Republicans pick up seats to win Senate majority

The television was set on mute at Spring Mountain Motor Sports Ranch for an election night party Tuesday, but the results on Fox News kept pace of the Republicans’ gradual pickup of the six seats needed to win the majority in the U.S. Senate.

County Commission Chairman Dan Schinhofen, the county’s liaison on nuclear waste, cheered the results as he served as a master of ceremonies for the event. Schinhofen hopes it will result in Congress acting on Yucca Mountain. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said a recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission report showed the site would be “a safe worthwhile investment” that should be allowed to move forward. She is likely to become chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Schinhofen said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “has done nothing but obstruct the will of the people” on Yucca Mountain after a Yucca Mountain spending bill easily passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier in the year, only to be blocked for a vote in the Senate by Reid.

“We’ll get a vote on it before the Senate, I think we’ll do well,” Schinhofen said. When asked about a possible veto by President Obama, he said the president can’t veto the spending bill. A Yucca Mountain spending bill would open up funding in lieu of taxes for Nye County, Schinhofen said.

Schinhofen is encouraged by the election of State Assemblyman Cresent Hardy, R-Nev., to Nevada’s fourth congressional district, who he said is more supportive of Yucca Mountain than other members of the Nevada congressional delegation.

“Every time he talked to me he supported Yucca, like Mark Amodei,” Schinhofen said of congressman-elect Hardy and his future fellow congressman from the Reno area. “Instead of the state saying no, no, no, we should be talking about mitigation.”

Steve Horsford, the sole Democrat to represent Nye County in Congress after years of Republican leadership, will serve only one term after Hardy won that seat, with 63,435 votes to Horsford’s 59,800 votes, a narrow margin of 48.53 percent to 45.75 percent. Hardy won Nye County more handily, 6,733 votes to 4,163, a margin of 56.01 percent to 34.63 percent.

“I’ve already been in the works all morning with individuals seeing how to put together staff. I’ve already touched base with Congressman (Joe) Heck and Congressman Amodei, they’ve been real helpful setting things up. I’m not going to waste any time hitting the ground in January,” Hardy said Wednesday. Those are Nevada’s other two Republican congressmen.

Hardy pledged, “I’ll be the hardest working legislator back there.”

Hardy sparred with challenger Niger Innis, the Tea Party challenger in the Republican primary, including debates in Pahrump. Horsford visited the Bob Ruud Community Center in June to talk about the new Veterans Administration Clinic, his top priority, but skipped the Democrats’ annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner and the Pahrump Fall Festival. Horsford was unavailable for comment after the election, all of his voice mails were full and he didn’t respond to emails.

Hardy said there was a lot of hard work put into the campaign by people who donated time to make phone calls and walk the streets over several months, reaching out to the 794,000 residents of the district. He was also helped by an $820,000 purchase of last-minute television time by Crossroads GPS, a conservative lobbying group.

“We identified our supporters, they came out to vote when it was time,” Hardy said. “We knew if we could stay close in Clark County we could win in the rurals and we did.”

Unlike in the 2012 election where Horsford had a cushion of 29,141 votes in Clark County — riding President Obama’s coattails to victory over Republican challenger Danny Tarkanian — this time the incumbent Democrat defeated Hardy more narrowly 52,899 votes to 50,989 votes in Clark County, but the rural counties put Hardy over the top.

Hardy said he has rural roots like Pahrump, and promised Nye County will get more priority.

“My whole district will get all the time I have available to do that. I think that’s my obligation,” he said.

“I think growing up in rural Nevada myself being a fifth generation son of ranchers being involved in rural communities all my life there’s nobody that understands rural Nevada as well as I do in an elected position,” Hardy said, mentioning the possible exception of rancher and State Sen. Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka.

But Hardy added he also understands the urban areas of Las Vegas, having served on the Clark County Regional Transportation Commission the Regional Flood Control Board and been a member of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board, along with sitting on the board of two hospitals. He was also a Mesquite city councilman.

Looking ahead to his upcoming term with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, Hardy said, “do we need a balanced budget amendment? That’s my belief. My goal is to convince 535 people in Congress that’s the right thing to do. I think you’ll see prosperity come back to this nation with an amazing boom if we can control our spending addiction we have in Washington D.C. Those people that put us in that position don’t have the ability to pull themselves away from the table.”

Hardy said public lands will be a priority topic, like the Nevada Public Lands Management Task Force that issued a report to the 2015 Nevada Legislature on the transfer of federal lands to the State of Nevada. He hopes to get a seat on the House Natural Resources Committee, other useful committees would be agriculture and transportation.

During the campaign Hardy emphasized his ability to work across party lines, mentioning the last state legislative session was the most productive in 30 years. He also disagreed with presidential orders, like those issued by President Clinton creating national monuments in Utah.

Nye County Commissioner Lorinda Wichman, who in January takes over as president of the Nevada Association of Counties, said Horsford did a better job than she expected and reached out to the rural counties.

“I put a lot of hope in the fact that with a change of the guard that maybe we can get some things done. The gridlock of the past few years has just been so painful to watch,” she said. “I hope there’s enough of a shakeup.”

Nye County Republican Central Committee Chairman Bill Carns said he’s more than pleased that local, state and national Republicans fared well in Tuesday’s election.

“Even though we don’t have a U.S. Senate race this year we have already secured control of the Senate,” Carns said during an election night party at the Mountain Falls Grill Room. “The hope now is to get some good legislation through the U.S. Senate.”

Carns said talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” a central issue in the 2014 campaign, is a bit premature.

“I would imagine legislation would go through but at the same time the president would veto it and they won’t have a two-thirds majority to override the veto,” he said. “Everybody in politics is full of a lot of hot air and this is just exactly one of those things where we want to talk a good game but the fact of the matter is, it’s the signature legislation of the president. He has the authority to veto it, and then both houses would have to have a two-thirds majority to override that and they simply won’t have it.”

Pahrump Valley Times reporter Selwyn Harris contributed to this report.