As Democrats attempt to hold their supermajority in the Assembly, Northern Nevada’s Assembly District 25 is one of the districts where Republicans hope to gain a foothold.
The sprawling swing district stretching from Bartley Ranch to Reno’s Northgate community includes parts of the city’s old southwest and northwest neighborhoods and Caughlin Ranch communities. Assemblywoman Selena La Rue Hatch (D-Reno) represents the district where registered Democratic (33 percent) and Republican (30 percent) voters are fairly evenly split, with nonpartisans making up about 28 percent of voters.
La Rue Hatch is a fourth-generation Nevadan who grew up on a ranch near Pyramid Lake and teaches world history and geography at North Valleys High School. She attended Boston University for her undergraduate degree and later returned to Reno, where she earned a teaching degree at UNR and wanted “to give back to the community.”
La Rue Hatch is seeking re-election to a district she won with almost 54 percent of the just over 32,000 votes cast in the 2022 election. She said her goal as an elected official is to bring the voices of her students, their families and her community into the halls of power and improve education in the Sagebrush State.
Her Republican challenger, Diana Sande, was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, and moved to Nevada about 21 years ago. She works in Reno as the program manager of the Black Youth Mental Health Initiative, a statewide program that addresses mental health for Black youth through a policy lens. Sande said she knew she wanted to run for office when she was 17 after she had a gun put to her head in a Latin American country that had been under a dictatorship for a long time and never wanted to feel powerless like that again.
She said she’s running to ensure that there is no one-party rule in the Legislature, protect Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s ability to veto legislation and represent her community from a moderate perspective. If elected, Sande would be Northern Nevada’s only Latina legislator.
La Rue Hatch said one of the most important tasks of a legislator is to represent their community, regardless of party politics. She said she is proud of her voting record, which marks her as an independent legislator who is among the top five Democrats to break with their party, and her bipartisan work, including a bill she co-sponsored and co-presented with Assemblywoman Jill Dickman (R-Sparks) banning the placement of GPS tracking devices on people’s cars. The bill came in response to a tracking device placed by a private investigator on Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve’s car and private investigations into two other Northern Nevada politicians as harassment of political figures in the region has increased.
During the campaign, La Rue Hatch has faced attacks this election cycle from the Lombardo-affiliated Better Nevada PAC, which launched a website accusing her of “spending big on offices for herself” and “hiking gas taxes.” The misleading claims surround a capital improvement budget that the Legislature is constitutionally required to pass (the legislation resulted in offices being built in Southern Nevada) and a bill that would have authorized, but not outright, increased gas prices.
Sande has faced questions about her ties to lobbyists in the Legislature. Her father-in-law is a retired lobbyist, and her brother-in-law, John Sande IV, is a lobbyist with Argentum Partners. When asked whether the two would influence her decision-making as a legislator, Sande said they would not.
“I’m my own person,” she said.
Below, we explore La Rue Hatch and Sande’s views on a variety of key legislative issues. Click here for the full list of questions we asked each candidate and their edited responses.
Education
La Rue Hatch said one of the key areas that need attention is class sizes.
“We have the largest class sizes in the nation,” she said. “If I could enact one policy, it would be to put those hard caps on our class sizes and ensure that our kids are getting the individual attention and instruction that they need.”
Sande, who has two children “on the spectrum,” referring to autism, said she would want to increase the support for special needs students.
“I know that they’re completely overloaded in their caseload,” she said. “I also know that there are many kids that are going undiagnosed and not getting the resources that they need.”
La Rue Hatch said it’s vital to invest in schools, and the state should bring Nevada’s per-pupil funding in line with the national average. Sande didn’t give a yes or no answer to increasing school funding but said she’d like to see outcomes correlated with increased funding and a focus on reading at an early age.
The two candidates aligned with their respective parties on the issue of universal school meals for students.
La Rue Hatch said she supported universal free meal programs in school, citing statistics that 1 in 5 students in Nevada is experiencing hunger. She said she’s had students from abusive or neglectful homes whose parents would not fill out the proper paperwork, leaving their child without a meal option.
