HENDERSON, Nev. — Fifteen months ago, Sam Brown was running in a Senate GOP primary against far-right loyalists of former President Donald Trump — with the backing of top Republicans in Washington.
In a lengthy interview at the time, Brown tiptoed around any topic that involved Trump while Brown’s rivals were running ads accusing him of not being sufficiently loyal to the former president.
For example, when we asked Brown if he’d be comfortable sharing the ticket with Trump in 2024, he didn’t answer directly.
All of that was ancient history here Thursday with Brown addressing the MAGA faithful at a Trump rally as he tries to topple Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.).
“President Trump will secure the border,” Brown told the crowd. “President Trump will take care of our communities. President Trump will be a president of law and order.”
A new day: Brown’s strategic shift from the early days of the 2024 campaign to now shouldn’t be a surprise. NRSC Chair Steve Daines got Trump on board in the primaries and avoided a repeat of the 2022 cycle.
Yet it underscores the prevailing view of Senate GOP leaders that the fates of Trump and of their candidates in the presidential battlegrounds are intertwined.
“As President Trump’s numbers continue to go up, so do Sam Brown’s,” said Senate GOP Conference Chair John Barrasso, who campaigned with Brown here. “This is now a very close election. You can see it in the polls. More and more money is coming here now.”
Brown and his counterparts in the Midwest battlegrounds — all top NRSC recruits — are hugging Trump tighter than ever before.
“What we had when President Trump was [in office] — lowering taxes, cutting the economic friction that regulations pose, securing our border, being strong internationally,” Brown told us in an interview here.
Like other GOP challengers, Brown has lagged significantly behind Trump in the polls. That’s at least in part due to name ID. That gap was always going to narrow as time went on.
But Trump’s visit at this late stage is critical for Brown, who’s gaining momentum amid Republicans’ surprising early-voting advantage — a practice the GOP actively discouraged here two years ago. They lost that Senate race.
Battleground Nevada: Just a few weeks ago, it seemed Republicans had narrowed their pickup opportunities to the Rust Belt. But the early-voting numbers sparked a big cash infusion, and GOP senators are returning to the Silver State in the final stretch.
On Thursday, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris held dueling rallies in the Las Vegas area within a few hours of each other. Nevada has gotten redder, and Rosen has campaigned as a pragmatic problem-solver who isn’t afraid to buck her party.
But Rosen, too, is tying herself to the top of the ticket. She wants to increase voter turnout, especially among union workers in the state’s hospitality industry who were long the backbone of the late Sen. Harry Reid‘s (D-Nev.) political machine.
“Sam Brown is only going to do what one person tells him to do — what Donald Trump tells him to do,” Rosen said at the Harris rally in North Las Vegas.
