From Washington: Balance Of Power In The Senate A Toss-Up
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Sunday, October 20th, 2024. I'm Jared Halpern. The electoral map isn't just about getting the 270. There's also a race to 51 as Democrats play defense to hold on to control of the U.S. Senate. Nowhere is it written on a stone tablet at the U.S. Capitol that just because you have a 50-50 Senate that the party that has the vice presidency has the majority.

We've only had these tied senates twice. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. It's got the smallest number of electoral votes of all the swing states, but Nevada is critical with sizable Latino and independent voting blocks and an abortion measure on the ballot this fall. It's kitchen table issues and the independent streak that Nevadans have. They don't like to be told what to do.

They don't like to be told they're supposed to vote for one candidate because of their demographic. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington. Regardless of the outcome on November 5th, Vice President Kamala Harris will leave office a record holder. No vice president has cast more tie-breaking votes in the Senate than she has at 33.

John C. Calhoun, who was VP before the Civil War, had the previous record of 31. The reason Harris has been needed so often in the Senate is because that chamber has been so closely divided during the Biden administration. Democrats have held no more than a two seat advantage the entire term, meaning just a single absence or defecting Democrat was enough for the vice president to be called in.

The next Congress appears to be headed for a similar setup, with polling showing very close Senate races in several states. Add to that a few potential upsets or surprises, and we're back to a small majority for either party to navigate.

Fox News senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram is studying the electoral map and what it could mean for the upper chamber next year. Well, some people have indicated that they think that maybe control of the House or certainly the House and Senate races are very reflective of the presidential race. You know, it's not a surprise that Wisconsin is in play and you have a competitive Senate race there or say, you know, Pennsylvania, the same deal, Arizona.

Maybe the outliers are Montana, which is probably going to go for former President Trump.

It's a Democratic Senate seat right now with Jon Tester. Does he hold on? It's looking iffy right now. Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Ohio used to be a swing state. It's not really that anymore. J.D. Vance hails from there. But you have a competitive Senate race between Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who has had a lot of success winning in what have turned out to be Democratic years when he's been elected to the Senate.

2006, 2012, 2018. But he also is somebody who kind of is able to run against that Trump MAGA grain, and that tends to work for him. But does he hold on this time? It didn't work for Tim Ryan, the former Democratic congressman, a couple of years ago, which is why we had Senator Vance. Well, we know that West Virginia is likely to flip, right? Obviously, Joe Manchin retires. That is not considered a swing district, a swing seat. So

That makes the map really tenuous for Democrats. They are. It's just the nature of how it's drawn up and how we have these election cycles. Democrats find themselves playing an awful lot of defense in these close races. That leads most to think that the Senate, regardless of which way it falls, is still going to be really evenly divided at the end of the day. Right.

Yeah. You see, Democrats have to run the table here to get close in the Senate or maybe hold on. Do they lose West Virginia and then maybe pull an upset in Nebraska or maybe Texas or maybe Florida? I'm not convinced of any of those yet. But, you know, these things do happen. Absolutely. You know, we don't truly understand our electorate right now. We're having trouble modeling it and understanding who actually shows up. So that's one of the reasons there.

But it's harder. I mean, maybe Democrats, the best case scenario for them that they're rooting for is 50-50. And then if you have Vice President Walz, then you can have control of the Senate. And I should note, and this is very important, that nowhere is it written on a stone tablet at the U.S. Capitol that just because you have a 50-50 Senate that the party that has the vice presidency has the majority. We've only had these tied senates twice.

We had one, well I should say three times. We had one back in the 1870s, we had one in 2001, and then we had one just a couple of years ago. And what had happened in the modern Senate is that they worked out a power sharing agreement with the other side.

to share power and the Democrats, you know, in the Congress a couple of years ago, they had kind of nominal control of the Senate. Chuck Schumer was the majority leader, but he didn't have maybe quite as much power as he might have in an outright majority.