Sande said the government already covers meals for students who are in need, and the money that could theoretically go toward a universal school meal program should be spent on other needs, such as youth mental health.
School choice
La Rue Hatch said the phrase “school choice” to exclusively refer to education voucher programs is a misnomer.
There’s choice within the public school system, she said, pointing to magnet schools and dual language programs where students learn academic content in two languages.
“I draw a line when we talk about taking public dollars and giving them to unaccountable private schools,” La Rue Hatch said. “They are allowed to pick and choose who they can accept. They are not required to teach standards in the same way.”
La Rue Hatch said she would not have supported the state’s creation of the Opportunity Scholarship program. However, she does not believe in punishing students and would support allowing students and their siblings currently in the program to continue to use it.
Sande said she supports Opportunity Scholarships, arguing that parents should feel empowered to decide what is best for their children.
Reproductive rights
La Rue Hatch said she will support in vitro fertilization (IVF) protections, vote for Question 6, the ballot measure seeking to enshrine existing abortion protections into the Nevada Constitution, and would support a broader abortion rights initiative going through the Legislature that would protect a more expansive range of reproductive health services, including fertility treatments and access to birth control.
“As we saw with Roe v. Wade falling, nothing is guaranteed,” La Rue Hatch said, responding to the argument that expanding the law is unnecessary because Nevada already protects abortions up to 24 weeks.
Sande said she would support legislation protecting IVF and supports the right to an abortion.
“At the end of the day, anything about decisions that we make, about our health, man or woman, it should be in the hands of that person,” she said. “End of story.”
But she said she would not be voting for Question 6 because state law already protects abortion rights and the ballot measure doesn’t have clear language. For example, Sande said the ballot measure changes the 24-week limit to “fetal viability” and would allow qualified medical professionals to offer abortion services. While the proposed constitutional amendment does not directly define “qualified health care practitioner,” the term typically refers to a broader subset of health care providers that includes registered nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners or midwives, as well as physicians. Under current Nevada law, only a physician can offer abortion services.
Sande did not give a direct yes or no answer to a question about whether she would support the broader constitutional amendment that is going before the Legislature in 2025. She said she would “definitely be open to the conversation to continue to protect reproductive freedom.”
Elections
La Rue Hatch said she believes in Nevada’s election system as it stands and would not support the voter ID initiative, which she described as a “solution in search of a problem.” It feeds the narrative that somehow Nevada’s election system is not secure, and that there’s rampant fraud despite evidence to the contrary, she said.
“I am very concerned about the voter ID initiative,” La Rue Hatch said. “I think it’s going to create a barrier for many disenfranchised communities to participate fully in our elections, without doing anything to make our elections more safe or more secure.”
Sande said she grew up as an American outside of the country, and those countries require identification to vote.
“I support it. I think it also streamlines the process as well,” said Sande, who added that she needed more time to consider arguments that voter ID laws could disenfranchise older voters or other communities who may struggle to get an identification card.
As for changes to the state’s campaign finance system, La Rue Hatch said she wants to more scrutiny over C4 groups or nonprofits that can advocate for causes or candidates, such as the governor’s inaugural committee, which are not required to disclose their donors but engage in political work and political attacks.
“The governor’s group is doing political attacks on me on behalf of my opponent, and voters in my district have no idea who is paying for all these attacks and for all these ads,” La Rue Hatch said. “And I know it’s not just me. It is across the state.”
Sande said she stood by the results of the 2020 election and indicated that she supports efforts to strengthen Nevada’s campaign finance disclosure requirements.
Health care
La Rue Hatch said reducing the cost of prescription drugs and addressing the state’s provider shortage are high priorities.
As costs have gone up, she said she’s heard from constituents who are struggling to make ends meet. In 2023, La Rue Hatch said she supported a bill that would have applied the Medicare-negotiated costs of 10 drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act to all Nevada residents. Lombardo later vetoed the bill, but La Rue Hatch said she would support the policy a second time.
