Extremist election denier Sam Brown announces 2024 Senate bid in Nevada

Sam Brown, a Nevada Republican and election denier who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2022, announced Monday that he will again seek his party’s nomination for a Senate seat in 2024.

National Republicans, including National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines, reportedly recruited Brown, a small business owner and retired Army captain, believing he will be more electable than Jim Marchant, another election denier who announced his candidacy in May. The party’s nominee will likely face first-term Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen in the November 2024 election.

“Right now, the American Dream is at risk. Joe Biden and Jacky Rosen promised to unite Americans and solve problems,” Brown said in his announcement statement, according to CNN. “Instead, they’ve abandoned Nevada and divided America with extreme policies to satisfy special interests in Washington.”

In 2014, Brown lost a primary race for a seat in the Texas Legislature. He then moved to Nevada, where he faced off against former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt in the 2022 GOP primary.

Laxalt, who was Nevada co-chair of former President Donald Trump’s failed 2020 reelection campaign, falsely claimed Trump had won the state’s electors and tried to overturn the election results. According to the Associated Press, Brown argued in a May 2022 primary debate that Laxalt had not done enough to overturn President Joe Biden’s Nevada victory: “When President Trump, Nevadans and Americans were relying on you to be the one to challenge any sort of issues in the 2020 election, the only thing you did was file a lawsuit, that by your own admission was late. Nevadans deserve better, and you need to be honest about your record.”

Polls show Brown’s right-wing positions on reproductive rights, gun safety, and climate put him outside the mainstream in Nevada.

On his 2022 campaign issues page, he said: “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American. As a Senator, I will oppose any federal funding of abortion and only support U.S. Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance of protecting Life.”

Brown backed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers and, in response to an “iVoterGuide” survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated right-wing hate group American Family Association, said he believes abortion should be legal only in cases of “risk of life to the mother.”

“Abortion is not an issue of choice,” Brown said on his 2014 Texas campaign site. “It is an issue of life and I am proudly pro-life.”

He opposes extreme risk protection orders, commonly known as red flag laws, that allow law enforcement to temporarily disarm people judged to be an immediate danger to themselves or others and believes that the Second Amendment unequivocally guarantees an individual’s right to own firearms.

In an April 2022 tweet, Brown mocked gun safety reforms: “You’d think the Democrats would’ve discontinued the phrase ‘commonsense gun control’ years ago. No one thinks their attempts to take our Constitutionally protected rights away have anything to do with common sense.”

Brown has attacked efforts to address climate change and switch to clean energy: “We have been blessed with an abundance of natural resources, but we’ve also been plagued by politicians pushing extreme energy agendas, like the Green New Deal, that raise prices and destroy jobs.”

He shared on Twitter an August 2022 story about Ford laying off workers from its traditional engine manufacturing business as it transitions to electric vehicles and wrote: “Green policies & EV mandates will create new jobs – on paper and campaign ads. Welcome to reality. This happens when mandates are forced on us over free markets solutions.”

His 2022 campaign site also noted his opposition to Obamacare, to teaching about the history of race and racism in America, and to “cancel culture.”

Last month, Brown tried to justify Trump’s allegedly felonious handling of national security documents by falsely comparing him to his opponents, tweeting: “Facts: James Comey mishandled classified documents. Hillary Clinton mishandled classified documents. Joe Biden mishandled classified documents. No indictments for them? Blatant hypocrisy leads many Americans to lose faith in our institutions of justice.”

Though Republican leaders have said they hope to recruit stronger candidates in 2024 than those who lost competitive Senate races in 2022, they are promoting a similar crop of hopefuls: candidates who oppose abortion rights and have a history of spreading election denial conspiracy theories.

In a press release on Friday, Nevada State Democratic Party spokesperson Johanna Warshaw said: “Between Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked candidate Sam Brown, MAGA election denier Jim Marchant, and a host of other far-right candidates eyeing a Senate run, Republicans are in for a messy primary that will expose their deeply flawed candidates as out of touch with hardworking Nevadans.”

The Cook Political Report noted in June that Nevada Republicans are skeptical of Brown’s viability and that other Republican candidates might still join the race.

“There has been a thought on Sam Brown for a while that he’s just not the guy. He’s a nice guy, he’d be a very serviceable nominee, but [some are] just not sure he can put it together,” a Nevada GOP consultant told the outlet. “I still suspect there to be other people that are not known that will get in and be real players.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.