The Democratic Nevada congressman whose district includes the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository will not seek re-election in 2018, depriving the minority party of an incumbent in a battleground district that has flipped three times since it was created.
Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.), a freshman lawmaker from the Silver State’s 4th Congressional District, announced Saturday he would not seek re-election. Kihuen, who strongly opposes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, made the announcement after the House Ethics Committee announced Friday it would investigate allegations the congressman sexually harassed a female member of his staff during the 2016 campaign.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal was the first to report over the weekend that Kihuen would not run again. BuzzFeed reported the sexual harassment allegations Dec. 1. BuzzFeed and other publications have since reported additional allegations against Kihuen by other women.
Kihuen denies the allegations.
Kihuen’s central Nevada district includes Nye County: the site of Yucca Mountain. The 4th District was formed following the 2010 Census; voters there elected their first representative in 2012 and Democrats have controlled the district for two of the three terms of its existence.
Kihuen’s decision to stand aside in 2018 conceivably gives a pro-Yucca GOP candidate a shot to capture the seat, but pro-Yucca candidates of either party are political unicorns in Nevada; even the dean of the state’s Washington delegation, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), unflinchingly opposes the project.
The lone GOP representative from Nevada, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), supports Department of Energy nuclear research at Yucca but opposes building a nuclear-waste repository there.
The Donald Trump administration requested $150 million for 2018 so the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could resume licensing the site as a permanent waste repository. One intransigent congressman couldn’t stop the House from approving the funding, but the Senate has been less amenable: A fiscal 2018 Department of Energy budget bill the Senate Appropriations Committee approved this summer approved no funding for Yucca Mountain.
