Another Republican who pushed Trump's election lies has his eye on the Senate

The Nevada Independent on Thursday reported that former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, is considering a run against Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto for her seat representing the Silver State.

Laxalt is just the latest Republican who was part of the effort to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump to weigh running for Senate in the 2022 midterms.

Laxalt was a co-chair of Trump’s campaign in Nevada and filed multiple lawsuits that aimed at interfering in the 2020 election or made baseless allegations of voter fraud.

None of his lawsuits, part of the efforts by Trump and his supporters to sow doubt about the results based on lies or overturn the election altogether, were successful.

On Nov. 5, two days after the election, Laxalt announced the Trump campaign was filing a lawsuit to “stop the counting of improper votes” in Clark County, the heavily Democratic county that includes Las Vegas. At the time, President Joe Biden was leading Trump in the state by more than 7,600 votes.

The lawsuit failed, and ballots continued to be counted, with Biden ultimately winning the state by 33,596 votes, or 2.5%.

Yet Laxalt continued to lie about the results, including holding a news conference in which he pushed a baseless claim from a 79-year-old blind woman that she was prevented from voting.

But Laxalt didn’t stop there.

In December 2020, he filed a lawsuit against Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, accusing her of keeping thousands of noncitizens on the state’s voting rolls.

A report from Cegavske’s office released in April 2021 found no evidence of Laxalt’s claim.

Nevada’s Senate election is expected to be competitive.

Cortez Masto won the seat in 2016 by 2.5 points, the same margin Hillary Clinton won the state by that same year, and that Biden won by in 2020.

Laxalt has been a name in Nevada politics for years: The current candidate is the grandson of Paul Laxalt, who served as both governor and senator.

Adam Laxalt was elected attorney general in Nevada in 2014, serving one term before running a failed bid for governor in 2018, which he lost to Democrat Steve Sisolak by 4 points.

If Laxalt does run, he’d be one of a half-dozen Republicans across the country running for Senate who tried to overturn Biden’s win either through lawsuits or by voting to block certification of his Electoral College victory.

And if he runs, Laxalt would possibly have the support of some GOP senators, including Lindsey Graham, who told the Nevada Independent that Laxalt is “a good guy and would be a good candidate for us out there.”

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan political handicapping outlet, currently rates the race a likely Democratic win.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.