It was very similar to what happened in 2001, where you had a 50-50 Senate. You had Vice President Cheney, who was the tiebreaker there, and Trent Lott, who was the Republican leader, and Tom Daschle from South Dakota, who was the Democratic leader, worked at a power-sharing agreement. And then Daschle was able to get a Republican senator to become an independent. This was Jim Jeffords from Vermont, and he caucused with the Democrats, and so he had a 51-49 outright majority at that point.

So what they had built in about those power sharing agreements is the idea that if you did get that right majority, then the power flipped to the other side. Because that's kind of where I was getting. I mean, even if it's 52, 48, 51, 49, it's going to be, we assume, a fairly close-ish type of breakdown between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. That's kind of been the lay of the land for...

What more than the last time there was like an outright super majority of 60 votes was that short lived period of time where they got the Affordable Care Act passed. Right. It's been a long time since we've seen something like that. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good example of that. In 2009, you're coming off this pretty significant win by then President Obama in 2008. They had precisely 60 votes. They had it for about a year.

They unexpectedly lost a special election for Senate in Massachusetts, and then they were down to 59. And that's one of the reasons they kind of had to do this in run around some of the Senate rules through what we call budget reconciliation, which you and I have talked about before.

to pass Obamacare because you can do that with a simple majority. You don't have to have that cloture-proof supermajority of 60 votes. Even some of the majorities that the Democrats had, look back in Bill Clinton, 1993, they were only up to 57, 58 votes at that stage. So that was pretty significant in 2008.

And so the states I assume you're going to be looking at closely are, you know, those ones that we've laid out that you have those blue wall states, Michigan and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania has a competitive Senate race. Are you going to be looking at those results to maybe get some insight at the presidential level? Or is there an expectation from folks you're talking to that there could be an awful lot of ticket splitting?

You know, that's something that people have tried to explore a little bit. And I talked about Senator Brown in Ohio just a few minutes ago. That's a good example. He is a known quantity in that state.

There are some people who think that the Vance VP candidacy actually works against Republicans a little bit in Ohio. You have two competitive House seats there, Amelia Sykes, who is a freshman Democrat, and Marcy Kaptur, who is the longest serving tenured female in the House of Representatives of all time, who Republicans have tried to beat for eons and never seem to be able to lay a glove on her.

So that would be ticket splitting. President Trump, former President Trump, is probably going to carry the Buckeye State. But it looks pretty good certainly for Marcy Kaptur, maybe Amelia Sykes, Sherrod Brown, jump ball right now, we'll see. But yes, that is something that we are looking at in terms of that ticket splitting. Do you have that in Arizona? Do you have that in Wisconsin or something?

Nevada even has a competitive Senate race. Same deal there. All are in play. All are important states at the presidential level. And yes, ticket splitting is something that might emerge as the trend, or it might say, no, people did not split their tickets. They voted consistently for these Senate races and for who they voted for president.

And if that is the case, then you're going to see everything kind of just fall along party lines. And then it's much harder, I think, to kind of at least at this stage kind of predict what the outcome is. It's really hard to predict. And this is where, you know, you and I've talked about some of the House races before. But the Senate races, again, you know, we don't always understand the body electorate.

We don't know who's going to show up at the polls. Do you somehow get an upset in Florida with Rick Scott and the former Democratic Representative Debbie McCarcel Powell because you have people displaced or people who are focused on hurricane recovery or something? You know, it doesn't seem like that's as significant right now as we thought it might be about a week or two ago.

North Carolina, okay, a little bit of a different story there. No Senate contest, though. But who gets to the polls, especially in western North Carolina, a pretty Republican part of the state. And that's where all the hurricane damage was. So, you know, these real-term events actually impact this. And that's why we have trouble understanding the electorate and understanding who actually shows up at the ballot box.

Let's talk a little bit about some of those outlier states. You mentioned Florida, Texas. I think those are both sort of in the reach category for Democrats. I hear Democrats a little bit more bullish maybe on Texas. I mean, that's a state that a couple of times has kind of been Lucy in the football for Democrats. What's?

