Nevada Sen. Dean Heller on Wednesday called President Donald Trump “a great leader” who had revived Nevada’s economy, a striking departure from the arm’s-length approach Heller took with Trump in the 2016 campaign and in the first months of his presidency.
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In a private conference call with White House aides, other Nevada Republican officials and local activists, Heller — the most endangered Senate Republican up for re-election this November — offered an unqualified embrace of the president.
“Our arms are wide open,” Heller said on the call, held to drum up interest in Trump’s campaign rally Thursday in Las Vegas. “We’re so thrilled to have the president.”
Heller has steadily moved closer to Trump, finally acknowledging last year that he voted for the president, but the senator has not gone as far in public as he did Wednesday. Heller memorably said in October 2016, weeks before the presidential election, that he was “100 percent against Clinton, 99 percent against Trump.”
On Wednesday, noting that Nevada is now No. 1 in job creation per capita, Heller said, “My message is going to be Nevada is back to work, and it’s back to work because of this president.”
The only Senate Republican running in a state that Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 election, Heller is facing a pricey and highly competitive race against Rep. Jacky Rosen, the Democratic nominee. Recently polling indicates that the race is effectively tied, and that about half of Nevadans do not approve of the president.
Heller also predicted that Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, would overcome an accusation of sexual assault three decades ago and be confirmed.
“We got a little hiccup here with the Kavanaugh nomination. We’ll get through this and we’ll get off to the races,” he said.
The New York Times listened in on the call, which also included the White House political director, Bill Stepien; the Nevada attorney general, Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for governor; and Danny Tarkanian, who is running for an open Nevada House seat.
It is Tarkanian’s House candidacy that partly explains Heller’s newfound admiration for the president. Tarkanian, a son of the legendary former UNLV basketball coach, was challenging Heller in this year’s Republican Senate primary until Trump intervened. The president persuaded Tarkanian to drop out of the Senate primary and instead run for the House.
But in warming to the president, Heller is not just returning a favor to Trump for clearing his primary field: The senator is also wagering that he cannot win in a midterm election without galvanizing his state’s Republican base. Grass-roots Nevada Republicans are enthusiastic backers of Trump, and the president’s endorsement has helped several Republican candidates prevail in competitive primaries this year.
In his last trip to Nevada, at the state Republican convention in June, the president joked about Heller’s initial distance, saying he had been a “little bit shaky at the beginning” but had become “rock solid.”
The senator, though, was far less effusive at the time than he was on Wednesday’s call. He spoke only briefly before Trump and claimed he had written the tax overhaul — and was happy “this president signed it.”
Stepien helped offer balm to whatever raw feelings there may still be between Nevada Republican activists and Heller, heaping praise on the senator for supporting Trump’s agenda and scorning Rosen for being “part of the obstruction.”
Laxalt did his part to unify the party, too, warning that if he lost his race for governor against the Democratic nominee, Steve Sisolak, it would be impossible for Trump to carry Nevada in 2020.
“If you thought the Harry Reid machine was bad, the Sisolak machine would be a sight to behold,” Laxalt said, alluding to the former Senate Democratic leader who very much remains the de facto leader of the state Democratic Party.