Associated Press
Other candidates running in the June 2022 Republican primary include former U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and Joey Gilbert, a Reno attorney who was outside the U.S. Capitol during last year’s insurrection. The winner will take on Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who won by 5.1 percentage points in 2018.
Representatives for Trump did not respond to questions about whether he had seen Fiore’s ad or planned to endorse a candidate in the Nevada governor’s race.
The Fiore campaign also spent more than $100,000 to air ads in Reno, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, where the media market extends to rural northeastern Nevada.
Targeting the Florida airwaves in addition to Nevada is simply about reminding the former president of her longtime support, her campaign consultant Rory McShane said.
“Many candidates are seeking Trump endorsements, but, if you look back at four and five years, a lot of those same candidates were disavowing Trump and even holding anti-Trump rallies,” McShane said. “It’s important to remind the President’s team that Michele Fiore is the only true America First candidate running for governor.”
From the archives (April 2021): Nevada GOP censures elections official who defended integrity of 2020 election results
Heller, who told the Associated Press last week he would also welcome Trump’s endorsement, clashed with Trump over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 but the two reconciled and campaigned together in 2018, when then–U.S. Rep. Jacky Rosen defeated Heller in Nevada’s Senate race.
Since 2020, Fiore is the only candidate running for statewide office outside of Florida to purchase ads from Comcast /zigman2/quotes/209472081/composite CMCSA -1.40% , a cable provider in the region, according to a review of FCC filings.
“What it tells me is that — assuming that the goal here is to get noticed by former President Trump — the ads are targeted at an audience of one, as opposed to an audience of thousands or millions of voters,” said Vanderbilt University professor John Sides, a political scientist who has written on the effects of television advertising on political campaigns.
“The calculation is that if you can get on the president’s radar screen or earn his support,” Sides said, “then that endorsement will be worth the investment of buying ads in a media market thousands of miles away.”
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