Democrats’ path to a supermajority in the Senate could run through a swingy southwestern Las Vegas Senate district, where a wealthy education advocate with deep family ties to Republican politicians is challenging an incumbent seeking her second full term.
The path to victory for Sen. Dallas Harris (D-Las Vegas) is complicated by the fact that the Culinary Union — a longtime force for getting Democrats elected — withdrew its endorsement of her and other sitting legislators because of their support for a bill ending a statutory mandate that hotel rooms be cleaned each day, and instead endorsed her Republican opponent, Lori Rogich.
The swing district is located in a fast-growing area of the southwestern Las Vegas Valley, bounded by the 215 Beltway, Interstate 15 and Durango Drive. Registered Democratic voters (30 percent) outnumber registered Republican voters (25 percent), but nonpartisans make up a plurality of the district with nearly 38 percent of voters.
Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, said the union endorsed Rogich “because she is a better candidate.” He also cited Harris’ votes in 2023 against the union’s efforts to introduce a state lottery, the room cleaning mandate and a union-backed public financing plan to support the establishment of a stadium for the Oakland Athletics in Las Vegas.
Rogich said she would not vote to allow lotteries but would have supported the Oakland A’s stadium. Harris said state lotteries tend to put funding weight on lower-income communities without much public benefit.
Born in Las Vegas, Harris received bachelor’s degrees from UNLV in computer science and psychology. She went on to receive her master’s in public policy from Claremont Graduate University in California and her law degree from The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.
An attorney, Harris was first appointed in 2018 to replace then-Sen. Aaron Ford (D-Las Vegas). She is seeking re-election to a district she won with almost 59 percent of the vote in 2020.
Raised by a single mother, Harris said she knows what it’s like when times get tough, an electric bill fluctuates and it’s hard to make rent.
“There’s a lot of work to do to make the lives of Nevadans better,” she said. “I’m a grounded person who cares about ensuring that disparities are closed where they’re found.”
Her Republican challenger owns the Rogich Law Firm and moved to Nevada about 20 years ago. Rogich holds a law degree from Rutgers University, which she earned while raising a child on her own, and is a regulatory compliance attorney focused on the cannabis industry.
Rogich, who describes herself as a special needs advocate, fought a seven-year legal battle with the Clark County School District on behalf of her daughter. The case set a national legal precedent protecting children who have conditions such as dyslexia, autism and auditory processing challenges.
She said Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, asked her to run as part of an effort to ensure that there is no one-party rule in the Legislature and to protect his ability to veto legislation. She said she views the role as a bipartisan one, with a focus on helping families.
“It takes a bipartisan effort to make that change that many families want,” Rogich said. “It’s an opportunity to continue to help people, and use my voice, use my experience and use my skills in order to do that.”
Harris said approximately 90 percent of the bills she’s passed have been bipartisan and she believes in legislating across the aisle and finding consensus. She said the two bills she was most proud of in the 2023 legislative session were her bill to end sundown sirens and another measure implementing a retirement savings program, designed and administered by the state government, that helps those lacking access to workplace retirement plans.
Harris has faced attacks this election cycle from the Lombardo-affiliated Better Nevada PAC, alleging that a bill Harris sponsored in 2023 would “make homeless camps like these legal in our neighborhoods.” The measure, SB142, sought to implement a “Homeless Persons’ Bill of Rights” that would guarantee any unhoused person the liberty to “use and move freely in or on public places” to the extent of any other Nevadan.
It did not pass out of the Legislature. Proponents of the measure said it would not invalidate any existing local ordinances, and it was designed to clarify the rights of people not living in a house.
Rogich said she was a teenage mom who worked and attended college at night. She said she’s a hard worker, fighter and willing to use her skills and experiences to be the voice of families in the district.
Rogich’s husband is Sig Rogich, who was the White House senior adviser to President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992, and the communications and campaign adviser to President Ronald Reagan and Bush and presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). In 1974, he founded R&R Partners, the largest advertising and consultancy firm in Nevada, running numerous state and local political campaigns in Nevada in the 1970s and 1980s.
Sig Rogich has also been the U.S. ambassador to Iceland, where he was born, and has a middle school in Summerlin named after him.