“I think that that is really critical for helping reduce prescription drug costs because I think that a huge number of Nevadans are going without,” she said. “They’re skipping doses, they’re trying to stretch it. They are choosing between rent or medicine.”
Sande said she had a bilateral pulmonary embolism, and it took the emergency room three times to figure out what the issue was and if she didn’t have an understanding of the medical system or have insurance, she would be dead.
She said people who are underinsured, and those with language barriers, have a very difficult time navigating the medical system and that emergency rooms have become the place for primary care and mental health crises or even addressing addiction.
Sande said she’d like to find a way to incentivize large companies to offer in-house primary care. This would help Nevadans and lessen the load on the state’s beleaguered health care system, she said.
Housing
Both candidates agree that the state’s housing crisis will require a multifaceted approach and that there is no single magic solution.
La Rue Hatch said lawmakers need to examine zoning to allow communities to use existing land to build up instead of out, reevaluate the state’s incentive system to ensure affordable housing is being built and stop corporations from buying up neighborhoods and outbidding local residents. She added that legislators should examine tenant protections, including the state’s unique, rapid summary eviction process.
Nevada is one of the only states in the county where the tenant is required to file first in court as opposed to the landlord under the summary eviction law, La Rue Hatch said. She said that the process is confusing for tenants and it’s vital to “clarify that process so that it is fair and understandable for everybody involved.” She voted for a bill later vetoed by Lombardo that would have changed the order of filing.
Sande said she agrees with Lombardo’s approach of allocating more federal land to housing but that protecting the state’s wide open spaces is also vital and other solutions are needed.
“We want to still protect the culture of what Nevada is,” Sande said. “We need to figure out how we continue to look at conversations around economic development and addressing the housing issues without affecting the culture.”
While door-knocking, Sande said she’s heard complaints that areas in Reno and Sparks are not being fully developed, and there’s an opportunity to come up with solutions in that realm as well.
She added that she doesn’t like the government interfering in business but would support reforms to Nevada’s summary eviction process, noting that it’s important to “strike a balance between protecting landlords and ensuring tenants have enough time and resources to respond.”
La Rue Hatch said she “seriously disagree[s]” with Lombardo on allocating more federal land. She added that she believes Lombardo is pushing the allocation of federal land to cover up the fact that he vetoed every single housing bill last session that would have alleviated the crisis for everyday Nevadans.
Firearm policies
La Rue Hatch said she grew up on a ranch and practiced with firearms. During the 2023 legislative session, she said she voted for three gun control measures that Lombardo later vetoed and would support those measures again.
“Those three measures were not extreme, they were not taking away anyone’s rights,” she said. “They were simply making our community safer.”
She pointed to one of the three bills that would have raised the age to buy an assault weapon to 21. She said some of her students are 18, and they could conceivably buy a gun and bring it to school with them.
La Rue Hatch said that her daughter, who is in second grade, has done active shooter drills since kindergarten, memorizing cutesy rhymes about staying quiet and hiding in a corner.
“That is horrifying,” La Rue Hatch said. “What I will always advocate for is data-based policies that reduce incidents of gun violence.”
Sande said she supported gun control measures but didn’t want to infringe on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. She said any proposed gun legislation should consider the benefits and drawbacks.
Tax credits
On a proposed film tax credit expansion, La Rue Hatch said she has been very vocal in her opposition to what she views as “massive giveaways of public dollars.”
Public dollars should stay in public services, she said, arguing that research from other states with film tax credit expansions shows that there is very little return on investment.
Sande said she is open to discussing a film tax credit expansion plan that would benefit Nevadans, especially people from underserved communities. She said she would have supported funding the A’s stadium.
Looking at the business implications and job growth, Sande said the legislation made sense.
“It’s very exciting,” she said. “There’s a big baseball presence here and having another team, a professional team … always helps these communities.”
La Rue Hatch voted against providing public funding for the Oakland A’s stadium, a decision she stands by, pointing out that her community was, and still is, opposed to the legislation.
“Until our schools are fully funded and our unhoused folks on the street have a place to go and our mental health systems are functioning, we can’t afford to give this money away,” she said.
