Fundraising Totals Spell Trouble for Democratic Incumbent in Key Assembly Race

Democratic Assemblywoman Shea Backus has raised only $68,103 for her reelection campaign in Assembly District 37 (AD-37). In comparison, GOP challenger David Brog has more than doubled Backus’s anemic haul, raising an impressive $151,713.

Brog told The Globe, “I’m glad we’re off to such a strong start. But we’ve only just begun to fight. We’re going to accelerate the pace in 2024 to make sure we outwork Shea Backus, flip this seat and save our state. I hope that everyone who cares about the future of Nevada will join me.”

Brog entered the Assembly race with established name ID. In 2022, Brog placed second out of eight candidates in the Republican primary for Nevada’s 1st congressional district.

Additionally, Brog received the endorsement of Governor Joe Lombardo, who, unlike his Republican predecessor, has taken an active role in endorsing numerous Republican candidates in legislative races as Republicans vie to gain seats in the Democrats’ control of the state legislature. According to his campaign’s financial report, Brog received $2,500 from Lombardo’s Nevada Way PAC.

Assembly District 37 is targeted as a GOP pickup opportunity, a key Assembly seat in 2024 to end the Democrat supermajority in the state’s lower house.

In 2022, Backus held her seat by only 800 votes, wining 50.49 percent of the votes in an evenly split district. According to the 2020 Census, the district is evenly split between Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Yet, her voting record may not align with a majority of her constituents as Backus has consistently voted with her left-of-center colleagues.

One such vote was to kill opportunity scholarships for low-income families. Lombardo referred to the partisan blockade as an “unimaginable injustice.” Backus received her largest donation, $10,000, from the Clark County Education Association, the largest teachers union in the Silver State.

Adding to her partisan record, Backus sponsored and passed the controversial National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, introduced a bill that would, according to critics, “pave the way for government to control currency,” and aligned with the Democratic majority to implement their progressive agenda through a variety of constitutional amendments, including enshrining “rights” for the ever-changing climate and environment.

In Brog’s campaign announcement, Brog took aim at Backus’s extremism: “Nevadans deserve common sense leaders who refuse to promote extreme ideologies. But Shea Backus and her colleagues in Carson City voted time after time for radical measures that have increased our crime rate, our prices and our tax burden. We need advocates who will work with Governor Lombardo to solve the problems facing our state rather than creating them. Together, we will restore common sense to Carson City.”