Harris said she’s spent more time being a tenant than a landlord and an employee who receives a paycheck than as someone who writes one, and that experience in Carson City is invaluable.
She added that one big difference between her and Rogich is who Rogich is married to.
Though Lori Rogich has described herself as a political newcomer on her campaign website, Harris said, “you can’t be married to a former United States ambassador for the first George Bush and be a newcomer to politics.”
“They’re involved in everything, things that I don’t even know about as a state senator,” she said. “Sig Rogich is pulling strings on so many things, and I think it’s a legitimate question to ask: Who would she be up there?”
Harris said that people don’t have the same questions about her and who she represents.
“I look forward to Election Day and being able to show that a people-powered campaign can, in fact, overcome monied interest and political clout,” Harris said.
Rogich responded to the criticism by saying it is “always unfortunate when a person implies that a woman politician is controlled by her husband.”
“I am a strong woman, and I worked hard for years to build a successful law firm, all while raising a family,” she said. “Shame on Dallas for trying to minimize another woman’s accomplishments.”
Below, we explore Harris’ and Rogich’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
If she could wave a magic wand and make one specific policy change to Nevada’s education system, Harris said she would make sure it was fully funded and able to deliver a high-quality education to every student.
She added that it’s vital for classrooms to be fully staffed, support staff to be properly paid, children to receive any specialized education they might need and that schools should not rely heavily on substitute teachers.
As part of the goal to fully fund education, she said she supports bringing Nevada’s per-pupil education funding in line with the national average. The state’s per-pupil spending is an estimated average of $12,863, about $4,417 less than the national average.
Rogich said she would want to implement a universal screening process that would help identify struggling readers within the first 30 days of school.
“There’s not anything in place that really can identify someone struggling,” Rogich said. “If you’re doing it universally, you may find a child that one would not perceive as struggling and catch them early.”
She did not give a definitive yes or no to increasing per-pupil education funding to the national average but noted Nevada’s low ranking and said “it’s something that needs to always be part of the dialogue.”
Both candidates largely aligned with their respective parties on whether to fund school meals for students regardless of household income.
Rogich did not give a direct answer, but pointed out that more than 80 percent of Nevada students already qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
Harris, who said she received free and reduced-price lunch growing up, said she would “without reservation” support funding for a universal school meal program.
“[Offering universal school meals] is this ability to kind of equalize the school experience for all children,” she said.
School choice
Harris said she does not support providing state funding to subsidize private education.
It was a view reinforced when, in 2023, Harris received a valentine from school choice advocates that said, “No more CRT [Critical Race Theory] or LGBTQIA+ in our schools.” Harris said at the time that the message she received made her hesitant to agree to publicly fund schools that may have fewer guardrails against anti-LGBTQ+ instruction than public schools.
Parents have the prerogative to choose private schools if they want to allow their child to have a religious education, but she worries about injecting public dollars into private schools that don’t have to follow the same guidelines as public schools.
She said alternative forms of education are available in the public education system, such as charter and magnet schools.
But Harris said it’s important to her that students currently receiving Opportunity Scholarships are not disrupted and she is personally committed to ensuring every child who is currently on the program can remain on it.
Rogich said she supports public education and subsidies for private education such as Opportunity Scholarships.
Rogich said her daughter didn’t receive the education she was entitled to because of a learning disability, and the school district refused to accept their offer of paying to bring in trained experts to help teach their daughter.
“We had that choice to pivot, put her in a private setting, but still continue to challenge the school district because they were wrong,” Rogich said.
She added that she supports income caps and ensuring that funding for a school choice program does not reduce public school budgets.
Reproductive rights
Both candidates said they support measures protecting in vitro fertilization (IVF) and will vote “yes” on Nevada’s Ballot Question 6, a measure seeking to enshrine existing abortion protections in the Nevada Constitution.
Harris said she 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.
Voter ID
Harris does not support Question 7, which seeks to implement voter ID, saying she has not seen anything definitive showing voter ID requirements would make Nevada’s voting system safer.
