As Nevada over the weekend counted the final ballots from last week’s midterm elections, the state’s incumbent senior senator, a staunch opponent of a national nuclear waste repository there, managed to hold onto her seat, state election stewards reported.
Although she trailed former state attorney general Adam Laxalt (R) heading into the weekend, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) edged out her opponent by less than a single percentage point to claim victory Saturday night. According to election results from the Nevada secretary of state, the incumbent senator captured around 48.8% of the vote compared to Laxalt’s 48.1%, a difference of roughly 6,000 votes.
A Democratic victory in Nevada guarantees that the party will control the Senate with 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie breaking vote.
During her time on Capitol Hill, Cortez Masto has been an immovable opponent of the mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nye County, Nev. The senator, elected in 2016, has lobbied over the last several fiscal years to keep funding for Yucca Mountain out of the federal budget and proposed legislation aimed at blocking the Department of Energy from accessing federal funds to develop the site.
Cortez Masto in 2016 won a special election to take over in the Senate for the retiring Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid in 2010 was partly responsible for the Barack Obama administration’s decision to pull federal funding for the Yucca Mountain site, a decision that has stuck despite then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to restart the project in 2018.
Also in the midterms last week, the Silver State elected a Republican governor. Former Clark County, Nev., sheriff Joe Lombardo (R) defeated incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) by a margin of around 17,000 votes.
Sisolak in September asked NRC to allow Nevada to make a formal motion to cancel the agency’s long-stalled review of the Yucca Mountain site.
