President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement may be the most powerful game-changing force in American politics today. The presumptive Republican standard bearer’s blessing helps potential primary winners outrun their rivals, and it does so quickly.
Drew Johnson, a candidate for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s Third Congressional District, is a perfect match for Trump’s thumbs up, both for what Johnson would bring to Capitol Hill and for the flamboyant inadequacy of his GOP opponents.
I have had the enormous pleasure of knowing Johnson as a personal friend and fellow freedom fighter in the conservative movement since 2002. He has used his abundant speaking, writing, and analytical skills to promote individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited government.
Johnson, a Tennessee native, scored an early coup when former Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. won an Academy Award for the greatest PowerPoint presentation ever — his chart-laden anti- “global warming” extravaganza, An Inconvenient Truth. Johnson’s think tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, consulted power bills, which are public domain in the Volunteer State. Johnson and his team discovered that Gore’s Nashville mansion devoured 20 times the electricity of a typical American home. The morning after Hollywood’s biggest night, Johnson made this inconvenient truth world famous. The warm glow of Gore’s 2007 Best Documentary victory soon cooled as his Oscar devolved into a prize for Best Achievement in Hypocrisy.
Johnson has collaborated with the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, and the Heritage Foundation, and published investigative pieces via Newsmax, the Washington Times, and the Daily Caller. Through these institutions, Johnson has identified some $60 billion in taxpayer-funded boondoggles that lawmakers subsequently junked. He has helped cut taxes, launch education-choice programs, and expand charter schools.
In 2022, Johnson ran for the Clark County Commission, which oversees greater Las Vegas and southern Nevada, where he and his wife, Sarah, have lived since 2015. Johnson won on election night, November 8. He maintained a 1,532-vote lead through the following Friday, November 11.
And then, as befalls too many Republicans, Democrat ballots magically trickled in. Johnson’s margin of victory evaporated. He was overtaken by incumbent Justin Jones, a protégé of former U.S. Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid. Jones beat Johnson by just 336 ballots out of 107,182 cast.
Johnson was one of Nevada’s top-performing Republicans in 2022. In Johnson’s district, he outpaced GOP gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo by 2.1% and US Senate candidate Adam Laxalt by 4.1%
Now, with the support of Nevada Lieutenant Governor Stavros Anthony, State Controller Andy Matthews, women’s sports preservationist Riley Gaines, and others, Johnson is channeling his conservative credentials and grassroots appeal into his U.S. House bid, in an extremely competitive seat.
“I will protect taxpayers’ hard-earned money, secure our borders, ensure government is transparent and accountable, and reduce inflation by slashing costly regulations and encouraging domestic energy production,” Johnson promises.
“America’s strength lies in fair elections and unbiased courts,” Johnson tells me. “Right now, we have elections that millions of Americans don’t trust and a two-tiered justice system that absolves Democrats and oppresses President Trump and other conservatives. I have been a government watchdog for 25 years. I have fought corruption and forced crooked officials out of office. If elected, I will take those skills to Congress and expose political witch hunts, election fraud, and the weaponization of our justice system so no American will suffer what President Trump has endured virtually every day since Obama-Biden’s FBI spied on his campaign in 2016.”
Johnson is a towering sunflower in a field of weeds. His three opponents are staggeringly wrong for the job. Johnson is the only credible conservative in his district and might be NV-3’s only sane Republican candidate.
•The good news about Dan Schwartz is that he overflows with new ideas. The bad news is that they usually involve tax hikes.
Nevada has no corporate income tax. While he was state treasurer, Schwartz tried to impose one — and failed. He also has advocated a 25-cent per-receipt food and drink tax, an airport-arrival levy, and — perfect for Sin City — a gambling tax hike.
Schwartz said in 2018: “I’m going to look at not raising taxes but if it becomes apparent that the people of this state will benefit greatly from increased revenues, then I will do that.”
No wonder Schwartz will not sign Americans for Tax Reform’s no-new-taxes pledge, as Johnson has done.
Schwartz has an unmistakable green streak. “I think at some point we have got to go to renewable energy,” he told The Nevada Independent. “I think we have to encourage solar and wind.” According to that news source, “He suggested the government has a role in making that happen.”
Like most socialists, Schwartz sees healthcare as an “economic right.” He also praises Biden’s student-loan/taxpayer bailout scheme. As Schwartz breezily told radio host Kevin Wall on April 22: “I’ve talked to some people who have had their loans forgiven, and they’re greatly relieved.” Those who repaid their loans, or never even requested them, probably resent Biden’s unconstitutional flimflam.
Since winning the treasurer’s office in 2014, Schwartz has become a three-time loser. “In 2018, Schwartz ran for governor, where he was humiliated, losing by more than 65%.” Liberty Watch reported. “He then lost a race for Congress by 23% in 2020 and a 2022 campaign for lieutenant governor by 18%.” This is non-momentum.