“I have seen lots of evidence that it would further impede people’s ability to vote,” she said. “The voter ID initiative coming forward is really a solution without a problem that might actually make voting a bit harder. And the unfortunate thing is, here in the United States, we’ve got an undervoting problem, not an over-voting problem.”
Rogich said she supports voter ID, and there are many identification requirements in the U.S., including if someone flies on an airplane or enters a cannabis dispensary.
Mental health
Harris said since her first legislative session in 2019, she’s been pushing the state to establish a crisis response system that moves away from a criminal justice-centered response toward a mental health-centered response.
“Mental health cannot be solved, and should not be addressed, in state prison systems and county jails,” Harris said.
The other piece to addressing mental health, she said, is ensuring that there are more mental health providers and that they are diverse and Nevada-grown, which could mean investing in internship and training programs.
Rogich said her first daughter died by suicide after battles with depression, and she wants to see adequate services in place, such as state-of-the-art mental health facilities.
Housing
Harris said the most effective solution to the state’s housing crisis is either gaining a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature or finding a way to work with the governor, who vetoed a large swath of housing bills the Legislature passed last year.
“We’ve got to get something done,” Harris said. “I believe that the governor has great ideas about opening up supply, but that’s not going to do it. We’ve got to do more.”
She wants to ensure the state’s most vulnerable citizens are not being price gouged, that assistance is available for people when they need it, and that the eviction process works for landlords and tenants.
Rogich said it’s important to streamline the permitting process to open up opportunities for developers so they can increase the state’s housing supply.
She said it’s also important to invest in bringing older homes up to livable standards.
Harris said Nevada’s rapid summary eviction process, in which a tenant must make the first filing in an eviction case, is out of step with a majority of other states. She supported a measure in 2023 that would have made it so landlords filed first, but it was vetoed.
“At bare minimum, that is one reform that we should take another hard look at,” Harris said.
Though Rogich said she supports Lombardo’s veto of the summary eviction change, she noted that eviction should be a last resort.
“The state’s summary eviction process tries to balance the interests of landlords in maintaining their property and investments and the interests of tenants in securing stable housing,” she said. “However, this balance is delicate, and we must continue to find ways to implement pre-court intervention programs for families at risk of eviction.”
Firearm policies
In 2023, Lombardo vetoed three gun control measures proposed by Democrats.
Harris, who proposed one of the three bills that was vetoed, described her measure as a “classic example of what conservatives say they would support when it comes to gun violence prevention legislation.”
The bill would have prevented someone who was convicted of a hate crime within the past 10 years from purchasing a gun. Data from the state indicates hate crimes have increased 75 percent since 2023.
Another measure that was included would have raised the legal age to purchase certain semiautomatic rifles and shotguns to 21, as well as closed a legal loophole in the state’s 2021 attempt to ban so-called “ghost guns.” Harris said the law had plenty of carve-outs for people who had military training and was aimed at addressing the use of assault weapons in mass shootings by people under the age of 21, which has been a trend in the U.S.
“We’ve shown that our society suffers when young folks who just maybe are not ready for these weapons get their hands on them,” she said.
Harris said she stands by her support of the third bill, which would have criminalized bringing a gun within 100 feet of an election site.
“This is America,” Harris said. “Voting is the most fundamental piece of our democracy. If anyone feels threatened to vote, we have all failed.”
Rogich said she supports Lombardo’s vetoes on these measures but supports mandatory prosecutions when individuals prohibited from possessing firearms purchase or possess them.
Tax credits
Harris, who voted against a public financing deal to build a stadium for the Oakland A’s in Las Vegas, said she stands by her decision.
“As far as I’m concerned, the evidence suggests that public[ly] funded stadiums do not generate a substantial return for the governments that invest in them,” she said. “I didn’t think this was a good deal for the state.”
Rogich said she would have supported the legislation, citing the number of jobs the project is expected to create.
“It’s not just constructing it, but it’s also the affiliated services,” she said.
On a proposed expansion of film tax credits, Harris said she has not yet seen a bill, and the details matter.
But she would approach such a bill with an open mind when it arrives.
Rogich said she would be open to considering expanding the state’s film tax credit system, but she would need to evaluate how the proposal would benefit communities and the state of Nevada.
