While the House of Representatives is reportedly swinging to red from blue, a Democrat and political newcomer has claimed the Republican-held seat in Washington state not far from the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
Meanwhile, a narrow victory by incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) over state attorney general Adam Laxalt (R) gives Democrats a 50-49 edge in the Senate with one race in Georgia awaiting a December runoff.
The latest House of Representatives election numbers updated Thursday morning by NBC News show Republicans claiming control of the lower chamber 221-to 214. The number needed for a majority is 218.
Out in Eastern Washington state, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat who owns an auto repair shop with her husband, claimed 50.2% of the vote in this month’s general election for Washington’s third congressional district, beating out Joe Kent, a former U.S. Army Ranger backed by former President Donald Trump, by 3,000 votes, according to the Washington Secretary of State’s office.
The Secretary of State figures were last updated, Nov. 16. The Associated Press called the race for Gluesenkamp Perez over the weekend, according to Washington news reports.
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), the incumbent and member of the House Appropriations Committee, one of 10 House GOP members who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection, was eliminated in an August primary. Herrera Beutler, who often voted with fellow GOP appropriator Dan Newhouse on Hanford funding issues, finished third in the primary behind Gluesenkamp Perez and Kent.
Although Newhouse also voted to impeach Trump, he survived a multi-party primary and won the general election easily over a Democratic challenger.
The third congressional district borders Newhouse’s fourth district that includes Benton and Franklin counties, where Hanford is located.
A Democratic win in Nevada ensures that the party will control the Senate with 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie breaking vote.
According to election results from the Nevada secretary of state, the incumbent senator captured around 48.9% of the vote compared to Laxalt’s 48.0%, a difference of roughly 9,000 votes as of Thursday morning.
During her time on Capitol Hill, Cortez Masto has been an immovable opponent of the mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nye County, Nev. The senator, elected in 2016, has lobbied over the last several fiscal years to keep funding for Yucca Mountain out of the federal budget and proposed legislation aimed at blocking the Department of Energy from accessing federal funds to develop the site. She has also been active on Office of Environmental Management issues at the Nevada National Security Site.
Cortez Masto in 2016 won a special election to take over in the Senate for the retiring Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Reid in 2010 was partly responsible for the Barack Obama administration’s decision to pull federal funding for the Yucca Mountain site, a decision that has stuck despite then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to restart the project in 2018.
Also in the midterms last week, the Silver State elected a Republican governor. Former Clark County, Nev., sheriff Joe Lombardo (R) defeated incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) by a margin of around 17,000 votes.
Sisolak in September asked NRC to allow Nevada to make a formal motion to cancel the agency’s long-stalled review of the Yucca Mountain site.
