Silver State Times

Adam Laxalt, senate candidate, is highlighting his opponent Democratic Sen. Cortez Masto's crime policies.

Adam Laxalt said in a news release, "in her six years in office, Cortez Masto has sided with the Democrat party over Nevada’s law enforcement community. She has voted to confirm anti-police radicals, she has encouraged rioting in our cities led by the far-left, and she has called police officers racist.

The attack comes on the heels of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions linking violent crime to Democratic policies in an op-ed in the New York Post.

Sessions wrote, “tragically, they (Democrats) ignored the warnings of law-enforcement officials and abandoned policies shown to work, replacing them with naïveté and wishful thinking. The results are now clear for all to see.”

It’s fair to say that Laxalt believes Cortez Mastro is part of the problem as he accuses her of being “anti-police.”

According to Laxalt: “We need leaders who will stand up and fight for the brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect us. In her six years in office, Cortez Masto has sided with the Democrat party over Nevada’s law enforcement community. She has voted to confirm anti-police radicals, she has encouraged rioting in our cities led by the far-left, and she has called police officers racist.”

Laxalt concluded his piece by stating he will support law enforcement while pointing out that the Fraternal Order of Police, the Public Safety Alliance of Nevada and 95% of the state’s law enforcement officers oppose her reelection campaign.

According to Cortez Masto’s campaign website, she has been supportive of law enforcement in her “fight to combat sex trafficking” and securing funding to train police departments. She sponsored legislation for women and girls “making sure law enforcement has the necessary resources to fight sex trafficking and is leading a bill to ensure sexual assault survivors receive the help they deserve.” Cortez Masto has even spearheaded a law for the mental wellbeing of cops.  

City Journal published an article by Jeffrey H. Anderson on the findings of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the nation’s largest crime survey reported a 29% surge in violent crime in cities and urban areas from 2020-2021. The City Journal says, “the property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households) and nearly three times as high as in rural areas (157.5 to 57.7 victimizations per 1,000 households).”

Sessions argues in his op-ed that urban areas, with the largest increase in crime, abandoned their police and cites an FBI statistic that arrests dropped 25% in 2020, coinciding with the 27% increase in murders. Cities such as Portland, Minneapolis and New York saw their murder rate rise due to what Sessions called “woke policies (that) make America more dangerous.”

When it comes to the issue of crime, a recent Reuters poll found that 39% of voters believed that Republicans can “solve crime” while only 30% would choose a Democrat.

Alex Conant told Reuters, "A lot of voters care about crime and a lot of voters care about immigration…Right now, those are winning issues for Republicans."

In 2019, in Nevada, the FBI Crime Data Explorer lists 309 violent crime incidents and 326 offenses reported by three Nevada law enforcement agencies. In 2021, the number increased to 11,872 violent crime incidents and 13,369 offenses reported by 56 Nevada law enforcement agencies.