What are you hearing from folks you talk to? Yeah, you see, that's a perfect example right there where they've spent a gajillion dollars. Beto O'Rourke, the former Democratic congressman, ran, you know, got kind of within an arm's reach of Ted Cruz last time around. Yeah, two points, but that's still a loss. You know, I'm going to tell you something here that Greg Walden, former congressman from Oregon, Republican,

He ran the NRCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee. He was in charge of getting Republicans elected to the House of Representatives. And he told me one time, he said, there's a lot of districts. Now, he was just working on House District. He said, there's a lot of House Districts I can get to 48, 49. 50.1? 51? No way.

And so you put a lot of energy and effort and money into these states. Maybe you get within a stone's throw. And that's not to say that there are not upsets. You know, I mentioned Nebraska in passing a few minutes ago. In fact, I think if there were to be an upset, that might be the one state I might try to look at a little more closely than Florida or Texas. I also realize that what happens in these final stages of the game,

especially on the Democrats who have a lot more money than Republicans, what you do is you start to send out alarm bells in some of these other states

to force the Republicans to put money into those states because, you know, you have the cash to burn. So you force them to do that. And if they're putting the cash into Texas, which maybe the Democrats don't have a snowball's chance of winning, then that diverts potential Republican money in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Ohio, which is closer. And then maybe you eke out a win there if you follow all that logic. Oh, so another example of that, I think, is Maryland. Um,

Larry Hogan, the popular Republican two-term governor running against Angela, also Brooks. I think Maryland's a state that Kamala Harris probably wins by 25 or more points at the presidential level. But this is a Senate race that...

is less predictable given the name recognition, the popularity of a moderate kind of in the mold of Mitt Romney, if you will, Republican. That, I think, sort of goes the other way, right? Democrats have had to spend, I think, a lot of money where they didn't intend to just to see if they can keep that seat that should be a super safe Democratic seat.

Yeah, exactly. And that's why these things are so unpredictable. There was even a little bit of chatter that there was a seat in Western Maryland that might be in play. You know, that if Republicans were able to flip that seat, used to be a Republican seat, not anymore, then that might help them. Yeah, exactly. Go toward a majority there. But but that's but that's you see, this is the game that is played here. But this is where in the Senate races, you know, you can't really get a sense early on as you go from east to west of

to understand if we know which direction the Senate's going to be in. I mean, the West Virginia returns, we'll probably know pretty early. Pennsylvania sometimes can be a little bit slow, especially around Philadelphia. And that's where the big Democratic vote probably comes in. So you might not know that early on.

Ohio is usually pretty quick, but again, if it's really close. Michigan, you know, sometimes that can be a little, you know, up in the air too. We're not going to, you know, I tend to think that both with the House and Senate, we probably don't know for a few days.

Wow. I mean, I mean, I mean, it took a while last time around to see where they were with the House and Senate. I mean, you talked about a couple of years ago, too, in 2020. Remember, there was a runoff in Georgia for the Senate, which was which was after the new Congress had started. The Senate. Yeah. And it determined control of the Senate.

That's right. That's right. And it came down amid when we were certifying the Electoral College and the riot at the Capitol. You know, something that would have been, you know, screaming from the headlines, news story got buried because of, you know, all the, you know, problems up here at the Capitol.

So I'll finish with this. As these elections kind of come and go, one of the orders of business will be both parties electing their Senate leaders. I imagine on the Democratic side, there's probably not much of an effort, regardless of whether he remains majority leader or not, against Chuck Schumer. He's probably pretty solid. Yeah, probably no contest there, although we don't know if he is going to be the minority leader or the majority leader.

But on the Republican side, Mitch McConnell is no longer going to be the leader of the Senate Republican Conference. It seems that there's been kind of two candidates emerged to the top and John Cornyn and John Thune. Is there anybody else on that list? And what does that look like? And do these elections have an impact on kind of their sell to their colleagues?

