FAR-LEFT FIRESTORM: Benitez-Thompson One of America’s Most Radical Candidates

RENO, Nev. — Texas Congressman Brandon Gill is turning up the heat on Nevada Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson, branding the former Assembly leader one of the most “radical FAR-LEFT candidates in the ENTIRE COUNTRY” as Republicans intensify scrutiny of her record in the closing days of Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District race.

Republican nominee David Flippo amplified Gill’s attack, pointing to three issues that have increasingly followed Benitez-Thompson around Northern Nevada: her opposition to sex-based school bathroom restrictions, her support for expanding welfare eligibility to people convicted of felony drug offenses, and her tenure as chief of staff in Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office during controversial clemency cases.

Gill’s attack follows an even sharper broadside from President Donald Trump.

During a tele-rally for Flippo last week, Trump called Benitez-Thompson a “radical Democrat communist” before concluding: “I think she’s crazy.” Benitez-Thompson’s campaign responded by attacking Flippo’s own record and campaign controversies.

On school bathrooms, Benitez-Thompson’s legislative record stretches back more than a decade.

In 2015, she voted against Assembly Bill 375, which would have required students to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers corresponding with their biological sex while requiring schools to provide alternative accommodations for transgender students. Benitez-Thompson attacked the proposal on the Assembly floor as “the exact opposite of small government.” The bill failed 20-22, with Benitez-Thompson joining Democrats and five Republicans in opposition.

Republicans have condensed that vote into the far sharper campaign line that she supported “men in girls’ bathrooms.”

Then there is Assembly Bill 138.

Benitez-Thompson co-sponsored the 2021 legislation eliminating Nevada restrictions that had prevented certain people convicted of felony drug offenses from receiving TANF and SNAP benefits unless they met treatment-related requirements. The enacted law removed requirements that recipients participate in substance-abuse treatment or demonstrate that they were no longer possessing, using or distributing controlled substances.

The Assembly debate made the dispute explicit. Opponents warned that someone previously convicted of drug distribution could still be using or distributing drugs and receive benefits. Supporters countered that access to food assistance should not be used as leverage to enforce addiction treatment and argued the restrictions created barriers to successful reentry.

The clemency charge is more complicated.

Flippo’s campaign has accused Benitez-Thompson of supporting the early release of six convicted murderers while she served as Ford’s chief of staff. The Nevada Independent reported this week that Ford’s office supported clemency in six such cases during her tenure, but Benitez-Thompson herself was not a member of the Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners and ran the administrative side of the Attorney General’s Office. The available record therefore does not establish that she personally cast, or had authority to cast, those clemency votes.

Benitez-Thompson has campaigned on affordability, health care, public safety and immigration reform, portraying herself as a Northern Nevadan focused on bread-and-butter issues rather than national ideological fights.

Republicans are determined to make her Carson City record the election’s defining issue instead.

With Trump calling her “crazy,” Gill labeling her one of America’s most radical candidates and Flippo hammering votes dating back more than a decade, Benitez-Thompson’s effort to run as a pragmatic Northern Nevada Democrat is colliding head-on with a very different portrait Republicans are presenting to voters.

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