Mark A. Kellner/New York Post
LAS VEGAS — Sam Brown, the combat veteran who survived massive burn injuries in Afghanistan in 2008, called in some high-powered ground support for his quest to unseat first-term Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) joined Brown at a campaign office here Thursday to rally some three dozen volunteers in crucial get-out-the-vote efforts. In 2022, Democratic Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto beat former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt by just 8,000 votes, an average of four ballots per precinct.
The Louisiana lawmaker lauded Brown as someone who’d fight for Silver State residents while pursuing fiscal responsibility.
“Sam Brown is tougher than a three-hour steak,” Kennedy declared.
Brown is in a heated battle with Rosen. Her campaign accuses him of favoring an “extreme MAGA agenda.” In turn, the Reno-based Army vet says Rosen’s vote for the Biden-Harris administration’s spending bills substantially created the 5.2% unemployment here and hikes in rent, groceries and gas.
He said President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “introduced to us Bidenomics, and what that’s resulted in is that Nevadans, on average, are paying $1,200 or more a month now than they were four years ago.”
Kennedy agreed, saying, “The people of Nevada do not deserve to have to sell blood plasma to go to the grocery store, and they don’t deserve to have to cash in their retirement account to pay their rent or to make their mortgage paid, and they’re scared.”
Despite one recent poll showing an 11-point gap with Rosen, Brown — who former President Donald Trump has also endorsed — believes he will win.
“Nevadans are stressed. As you’ve seen and heard from across the state, people are driven to a point of desperation,” he said. “You will see a high turnout in this election, and when I’m across this state from city to city, town to town, mile after mile, people are furious with what has happened with this government and what it’s done to them.”
Brown said another poll shows “only a 1.5-point race, so that feels much more like what we’re seeing on the ground.”
Kennedy said polling is less reliable in the current cycle than in earlier years.
“People on both sides are so angry right now, particularly about inflation, that I think a small number, but a meaningful number of people, instead of just not taking the call from the pollster, they take the call, and they just screw with the pollster,” he said.
“I’m not an expert in many things, if any, but I’ve been polling for 30 years, and if you get 4% to 6% of the people, even 3% who lie to a pollster just to screw with him, you can throw that thing away,” he said.
Despite Kennedy spurring on the troops, one Brown supporter conceded it’s a difficult contest.
“I think this is a tough seat,” Joanna Gorman of Summerlin told The Post. “I would not be surprised if it did not go our way, but we are trying by getting the vote out.”
The retired dietitian and diabetic educator said she and others are working to boost Republican turnout.
“We are knocking, we are calling, we are sending out so much information that we need to get those voters who did not come out four years ago out, and that’s our main focus, Republicans who didn’t show up and independents,” Gorman said. “So, I think the polls underestimate the Republicans in general, but in this particular race, it is going to be an uphill battle.”
A day after the Brown-Kennedy event, Nevada Independent publisher Jon Ralston tweeted that the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the GOP’s campaign arm funding Senate races — had canceled ad buys in Nevada through Election Day.
But an NRSC spokesman directed The Post to a Politico report in which the group said it’s shifting expenditures to “hybrid” ads that attack an issue and boost a candidate, claiming such expenditures yield more advertising bang for the buck.