With Democrats seeking to maintain their two-thirds majority in the Assembly, and just one seat shy of a supermajority in the Senate, swingy Assembly District 29 could prove key to whether the party can achieve enough power to neutralize the Republican governor’s veto power and accomplish their legislative agenda next session.
The long-competitive, slightly Democratic-leaning district cuts across large swaths of Henderson, with some 33 percent of voters registered as Democrats, 32.5 percent registered as nonpartisan and 26 percent as Republican. With five-term Democratic Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen’s upcoming departure, Democrat Joe Dalia and Republican Annette Dawson Owens are vying for the newly open seat.
Dawson Owens, 57, who has been endorsed by Lombardo, has worked as an educator in Nevada for decades and served as the school readiness policy director for the nonprofit Children’s Advocacy Alliance. Her time in education, she said, was one of the main reasons she decided to run for office for the first time.
This is also Dalia’s first time running for office, although he is no stranger to politics. The 33-year-old Michigan Law School alum previously interned with Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, and has worked as a privacy attorney for numerous Silicon Valley companies, including his current employer, Facebook parent company Meta. Dalia is a native Nevadan.
Take a look below for more on their policy positions.
Education
Dawson Owens and Dalia said that Nevada’s education system was their main motivation for running.
If she could wave a magic wand, Dawson Owens said that she’d increase investments into early childhood education such as kindergarten readiness programs, which have been shown to have lifelong benefits.
Dalia says that his top priorities are increasing funding (Nevada’s per-pupil funding is consistently among the lowest in the nation) and increasing teacher recruitment and retention.
Dalia also said he is in favor of free lunches for all students regardless of their household income, a topic that has become mired in controversy after Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed a bill last session that would have continued Nevada’s pandemic-era universal free lunch program, saying that a large number of students were already eligible for free meals.
School choice
Dawson Owens said that she supports providing state funding for school choice options.
Such programs, like Nevada’s own Opportunity Scholarships, subsidize the cost of attending private schools for eligible low- and middle-income students. Opportunity Scholarships, which have limited enrollment and strict income eligibility requirements, have been a lightning rod issue since their creation in 2015 and are likely to come up again during the next legislative session.
Dawson Owens said that she believes that parents should have the right to be able to select a school for their child and that taxpayer money should “follow the student,” regardless of whether they attend a public, private or charter school.
Dalia, like other Democrats, said he opposes such school choice policies. He expressed concerns that school choice policies will further divert attention from helping Nevada’s struggling public schools.
Health care
Dawson Owens and Dalia agreed that Nevada’s health care system needs to be revamped and that the state needs more providers.
The Republican candidate said he believes that the state needs to invest into educational opportunities and build more hospitals to draw additional medical professionals to the state. Dawson Owens says that she believes a large part of Nevada’s health care issues comes from a lack of adequate investment.
Another one of Dawson Owens’ top concerns is the lack of mental health providers. She said she is troubled by the fact that Nevada currently ranks as the worst state for mental health, according to one recent analysis.
Dalia has similar concerns. He believes that putting more money toward Nevada’s medical training programs can help boost provider retention, and he wants to look at “cumbersome” insurance practices, such as heavily relying on prior authorizations, that he says can harm patients and doctors’ offices.
Dalia also supports adopting prescription drug price caps negotiated by Medicare under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Reproductive rights
Dawson Owens said that she supports access to abortion services in certain instances. Although the Republican candidate didn’t offer a clear yes or no about whether the state should expand existing abortion protections, she said she understands when “health” or “the situation” call for an abortion.
Dalia said that protecting abortion access is an “easy yes.” He also said that he agreed with a recent Nevada Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state Medicaid program to cover abortions.
Elections
If passed, Ballot Question 7 would require Nevadans to bring an ID when voting, joining 24 other states that have similar requirements.
Dalia said that such voter ID requirements are part of wider political efforts across the country to disenfranchise voters, particularly those from marginalized communities,
When asked about the ballot question, Dawson Owens said that she believes “secure” elections are the biggest priority.
“We want people to have trust in the election system,” she said.
Neither candidate believes that widespread voter fraud happened during the 2020 election, and neither raised concerns about “ballot harvesting,” a practice now legalized in Nevada involving people collecting and submitting ballots on behalf of others.
Vetoes
Last year, Lombardo issued a record 75 vetoes, and Dawson Owens said that she will do her best if elected to protect his power to veto.
Dawson Owens has been a longtime supporter of Lombardo, and says that she met with the governor’s team prior to joining the race this year, vowing to “always” support him.
For Dalia, Lombardo’s vetoes rang a bit of an alarm bell, especially given that he considered many of the rejected bills — such as the one allowing terminally ill patients to self-administer a life-ending drug — to be of quality. Dalia says that vetoes should only be used for special circumstances.
Housing
Dawson Owens said that freeing up federally owned land — a proposal with bipartisan support that includes the governor — could help create more affordable housing.
But for Dalia, the “devil’s in the details.” Although he broadly agrees that more federal land should be released for development, he has concerns about conservation efforts and would want to ensure that Nevada’s tribal reservations would remain unaffected.
Dalia also says he’s open to proposals removing the state’s summary eviction process so that the landlord would file first, and wants to find ways to make the process more fair to tenants.
