The future of elections in key swing state of Nevada hinges on these two Reno-area races
Tammy Holt-Still stood at the podium at a local government board meeting in Reno in May and pointed her finger in the air as she scolded her elected officials.
The first in a series of speakers, Holt-Still slapped her mail-in ballot on the stand several times and said she didn’t want it. “I want you guys to do your jobs correctly and start protecting us citizens correctly,” she told the Washoe County Commission.
Nicholas St. Jon was clad in a camouflage hat reading, “Jesus is my savior. Trump is my president,” and a black T-shirt that said “Easy to vote, hard to cheat.” He told a Republican commissioner whom the local party had disowned that she needed to resign.
This is a battleground county that President Joe Biden won by five points in 2020 and was key to his winning Nevada’s six electoral votes. But in the wake of Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election, a combination of vitriol, conspiracy theories, and a wealthy donor have given far-right Republicans growing influence over local politics.
The battleground is the Washoe County Commission, which has the power to make some local election policies, appoint the local election administrator, and decide whether to certify the results of elections from municipal government to the presidency. Control hinges on winning one of two races in the next six months.
The first is a June 11 primary in a Republican-leaning district. Several Republicans are vying to unseat Commissioner Clara Andriola, whom they accuse of being a Republican in Name Only. The next is the Nov. 5 general election, in which a Republican is seeking to unseat Democratic Chair Alexis HIll, who has fought Republican proposals to upend how elections are run. Winners will be seated in January.
If the insurgent Republicans pick up either of those seats, they could have a majority that votes against certifying election results starting in 2025.
“What we’d really like to see is true Republicans on the county commission,” said Bruce Parks, the chair of the Washoe County Republican Party. He said true Republicans support his party’s platform, which would significantly restrict how people can vote.
Since 2020, the county has already seen two election administrators leave their jobs, with at least one saying she was trying to escape threats and harassment. The commission is supposed to sign off on the results of all elections, but two of the five commissioners have voted against certifying at least one recent election.
“There’s this push by a very vocal minority, and they are attacking the very — the integrity of our voter process here in Washoe County,” said Carissa Snedeker, the chair of the Democratic Party of Washoe County, which she called "the swingiest county in the swingiest state."
“We’re really nervous,” Snedeker told USA TODAY. “We’re just concerned that we’re going to get an extremist on the county commission, and then there’s so much at stake.”
Swing vote not seen as Republican enough
Perhaps the most significant race for the future of Nevada’s elections is the June 11 Republican primary for Washoe County’s District 4 commissioner race, a Republican-leaning district where four Republican candidates are vying to unseat Andriola, the embattled incumbent. Early voting is underway. The winner of the primary is likely to win Nov. 5.
County commissions in Nevada certify every election, and in Washoe and Clark counties, the commissions also vote to confirm the local election administrator, called a voter registrar. The current voter registrar is serving on an interim basis after the last two people in that job quit in the wake of harassment and intense scrutiny from right-wing activists.
Andriola, who declined to comment for this story, is the commission’s swing vote. She votes with Democrats to certify elections and voted to make a Democrat the chair. The county Republican Party wanted her to support a long-serving Republican who proposed to have the county use paper ballots, hand count votes, and put law enforcement at polling places.
At the most recent meeting, St. John, the public commenter, read from a piece of paper and accused Andriola of vacating her seat and wrongfully accepting her salary. “Clara we’re trying to give you a chance to step down gracefully, because as I pursue this, eventually it’s going to come to a head, and you could find yourself serving a lot of time,” he said.
When the board chair told him he wasn’t allowed to single out one board member, he barked back, “Quit interrupting me.” A buzzer went off and he retreated back to a small crowd where a man held up a sign calling the chair a “queen tyrant.”
“She represents the most conservative district in all of Washoe County, but she is clearly not voting according to the wishes of her constituency,” Parks, chair of the Washoe County Republican Party, which ousted Andriola from the party in January for criticisms that included her views on election administration.