Certainly. Well, Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida, who's running for reelection and has, as we said, somewhat of a competitive reelection bid down there. He's running. The shadow candidate, not that he is actually running, but a lot of people have said maybe he would be the guy.

is Steve Daines from Montana, who chairs the NRSC. Now, that's the Republican Senatorial Committee here. And if they, you know, if he's able to deliver... If they run the table, he'll have a lot of goodwill. Exactly. And if it's former President Trump, does he have some say? You know, he has not been on the same page with John Thune sometimes. A little more on the same page with John Cornyn. But does he turn around and say, I want Steve Daines or somebody else?

This is where, you know, it's going to be unclear because it's a secret ballot. You know, Mitch McConnell won reelection last time to be the Republican leader in the Senate. But

There were several people who voted against him. We don't know exactly who voted against him. I remember the first day he brought these new Republican senators in, senators elect at that point after the 2022 election. You had Katie Britt. You had J.D. Vance. You had Eric Schmidt from Missouri and shouted a question. Are you all going to support McConnell? And nobody said anything. But somebody and probably at least a few of those

did not vote for Mitch McConnell. And so sometimes you might get an upset. Let's say former President Trump says, yes, I want so-and-so if he is going to be the person who's going to occupy the White House. It's a secret ballot. And then suddenly, you know, John Thune wins hands down because people say, well, you know, that's who I think should be. It's obvious he's done the work as the whip. He's the number two or someone like John Cornyn, who has been the whip before. And

You know, I've said this before, Jared, leadership elections are particle politics, you know, decided at the subatomic political level.

And so it's very hard to divine who actually gets into leadership. I mean, if you would have told me at the beginning of this Congress that a guy from Louisiana was going to be the Speaker of the House, and if I said yes, I agree that somebody from Louisiana is going to be Speaker of the House, you would have said Steve Scalise, right? Right. Not Mike Johnson, who nobody had ever heard of. You see, that's why these things are very tricky to determine who actually gets to the leadership table.

It's a good example in why that leadership election in the Senate may not be as crystal clear as it is right now. But I know you will be in the hallways as soon as Congress returns after the election. Chad Pergram, appreciate your insight. And we will talk certainly over the next couple of weeks here before election night.

All right. Thank you. I'm Guy Benson. Join me weekdays at 3 p.m. Eastern as we break down the biggest stories of the day with some of the biggest newsmakers and guests. Listen live on the Fox News app or get the free podcast at Guy Benson show dot com.

Nevada is where former President Trump unveiled this new policy proposal back in June. This is the first time I've said this, and for those hotel workers and people that get tips, you're going to be very happy, because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips. Vice President Harris said a couple of months later, also in Las Vegas, that her economic proposals included... To the minimum wage...

and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers. At a recent Hispanic roundtable in Nevada, though, the former president reminded who was first on that plan. We sent her a MAGA cap. That hasn't been the only focus. When it comes to Nevada, the former president told the Hispanic community that unemployment was low when he was in office, and he banked on their support for many of his border policies.

Vice President Harris was pressed on immigration and the border as well when she did a Univision town hall in Las Vegas earlier this month. I will put my record up against anyone.

in terms of the work I have always done and will always do to ensure we have a secure border. This year, a measure is on the ballot that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. But when Fox Digital talked to several voters about their top-of-mind issues this week, almost everyone mentioned the economy. Things are getting more expensive, slowly, but they're getting up there.

They go to the grocery store, you get three items and there's 50 bucks right there. That's not living, that's not quality of living. I think the grocery store, the gas is the big deal right now and my money goes down each month more than it used to four years ago. The inflation.

seems to be wearing on people. I'm a realtor, and so I see how it's affecting my clients. More than 20% of the electorate in Nevada is Latino. Its largest registered voting group is nonpartisan, with more than 825,000 voters. Democrats have over 718,000 voters, and Republicans just over 673,000. We for years had

the Reed political machine in Nevada, which was primarily driven by the culinary union in terms of the personnel and the boots on the ground were the culinary union. When that organization is completely deployed, effectively deployed the way it was during the Reed years, it is brutally effective and almost impossible to win without. Warren Hardy is the president of Warren Hardy Strategies, a lobbyist, and a former state lawmaker.

