Experts agree the congressional race between Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) and her Republican opponent Drew Johnson, a conservative policy and tax analyst, in swingy District 3 leans squarely toward Lee this November.
But as the election reaches its home stretch, both candidates have been ramping up efforts to draw in voters in District 3, which encompasses parts of Las Vegas and Henderson and where 35 percent are registered as nonpartisans, 30 percent are Democrats, and 26 percent are Republican.
Although former President Donald Trump won the district in 2016, Lee has represented it since 2019, winning re-election in 2020 by 3 percentage points and by 4 points in 2022, after it was redrawn to be more favorable to Democrats.
Lee, 57, remains significantly ahead of Johnson in fundraising. She has raised nearly $5.4 million dollars this cycle compared with the roughly $1.2 million Johnson has raised (more than half of that amount was self-funded) according to the Federal Election Commission. An analysis from AdImpact, meanwhile, found that Democrats have poured nearly $7.8 million into ads backing Lee since the primary, while GOP-aligned groups have spent a little more than $20,000 in the race during that period.
Lee said that in addition to continuing her mission to revamp Nevada’s economy, as a deeply committed bipartisan lawmaker, she’d like to continue to fight against the hyper-partisanship that has taken over Congress.
“I’ve been ranked the most bipartisan member of Congress,” Lee noted. “I’m going to continue to do that. I think that this country is served better when Congress comes together in the middle.”
Outside of Congress, Lee spent 25 years leading nonprofits, including Communities In Schools of Nevada, a local organization that helps at-risk kids graduate high school. The Ohio-born congresswoman has been in Nevada since 1993 and said that one of her main motivations for running again is to continue to work for the community’s interests, not “Washington’s.”
This isn’t Johnson’s first race either. The 44-year-old moved to Las Vegas about nine years ago and ran for Clark County Commission in 2022, losing by less than half a percentage point to incumbent Justin Jones. The Tennessee native said that his working-class upbringing drew him to politics, contending that seeing “the failures of government” made him want to “hold government accountable as a career.”
His 2022 Clark County race, he said, taught him some “really important lessons.”
“A lot of people wanted me to say that the election was stolen,” Johnson said. “The fact of the matter is that we as Republicans stole the election from ourselves because we did not turn out.”
Although Johnson has criticized firebrand conservatives and says he identifies as a “small L libertarian,” the Republican candidate has been endorsed by Donald Trump and members of the Freedom Caucus, widely considered to be the most far-right bloc in the House. Currently, he is also a senior scholar at National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank that does work in free markets, environmental and regulatory policy.
Lee and Johnson were highly critical of each other in their interviews with The Nevada Independent. Johnson repeatedly claimed that Lee failed to help working-class families during her congressional tenure and that he would finally bring a better economic outlook for the group.
Lee, meanwhile, says that Johnson is insincere about his platform — especially his support of abortion protections. Lee contends that Johnson is trying “to have it both ways” — receiving the support of candidates such as Donald Trump, who was president when Roe. v Wade was overturned — and is “ducking behind Nevada’s strong pro-choice laws.”
“If you’re throwing the decision back to the states, then that means that you are OK with politicians making a decision that women should be making,” Lee said.
ON THE POLICIES
Social Security
Lee said that one of her biggest accomplishments is her work on Social Security. While representing the district, Lee’s office has closed more than 7,000 cases for Southern Nevadans and returned more than $31 million to individuals for casework involving Social Security, the IRS or the Department of Veterans Affairs, she said.
Social Security is somewhat in free fall right now, however, with its reserves projected to be entirely depleted by 2035, according to the Congressional Research Service. Congress has been scrambling to find solutions, whether that’s raising revenue, making cuts to the program or some combination of the two.
Democrats have come after Johnson for public statements he has made supporting raising the retirement age to fill the spending gap. A spokesperson for Lee said the congresswoman does not support raising the retirement age or cutting Social Security.
However, in an interview this June with The Nevada Independent, Johnson said he believes that the shortfall can be addressed without raising the retirement age by auditing the Social Security Disability Insurance rolls and cutting government spending elsewhere. Johnson said that when he began his campaign, he talked to seniors and veterans who had encountered issues with their Social Security — a key motivator behind his decision to run.
“These are things that Susie, admittedly, was good at early in her time in Congress, but as time has gone on, her priorities have changed,” Johnson said.
Housing
Lee and Johnson agreed that housing costs are one of the top issues facing Nevadans.
If elected, Lee said she will continue to fight to make federal land available for housing developments (more than 85 percent of land within Nevada’s borders is owned by the federal government). In July, the House passed Lee’s Accelerating Appraisals and Conservation Efforts (AACE) Act, which she said would cut bureaucratic red tape and speed up housing projects on federal lands.