The Republican Party’s resolution said Andriola “intentionally and willfully failed to uphold the Republicans and the Republican brand, particularly as it relates to election reforms and spending” and highlighted the party’s election integrity committee, chaired by prominent Republican activist Robert Beadles.
Beadles is one of the local party's top donors, shelling out more than $37,000, according to records from the Nevada Secretary of State. Nationwide, he’s poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into electing like-minded people, according to a 2022 Reuters investigation.
Beadles is known to come to commission meetings and rattle off allegations against the commission. He unsuccessfully sued the county alleging election fraud and publicly accused a former voter registrar of “treason," suggesting she be jailed. Efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.
"I just want to make sure our votes count, period," Beadles told Reuters. "Correctly. Legitimately."
Former election worker seeks to take swing seat
One of Andriola’s leading primary opponents is Tracey Hilton-Thomas, a former election worker who says on her campaign website that she is “committed to rebuilding our elections department.” Her Facebook page includes false information about elections and photos of her with Donald Trump and his close ally Kash Patel.
Patel said on a podcast in December, months before he took a photo with Hilton-Thomas, that the left “lied to Americans over and over again to rig a presidential election."
Judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats alike all over the country have repeatedly shut down the Trump team's lawsuits alleging election fraud, and there is no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020.
Hilton-Thomas said her advocacy on local elections started in early 2021, when she sent a four-page email to the county commission proposing changes and alleging, among other things, that a handful of Washoe County voters cast ballots both in person and by mail, and that others attempted to vote twice.
Hilton-Thomas said she did not have documentation for her allegation. A state-level review of hundreds of claims of election violations in the 2020 election found no evidence of widespread fraud.
“Never would I have imagined my simple suggestions would have met with such resistance,” Hilton-Thomas wrote in an email to USA TODAY. She said the county should create a citizens advisory board for elections in to give voters more confidence in the county’s elections.
Hilton-Thomas campaigned for the same seat in 2022 during an abandoned effort that Beadles funded to recall the previous commissioner for reasons including "failure to address election integrity concerns and resolutions." Hilton-Thomas said Beadles was planning to support her if the race happened, but it didn’t. Her website at the time said she was running for the seat “to fix our broken elections, restore public trust, and ensure free and fair elections.”
Another top contender for Andriola's seat is Mark Lawson, a former fire chief who is embroiled in a criminal scandal. Lawson says on his campaign website he wants to improve "government openness, transparency, and accountability." He told the USA TODAY Network he wants to switch the county paper ballots and come up with a compromise on reforming the county's election system. He also called voter ID "very necessary."
Parks, the chair of the Washoe County Republican Party, wants all elected Republicans to follow a platform that includes requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, replacing electronic voting machines with paper ballots, requiring a government issued photo ID, and aggressively purging voter rolls of inaccurate records.
Similar measures have been proposed across the country as ways to prevent fraud, but voting rights groups say those restrictions disenfranchise eligible voters and paper ballots are more likely to cause errors than prevent them.
“That is the yardstick by which you will be measured while you are in office,” Parks said. “If you have a problem with anything in that platform, maybe you need to consider changing your party.”
Democratic chair battles Republicans on elections
On the November ballot, voters will decide whether to keep in office County Commission Chair Alexis Hill, a Democrat, who has been battling the two right-wing Republicans on the commission, Michael Clark and Jeanne Herman.
Hill said she has pushed back on putting some Republican election proposals on the meeting agenda when they're illegal or get in the way of the county doing its job. She said she also pushed back on resolutions to require to hand-counting ballots because of cost and staff concerns.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told USA TODAY the county's job under state law is to administer the day-to-day operations of elections, but some of the GOP's suggestions, such as requiring the registrar of voters to be elected, would require changes to state law.
