “Not once did he stand up for those Capitol Police officers or the law enforcement. … But at the moment when it mattered, not one word from him.”

Laxalt has said he thinks that “very few” people broke laws on Jan. 6, and says the media exaggerated the rioting.

Cortez Masto and Laxalt have dueled during the entire campaign about who supports cops more; both have police union endorsements behind them.

Laxalt, by contrast, accuses Cortez Masto of being a reliable vote for the Biden administration, and of failing to use the Senate’s 50-50 division to gain more advantages for Nevada. He sells his candidacy by saying he’d be a vote to stop what he sees as Biden’s errors. According to Laxalt, Cortez Masto could have chosen to be more like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who held up bills by threatening to withhold his vote in return for concessions to his state.

Unlike Manchin, nobody is asking where Cortez Masto stands on an issue, Laxalt said in a Review-Journal editorial board interview.

To be sure, Cortez Masto votes almost always with Biden, 92.9 percent of the time, according to the website fivethirtyeight.com. She’s actually 46th on the list of 50 Democratic senators in terms of voting with Biden, siding with the president less than would-be maverick Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Cortez Masto can cite examples of breaking with Biden to benefit Nevada, such as the time she worked to kill a mining tax that would have hurt Nevada’s extraction industry. But Cortez Masto, as is her style, did that work behind the scenes, not in public like Manchin.

Immigration is another issue where the candidates differ. Laxalt says the border is not secure, and that it represents a national security threat. He’s certainly right about that, and both parties would do well to put that concern at the center of the debate on border policy.

Laxalt’s approach is to insist on border security and, to discourage future illegal immigration, to oppose amnesty for those who’ve come here illegally. “People know as long as they get over, they’re here for good,” Laxalt said.

Cortez Masto declined to say whether the border was secure, saying “we need to ensure we have a strong, secure border,” adding that she’s voted to devote resources to border security.

But, she said, that’s an entirely separate issue from dealing with immigrants who are already here. “We can do both,” she said. “We can help fight to secure our borders and still fix a broken immigration system.”

Asked whether there was a deal to be made with Republicans — start with border security and move on to dealing with immigrants already in the country, Cortez Masto says she’s tried, but Republicans aren’t interested in the latter. “They’re not going to do anything with it, because they want this, Republicans — including my opponent — as some sort of political tool to use in this election.”

The contrasts go on — energy policy, foreign policy and abortion rights, just to name a few. Although the polls show voters are almost equally divided between the two, the contrasts between them — personally and politically — couldn’t be greater.

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.