I'm not sure since Senator Reid has passed on and is no longer on the scene how effective that really is. There's a bit of a divide among the Culinary Union and some Democrats. There was a piece of legislation last session that really scaled back some of the COVID era issues.

cleaning and requirements that were put into place for temporary COVID-related purposes. The Culinary Union did not want to see those things reversed. And there was a piece of legislation last session, which many Democrats, including Democratic leadership, voted for, which has caused a bit of a divide. And so notably, the Culinary Union is not supporting any

the majority leader of the Senate and the speaker of the assembly who are prominent, I would call pro-business Democrats who really understand what it takes for businesses to function. And so it's really early to tell. And unfortunately, I'm not sure we're going to be able to tell until the results of the election, whether or not the culinary union has been fully engaged on the ground the way they have in the past.

They're certainly saying the right things. I'm not sure whether that's going to translate. It doesn't seem to me that it's going to translate into the read machine type effort. But who knows? I don't. It's really hard to determine without being inside. I just know that divide has created a very interesting dynamic between Democrats and the Culinary Union in Nevada. Yeah.

Tell us about the electorate, though, like why this is a swing state, because a lot of us think of Vegas and Reno and we know like a bit more than I think it's a fifth of workers in the state are in hospitality. But then there are plenty of Republicans. I think the biggest Tea Party rally I ever went to was in Searchlight, Nevada. I mean, there are plenty of rural voters. Why is this a swing state?

Well, Nevada voters are really very independent and Democrats have done well. I mean, I know there's a lot made of the fact that we haven't voted for a Republican presidential candidate, I think, since 2008. But

But I think it's worth noting that those elections have been very close. I think both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden won the state by less than two percentage points. So it's very, very close. And I think what's driven a lot of that is the fact that there's been as much as a seven point Democratic registration advantage in Nevada for most of those years. It has shrunk significantly. Some reports have it within one percentage point.

That is hugely problematic for Democrats, I think, if it's shrunk that much. And you're looking at a 2% margin of victory for Democrats in the past, and now you have a 5% to 6% swing in voter registration there.

But it's really hard to predict Nevada. I mean, I think the Rosen race, which I'm sure we'll get to in a minute, is indicative of that. Nevadans are fiercely independent. Nevadans care about Nevada. I mean, with all of the strength of the culinary, with all of the strength of the Democrat in terms of voting advantage, we usually elect a Republican governor. We've had one Democratic governor in recent memory, but

We do elect a lot of statewide offices as Republicans. So I think if there's something that's got to keep the Democrat, well, that's the Hispanic vote is another thing that I think should keep the Democrats up at night and what's happening there. But the shift in voter registration, I think, is a significant issue to watch in this race.

That is significant. I think that's that's happening in a couple of states. I did want to ask about the Latino, but we always pay attention to the Latino vote out of Nevada for obvious reasons. What is your sense? We see in in broad polling, Latinos are shifting, as we've heard over the past decade, really, that they're shifting. They're more open to Republicans. They still largely break votes.

for Democrats, but seeing, gosh, I think it's like a 10 point shift in like the New York Times, Santa pull, for example, from 2016 to now, in terms of their openness to Republicans. Are you sensing that in Nevada? What are the I guess, if you are seeing that or sensing that in Nevada, in what way?

So very, very much. I mean, we're seeing it in polling. I mean, we're seeing that Trump is making significant inroads with Latino voters. And that seems to be that seems to be sticking. But I would say also from some polling I've seen and other anecdotal evidence, I mean, the same thing sort of is happening with union households.

And with black men, frankly. So there's three major demographics that have shifted towards Trump. They don't seem to be shifting to Sam Brown in the same way, which is an interesting thing to watch.

But that is a significant red flag for Democrats, that shift in the Latino vote. That's always been a reliable vote. But I think the last poll I saw shows Trump...

outperforming Republicans who ran against Biden and Clinton by as many as seven points among Hispanics that that's a significant that's a significant issue when when this race what do you think is come down then

What do you think is behind that? I remember seeing during peak inflation, Nevada, we talked about this during the 2022 midterms, Nevada was suffering more as compared to national voters when it came to high inflation and obviously energy prices too, because people in Nevada drive a lot or they're stuck in traffic. I mean, how much of cost of living issues has

has mattered not just to voters in Nevada, but also to those Latino voters.