"If you're trying to circumvent state law, in order to do that you have to go to the legislature, just like if I want to change state law or implement certain things," Aguilar said. He suggested, instead, that counties build out their capacity to process ballots.
“If they refuse to certify the canvass, obviously we’d end up in litigation, and it’d be in the courts,” Aguilar said. He said he was not aware of any time in recent history a county has refused to certify a vote, but that he would expect there to be an emergency hearing.
Hill also temporarily banned public comments during meetings after local GOP activists would come to meetings and berate the commission for hours at the start of each meeting over election concerns and other criticisms. Her decision to ban public comments was met with months of protest that lengthened meetings further until Hill brought the public comments back.
“What they’re trying to do is disrupt the required administration of our elections, and so it’s really upsetting actually, really, to be fighting this on my own board,” said Hill, who won her seat in 2020. "I am trying to be strong for the community that I love and grew up in."
Hill pointed to Nevada’s presidential primary in February, in which Donald Trump was not on the ballot and Nikki Haley lost to “none of these candidates.” Hill, another Democratic commissioner and Andriola voted to certify the election, but Clark voted against certification. Herman was absent for that vote but voted against certifying results of the primary and general elections in 2022, before Clark joined the commission. Republican activists protested against certification at that meeting.
An analysis of the 2022 primary by the Nevada Secretary of State's office found almost all reported violations were complaints about the process and did not provide evidence of actual fraud.
“I’m not an election denier by any stretch of the imagination,” Clark said before he voted against certification on the basis of there being too many people on the voter rolls. The vote followed more than an hour of public commenters. “If the rolls aren’t accurate, the outcome won’t be accurate.”
Herman did not respond to an interview request from USA TODAY.
Complaints about too many people on voter rolls is common on the right, especially among those who question the outcome of the 2020 election. The Republican National Committee sued the state in an effort to remove people from voter rolls, and the Washoe County Republican Party platform calls on the county “to continuously update the voter rolls and aggressively purge inaccurate records."
But earlier this month, the commission voted 5-0 to accept the results of a successful recall election spurred by allegations of mismanagement that the recalled official said were false. Hill quipped from the dais, “First canvass that we’ve ever passed unanimously, very interesting.” She said in an interview the vote was unanimous because her Republican colleagues agreed with the outcome. Clark countered that he voted to certify because the county election administrator and secretary of state ran the election well.
Headed into November, Clark said he is neutral on whether to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election and hasn't made a decision. "I am not going to say that I’m going to not support it or support it," he said. "I’m going to wait until the election’s over."
Robert Beadles funds Republican who lost in 2020
Hill’s likely Republican opponent is former commissioner Marsha Berkbigler, who is seeking a rematch after serving two terms and losing her bid for a third. Berkbigler received $5,000 from Beadles, nearly half of her 2024 campaign money.
At a 2022 commission meeting, Beadles accused members of the commission of needing to cheat, of committing treason, and wanting to “ramp up” election fraud. He rattled off a list of accusations and questions about the local 2020 election and said Hill beat Berkbigler “suddenly, out of the blue.”
Berkbigler, for her part, told USA TODAY she is not an election denier. “I take money from my campaign from anybody who wants to support integrity, honesty and transparency, and that is what Mr. Beadles came to me about,” she said. “That’s who I am. I don’t take money from people because they buy me, because I’m not buyable.”
She declined to say whether the county had fair elections in the past, instead saying, “I think that if we fix a few of the problems in the voter registrar’s office, then we clearly will be having free and fair elections.”
Andriola and Hill may both survive their challenges. Protest votes against Andriola, who is well-funded, are likely to split among four opponents and Hill has a significant fundraising lead over Berkbigler. But the Trumpist wing of the local Republican Party is eager to replace them and pursue its agenda.
"I hope they both lose," Clark, a Republican on the commission, said of Andriola and Hill. "These people are absolutely, in my world, the example of what’s wrong with the political system in America."
Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Mark Robison contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nevada elections hinge on these two local races near Reno
