MESQUITE, Nev. — A veteran politician who could be watching the sun set over the mesas from the comfort of his sprawling Sun City retirement community here is campaigning to get the votes he hopes will flip a swing key district back to Republican.
John Lee, 69, is a former state legislator and former mayor of North Las Vegas and a former Democrat.
But three years ago, Lee grew disillusioned with the party’s policies and left it, garnering national attention as the first elected official to leave the Democratic Party under the Biden administration.
Lee is currently trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, 51, in the 4th Congressional District, “probably the second-largest district in the country” in terms of area, he said.
“I [North Las Vegas] “I started Starbucks when there was nowhere to go to eat,” he told The Washington Post in a recent interview at the only Starbucks store in Mesquite, a retirement town of 23,000. “I’ve attracted 31 restaurants.
“When I was mayor, we didn’t have a choice when it came to schools. Now we have 31 charter schools.”
“I’ve done everything I can to make sure the quality of life for the people of North Las Vegas is on par with the rest of the valley,” he said.
Lee said Nevada’s top Republicans, Gov. Joe Lombard and Rep. Mark Amodei, as well as House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), have encouraged him to run for Congress.
The candidate said he also received a call from Donald Trump urging him to run.
Lee, a former plumbing company owner, said his track record in North Las Vegas, a city of more than 280,000 people that grew from a World War II-era aviation gunnery school into Nellis Air Force Base, speaks for itself.
Beyond North Las Vegas, where most of the 4th District’s residents live, lies heavily Republican rural counties including Lincoln, Overton, Logan, Moapa Valley, Nye, Esmeralda, Monroe and Lyon County, near the state capital, Carson City.
The 4th District has represented Horsford in Congress four times, after Republican Crescent Hardy was elected in 2014 and Democrat Reuben Kihuen reclaimed the seat two years later.
Veteran political consultants said the partisan jockeying suggests the region could flip Republican again.
Sources say a combination of economic issues, Lee’s popularity as a former mayor and a tenacious campaign could change the outcome.
Mr Lee argued that Mr Horsford was absent as a councillor.
“Nobody knows him. He’s nowhere to be found,” the politician said.
In the midst of a global pandemic, Lee alleged, Horsford “never called and asked, ‘What can we do to help small businesses? What can we do to help our employees?'” during COVID. “There was nothing. There was silence.”
Horsford’s office has arranged an interview with The Washington Post but has not yet arranged one.
Regarding a Democratic proposal to exclude service workers’ tips from federal income taxes, Lee said, “That’s President Trump’s idea, and I think it’s a great thing.”
“This is by no means [Horsford’s] Idea.”