I think you can take what's happening nationally and amplify that in Nevada because of the independent streak of Nevadans. I think that is significantly amplified here in Nevada. So it is. It's kitchen table issues. It's cost of food. It's cost of energy. It's cost of housing. Housing is a major concern here. And it's really difficult for Vice President Harris –

to say she's going to do anything different when they've had four years. And I think there's some brutally effective ads running here that show, you know, that she's not, doesn't really intend to change policies of the Biden administration much. So, but that's kind of unique. It's interesting because that's kind of unique to the presidential race. It doesn't, a lot of it doesn't seem to be translating to the U.S. Senate race where voters, I think, are more trusting of Senator Rosen and

than they are of Kamala Harris. So interesting, really interesting dynamics. But it's kitchen table issues and the independent streak that Nevadans have. They don't like to be told what to do. They don't like to be told they're supposed to vote for one candidate because of their demographic.

I remember campaigning as a state senator and I would go out of my way if I saw a bumper sticker on a car that says live, live better, work union. You know, that bumper sticker that was out there for you. I'd actually knock on the door and just say, hey, I'm Warren Hardy. And a lot of them would say, look, I know you are. I know you're not the biggest union supporter out there, but I'm going to vote for you because you're going to protect my guns and you keep taxes low.

So Nevada's don't particularly like to be lectured to about how they're supposed to vote. They vote their conscience. And we're seeing that this cycle.

So what do you make then of Sam Brown's race, the Republican there trying to unseat the incumbent, Jackie Rosen? You've referenced it a couple of times in this interview. I can tell it's on your mind. So what do you make of her? We're talking about these sort of shifts we're seeing and all these shifts we're seeing, whether it's the Latino vote or whether it's concerns about the economy, economic

You're saying you're not seeing that necessarily translate into the Senate race, that Jackie Rosen is still hanging on despite maybe concerns about Democrats or any red flags Democrats are seeing. Those red flags are not appearing necessarily for Jackie Rosen.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a function of the I mean, look, I said this on a local show last week. If it were any other Republican besides Donald Trump running, this would be a triple landslide nationally and a triple landslide in Nevada. I think a lot of what you're seeing in terms of the additional polling support for Trump is that there's a sort of an anti Biden movement.

Harris, you know, you sort of have a chance. And that's not happening in the, in the Brown race. And the other thing is, and I honestly, as a former Republican Senator, I never understand the last few election cycles, why, why Republicans have done this, but every Republican in the, in the, in the race last time, you know,

with Adam Laxalt against Senator Cortez Masto, tied himself very closely to President Trump. Sam Brown has tied himself very closely to Donald Trump. That has resulted in defeats in the last two election cycles. Conversely, Senator Cortez Masto sort of distances herself a little bit from the Biden administration and

Senator Rosen has seemed to have done that as well. Maybe not distancing is not the right word, but balance. They're more conscious about being balanced, of being an independent voice that's going to speak their own mind. And I think Senator Rosen, you know, the proof's in the pudding. She's actually done that and shown that she is part of what the Biden administration in a number of issues that affect Nevada, such as mining issues.

And the Republicans don't seem to do that. They seem to be doubling down. They're all in for associating themselves with Donald Trump. I think that's hurting them. I mean, again, it's that Nevada, independent Nevada streak. We want you to think for your own. We want you to think, we want you to be Nevada-centric, not nationally-centric.

And the Democrats, I think, have traditionally done a better job of doing that. And I think we saw that in the governor's race. Governor Lombardo, who is, you know, is a bipartisan, works with both sides, has a record of being bipartisan and addressing Nevada problems. That's the recipe for success there.

in electoral politics in Nevada. And Senator Rosen has done a much better job of following that than Sam Brown is. I don't see any daylight between Sam Brown and Donald Trump. And I think that that strategy will continue to be problematic. So I really think, I don't think it's going to be close. I think

Senator Rosen is going to win significantly. And I hope as a Republican that Republicans learn the lesson from that. I mean, this whole Donald Trump thing, it's time to move past it. And it's time to have more independent thinkers who support Nevada. You mentioned mining.