She said that she would also fight for additional funding for affordable housing projects across the state.
Johnson said that Nevada needs to get “as much federal land back in our hands as possible,” although he expressed concerns about conservation efforts and water rights.
Abortion
Lee said that it’s crucial that Congress enshrines and protects a woman’s right to an abortion. She is also a proponent of The Right to IVF Act, which would protect access to and expand insurance coverage of fertility treatments, and the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023, which bans certain restrictions on abortion.
Lee conceived her two children through in vitro fertilization, saying that for her, the stakes are personal.
Johnson previously said the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade “appropriately” left the question to the states, and he said he “strongly opposes a federal abortion ban.” He also said that he would oppose any restrictions on IVF.
Tax policy
Johnson says that he is in favor of keeping the Trump-era tax cuts that slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and cut individual income tax rates as well, although many of the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act helping individuals and families expire in 2025. He contends that “the narrative that [tax cut legislation]has only helped rich people is one of the greatest falsehoods I think I’ve ever seen” and that it boosted the middle class.
An analysis from the Brookings Institute backs up Johnson, finding that although the cuts had the largest benefits for the wealthy, provisions such as the increased standard deduction and expanded child tax credit did benefit middle-income Americans.
Both candidates say they are in favor of expanding the child tax credit and ending taxes on tips.
Lee, however, says she wants “very specific guardrails” on any no tax on tip policy, ensuring that it also applies to gig workers such as Uber drivers. A spokesperson for her campaign said that “too often has Trump given tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans.”
Health care
Lee said that she is “absolutely” in favor of letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices.
During the September presidential debate, Trump took a stab at the Affordable Care Act (ACA, widely known as Obamacare) and called for it to be eliminated, reopening the debate about the once unpopular policy. Although Lee said she’s against eliminating the ACA, she’d like to see some “refinements” to it, continuing to home in and make pricing models more affordable.
Johnson, on the other hand, called the ACA “horrific.” When the policy was instituted, Johnson was in his 20s and was paying “out of pocket” for his insurance. After the ACA passed, Johnson had to purchase minimum essential coverage, as mandated by the ACA, which he said was an additional expense that cut his quality of life.
Johnson didn’t directly say if he was opposed to allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but contended that lowering the costs (an accomplishment that Lee has touted) could stifle medical innovation. He suggested that lowering drug prices will “strip the intellectual property rights” from pharmaceutical companies.
“The biggest concern I have with Susie Lee’s proposals — with a lot of these Democratic proposals — is to basically cut the amount of money that a drug company can make from bringing a drug to market,” Johnson said.
Immigration
Lee said that “comprehensive immigration reform” is necessary. She has called for stricter border control and additional pathways for legal residency.
If elected, Lee said that she would be in favor of reintroducing a bipartisan border security deal that GOP senators rejected at the behest of Trump that would have hired 1,500 new Border Patrol agents and cracked down on fentanyl trafficking.
Lee previously supported the Bipartisan Dignity Act, which would create a path to citizenship for immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, and opposed her party’s decision to end Title 42, a public health policy from 1944 activated during the Trump administration that allowed U.S. officials to turn away migrants who came to the U.S.-Mexico border on the grounds of preventing COVID-19.
Johnson said that he would push to restore Title 42 if elected. Although he said he isn’t in favor of a mass deportation campaign — a policy that the Trump campaign has pushed for — he is in favor of making it “easier to kick out illegal immigrants.”
Yucca Mountain
Lee said that she is opposed to using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when there will be an accident,” she said, adding that it could endanger human lives and railway infrastructure.
However, Lee said she is open to the creation of a “consent-based siting” for a nuclear waste storage facility, meaning that a community must agree to host the facility and play an active role in the decision-making process. Currently, Lee is co-chair of the House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus with Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN).
Johnson said that as Yucca Mountain is not in his district, he “defers” his opinion to “the people most affected.” However, Johnson has previously said that he could potentially see being more open to the proposal.
Election policy
Lee said that she is “undecided” about Question 3, which would implement open primaries and ranked-choice voting, expressing hesitancy regarding the “mechanics” of how it would work and its efficacy. High-ranking elected Democrats, the state Democratic Party and the state Republican Party have opposed the measure.
Lee is also opposed to Question 7, the voter ID initiative on this year’s ballot, contending that it is a part of a larger GOP effort to undermine elections and voting.
Johnson said that he is in favor of Question 7, saying that requiring ID to vote “just makes sense.” He also said that he is against Question 3.
