The contest for a Nevada Senate seat up for grabs in the upcoming midterm elections is, according to one poll, too close to call with around a month remaining until Silver Staters cast their votes.
Incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) trails her challenger, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R), by just two percentage points among likely voters, according to CNN polling data published Thursday afternoon. Cortez Masto, who took office in 2017, is polling at around 46% of likely voters compared to Laxalt’s 48%.
Among registered voters, Cortez Masto leads Laxalt, 47% to 44%, the poll said. Both figures are within the survey’s margin of error.
Although the outcome of November’s Senate race remains unclear, both candidates have already pledged their opposition to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The Nye County, Nev., site, designated by Congress to store the nation’s spent fuel inventory, has been on ice since 2010, when the Barack Obama administration pulled the project’s funding.
Cortez Masto is an avowed opponent of the repository project, most recently applauding state Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) Sep. 20 for his move to cancel the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing review for Yucca Mountain.
Over her last five years in Congress, Cortez Masto has become a regular voice of dissent on the moribund nuclear waste repository. The senator lobbied to keep Yucca Mountain funding out of the federal spending plan over the last several fiscal years. She has also repeatedly brought forward legislation, most recently in March 2021, aimed at blocking Yucca Mountain wholesale by barring the Department of Energy from accessing its federal Nuclear Waste Fund for repository development without stakeholder consent.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Laxalt told RadWaste Monitor via email Thursday that the Republican candidate “has been and remains opposed to the transportation and deep geologic burial of the nation’s high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.”
During his time as Nevada’s attorney general, Laxalt successfully countered a 2018 lawsuit from the state of Texas aimed at fast-tracking NRC’s review of the Yucca Mountain project. Laxalt also oversaw the Silver State’s suit against the Department of Energy over its plan to ship weapons-usable plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site.
The decision to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain was due in part to successful political maneuvering from Nevada’s congressional delegation, including Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), whose old seat Cortez Masto holds.