We know hospitality matters and unions matter in Nevada, but what else? You're talking about mining. What else do we know about who is doing what kind of work? I mean, mining is significant. I mean, it's one of the major industries in Nevada. It matters a great deal in northern Nevada and even to a greater extent in rural Nevada.

And we have, you know, as long as I've been involved in Nevada politics, which has gone on 40 years, we've always had folks defend that regardless of political affiliation. And so the Democrats, you know, tend to push back, you know.

against criticism of mining and particularly when it comes to green energy. And I think that served them well. So, you know, mining's obviously gaming's big. Gaming's a little more politically difficult because you will get attacked if you're considered sort of the voice of gaming, which is a

something I've never really understood since they're one of our largest employers, but mining's, you know- - 'Cause it's the house money. - Yeah, exactly. Mining's one of the big three, and so,

The rurals which vote at a significantly higher percentage than anywhere else in the state, that's a major issue. And with Tesla coming in and the lithium mining and those sorts of things that support clean energy, Democrats in Nevada have to take kind of a nuanced approach. And I think for the most part, they've done that and they've balanced that well. And Senator Rosen is sort of at the top of that. I think she specifically said,

you know, when they went against the Democrats on some mining votes a year or so ago. Is that happening in Nevada, right? I haven't been following it closely enough. Is lithium mining, is that sort of beginning to take a hold in Nevada? It's been. It's been. Nevada is significant lithium deposits. And with the

the Panasonic battery people often refer to it as the Tesla but the Panasonic battery factory in Reno Nevada so yeah lithium mining is a significant economic contributor here

Your thoughts on Yucca Mountain? Because we heard, I guess, a couple years ago, Sam Brown said that it's actually a shame not to have nuclear waste stored there, that it would mean some revenue. Nevadans have had some pretty strong feelings about storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Has that issue come up at all in politics this cycle?

I have not heard that as a major issue for a number of cycles. It was interesting if somebody did bring it up, it would kind of fall on the lines of President Obama's quote or quip to say,

to Mitt Romney that, hey, the 80s called, they want their foreign policy back. That would kind of... And sadly, as I've watched that as a policymaker and as a senator in Nevada, so much of that is driven by disinformation. And I was concerned, and fortunately this really hasn't come to pass, but I was concerned back in the mid to late 90s, early 2000s, that all the money we were spending to talk about how horrible and dangerous...

nuclear waste storage was for Nevada would backfire on us as a tourist state if it actually happened. It hasn't happened, so my theory hasn't really been tested, but spent tens of millions of dollars on PR campaigns to try to keep it away. Had it come, we would have had to

spend tens of millions of dollars to say, well, just kidding. It's not really that dangerous. But it was such a political hot potato for 20 years in Nevada and something that was a litmus test for our federal government.

officers that had never really had an opportunity for the public unless you really wanted to drill down on it to understand the truth about it. The reality of it is it's somewhere in the middle. It's not as dangerous as we made it out to be. But then again, independent Nevadans, that wasn't really an issue for them. They just didn't want to be a dumping ground for the state. It wasn't for the United States. It wasn't so much an issue of danger as just being felt

Not the Littman test that once was, though. People still bring it up from time to time, but it's certainly not nearly the issue it used to be. Warren Hardy, president of Warren Hardy Strategies. Thank you so much for your insight and your time. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Anytime.

That will do it for this episode of the Fox News Rundown from Washington podcast. Tomorrow on the Fox News Rundown podcast, Nebraska Republican Senator Deb Fischer talks about her competitive reelection race, the fight for Nebraska's blue dot, and her take on how the death of the Hamas leader could shake up the Mideast conflict. Until then, thanks for listening. I'm Jared Halpern from Washington.

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