“Schwartz doesn’t live in the district he’s running to represent,” according to Liberty Watch. “His Nevada crash-pad condo is in the 1st congressional district, not the 3rd. And when he’s not in Nevada campaigning for office, he spends most of his time at his $4.4 million estate on the San Francisco Bay.”
•Marty O’Donnell makes Dan Schwartz look like Ronald Reagan.
In a likely first for a GOP primary contender, O’Donnell applauded Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist - Vermont) as he ran for president on May 23, 2016. “I never thought I would feel such affection for a crotchety old socialist,” O’Donnell wrote via X (then Twitter). The next day, he added: “I love what he’s doing for the Democrat party.”
If only O’Donnell admired Donald J. Trump. O’Donnell aspires to run for Congress on the same ticket with a man he loathes.
“Donald Trump is an idiot. Period,” O’Donnell announced via X on February 15, 2016. That May 9, O’Donnell stated: “Remember the horse in Animal Farm? The horses are voting for Trump.”
Continuing zoologically, O’Donnell wrote on January 27, 2016: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s Donald Trump.”
O’Donnell grew far nastier on November 14, 2018. He compared Trump to occupied France’s pro-Nazi puppet government: “Don’t conflate me with Trump,” O’Donnell demanded. “Patriotism is not the opposite of nationalism. The Vichy French said they were patriots. We shouldn’t let people like them define our words.”
Like Schwartz, O’Donnell welcomes higher taxes, as he declared on July 9, 2012: “Another tax hike. Ok, it’s about time we all paid our fair share.”
O’Donnell seems OK with boys who invade girls’ sports and men who assault women’s athletics. A voter at a UNLV College Republicans event asked, “As my representative, what are you going to do about the NCAA pushing this ideology” of transgenderism?
O’Donnell replied: “Probably nothing.”
•But Schwartz and O’Donnell are statesmen compared to Elizabeth Helgelien. A March 13 Nevada Globe article about her was headlined: “The Worst Congressional Candidate Ever?”
“There is one candidate for Congress whose past is more scandal-plagued and disturbing than any ad could ever convey: a past filled with infidelity, lies, abandoning constituents, and raising a teenage daughter who committed a brutal murder,” wrote Christine Halseth, Helgelien’s former mother-in-law.
In 2010, at age 27, Helgelien became Nevada’s youngest-ever state senator. She seemed to love the job — for all the wrong reasons.
“Stories surfaced in the state capital of Elizabeth allegedly having affairs with lobbyists, staffers, and even several other lawmakers,” Halseth wrote. Her son Daniel — who stayed in Las Vegas with the couple’s three children, while Mom sowed her wild oats in Carson City — learned of his wife’s hijinks and filed for divorce.
Helgelien kept screwing up, even while dressed. She bragged about MBA studies when she lacked a BA. She blew off legislative meetings, failed to return committee leaders’ phone calls, and went AWOL when it mattered. Her erotic activity and parliamentary inactivity finally forced her to resign.
Three months later, Helgelien posed semi-nude for Maxim magazine. She married one of her lovers and moved to Alaska.
Back home, Daniel and Elizabeth’s daughter Sierra, 16, could not handle this emotional chaos. So, she joined forces with her boyfriend, Aaron Guerrero, 18. In April 2021, the young couple attacked Sierra’s father, and stabbed him 70 times.
“Following the stabbings, they dismembered and burned my son’s body, then bragged and laughed about the brutal killings on social media,” Halseth wrote. “There is nothing like the pain of having to bury your own child, especially at the hands of your granddaughter,” Halseth continued. “Elizabeth had primary custody of the child for years and clearly failed in her role as a mother. In other words, Elizabeth raised a murderer and now wants to be a member of Congress.”
Republican campaign professionals warn that if Helgelien becomes NV-3’s nominee, she would torpedo the entire GOP ticket. Republicans would spend every day answering questions about her sexcapades, reckless legislative antics, and grisly details about her ex-husband’s murder at the hands of his own daughter.
Democrats and their media comrades would be delighted to focus on Helgelien’s X-rated, blood-soaked history rather than truthfully cover other Republicans running for the US House, Senate, and the White House. Those seats and Nevada’s electoral votes are too precious to fritter away, just to watch the unsavory Helgelien vanish beneath a groundswell for Democrat incumbent Susie Lee.
The far-better bet, within a dice throw of the Strip’s craps tables, is for Republican voters to put their chips on Drew Johnson as their nominee for this highly attainable seat. Trump’s same wager would boost the odds for a Johnson victory next Tuesday, a House GOP pickup on November 5, and the critical mass that will shift the Silver State’s six Electoral College votes toward the 270 that would earn Donald J. Trump four more years as President of the United States.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
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