Trump Endorsement Pits Newcomer Against Familiar Face in Deep Red Nevada House Primary

RENO, Nevada—Fourth-generation rancher and Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Director James Settelmeyer was the overwhelming favorite to succeed the retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) by winning November’s midterm election in the state’s deep red Congressional District 2.

He earned broad name recognition across the 65,000-square-mile district, which spans 12 northern Nevada counties, as a small government, low tax, “common sense” conservative during his 18 years in the state legislature, including as state Senate minority leader, and as President Donald Trump’s 2020 Nevada campaign co-chair.

As he had in Carson City when Amodei vacated his Nevada Senate seat in 2010 to run for Congress, Settelmeyer emerged as his likely 2026 successor in Washington after Amodei announced in February he would not seek a ninth term in Congressional District 2 (CD 2).

His frontrunner status among 13 party rivals in CD 2’s June 9 Republican primary was affirmed when Amodei and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo endorsed him.

But all that changed on May 29 when Trump formally backed financial adviser and Iraqi War veteran David Flippo, a retired Air Force colonel who ran unsuccessfully in a 2024 Las Vegas-area House Republican primary before moving into CD 2 in March to seek Amodei’s open seat and launching a largely self-funded campaign that has since accrued support from a constellation of national conservative and Make America Great Again (MAGA) organizations.

The GOP primary in CD 2 has, for the first time in a generation, made Reno rather than Las Vegas the center of attention for the June 9 inter-party preliminaries.

Although the National Republican Congressional Committee identifies Nevada’s three Democrat-held Las Vegas-area House seats as “prime pick-up opportunities” for Republicans in the fall, whoever wins the CD 2 Republican primary will be heavily favored to defeat the Democratic candidate in November.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball all rate CD 2 as solid or safe Republican. Cook gives it an R+7 rating.

Trump won the district by 17 percentage points in 2024, a decisive wedge in becoming the first GOP presidential candidate to win Nevada since 2004, beating then-Vice President Kamala Harris by about 3 percentage points. The district has never sent a Democrat to represent it in Washington.

What appeared to be a staid no-drama transition in a non-competitive Republican stronghold in a purple state, where the GOP has a 65,000-registered voter advantage over Democrats, is now an inter-party slugfest, local party leaders said.

‘Politics Is Warfare’

The president’s 11th-hour endorsement of a relatively unknown newcomer over a long-entrenched party presence has sharpened schisms already being raked raw over Washoe County Republican Party Central Committee’s April ratification of Flippo, spurring criticism of the region’s most influential party organization for picking sides in intramural contests, while issuing what some say was the keystone precursor to securing Trump’s endorsement.

Among those saying so is Washoe County Republican Party Chair Bruce Parks, who notes, as far as he knows, he’s the only county party committee chair—elected under Nevada GOP bylaws—in the nation endorsed by Trump. Flippo, he stressed, is among a slate of preferred primary candidates adopted by more than 170 county committee members after debate and multiple votes.

“There are other such committees across the state that their chairmans have asked me, ‘Just what is wrong with you? Why are you doing this?’ Whether other people want to accept this or not, I couldn’t care less,” Parks told The Epoch Times.

The county GOP committee is “the final authority for all things Republican in Washoe County. Why?” he asked. “Because they are elected to the position, right?”

The committee had never endorsed primary candidates before, he said, but Washoe Republicans were itching to “try something different next election cycle. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result,” he said.

Republican Party Chair Gary Schmidt of neighboring Storey County said his committee traditionally doesn’t issue primary endorsements but may consider doing so with the influx of voters joining the party because they support Trump and are animated by national MAGA-inspired issues.

“A lot of people got engaged when Trump came down the escalator, but plenty of people [in northern Nevada] were engaged before that in the political process and they know Settelmeyer, so they’re not just zombies that’ll follow what Trump says,” he told The Epoch Times. “They know Settelmeyer better than Trump knows Settelmeyer—and they don’t know Flippo.”

“One of the things that’s tore a lot of these parties apart this election cycle is this endorsement issue,” Elko County Republican Central Committee Chair Dr. Scott Gavorsky told The Epoch Times. “[It’s] why we don’t endorse.”

With Trump’s endorsement following the seminal nod from the Washoe County GOP committee, there’s discord within the party across northern Nevada, “and it’s getting bloody, it really is,” Parks said. “But then again, politics is warfare, and if you think other than that, you’re not in politics.”

Primary ‘Crapshoot’

The Flippo–Settelmeyer campaign is really a referendum on whether Nevada’s CD 2 Republican voters want to send someone to Washington who is there to be an ally to the Trump agenda, or somebody who’s going to support local issues in Washington, Elko County Republican Committee Vice Chair Hank Thurston told The Epoch Times. “I kind of see that as the large-scale differentiator between Settelmeyer and Flippo.”

Schmidt said Trump’s endorsement could galvanize recently engaged Republican voters to get to the primary polls but is unlikely to sway how longtime CD 2 party faithful vote.

“If you’re a Republican and you haven’t been engaged in politics in the last 12 years, you’re probably not a big Trump guy,” he said, noting he is “a big Trump guy” known for driving his “Trumpmobile” around Virginia City.

“I don’t think that Trump endorsement is going to mean as much to those voters, or mean as much as it would in other races because the people engaged—everybody in northern Nevada in CD 2—they know Settelmeyer, they know his record,” Schmidt said. “So in that regard, I don’t think the Trump endorsement is going to mean that much.”

Gavorsky, who hosts a widely-watched 755 Alive podcast, said the party fracture over the endorsements reflects Nevada’s “north-south divide” and the nation’s general rural-urban fissure. Nearly three-quarters of the state’s population lives in the Las Vegas area, primarily in Clark County.

Of Nevada’s remaining 16 counties, only Washoe County, which includes Reno, would qualify as urban or suburban. With a population just above 500,000, two-thirds of CD 2’s voters are in Washoe County, meaning the other 11 counties—totally or partially in the district—are among the 15 statewide commonly called “the rurals,” he said.

While only 11 percent of Nevada’s voters live in “the rurals” outside Washoe and Clark counties, Gavorsky said nearly 20 percent of the state’s registered Republicans live in these sparsely populated areas. “We punch above our weight” in GOP primaries, he said.

“The [Trump] endorsement has been controversial up here since it broke, and I think it’s 50-50 right now whether that’s going to put Flippo over the top. There’s a lot of questioning up here,” Gavorsky said. “It’s up in the air. I’m not sure how this race is going to shake out, you know?”

“I think it’s going to be a crapshoot,” Schmidt said.

President’s Impact

The Settelmeyer campaign did not return repeated emails and phone calls seeking to speak with the candidate or requesting updates on meets-and-greets and engagements.

The Flippo campaign was eagerly responsive, arranging an interview at its headquarters in a residential subdivision overlooking downtown Reno with the candidate and campaign manager Rory McShane explaining why they opted to run in CD 2 and why they see Trump’s endorsement as so critical.

“It’s an R+7 district that Trump won by 17 percent [in 2024], so Trump has an impact in this district,” McShane told The Epoch Times.

Flippo said he’s running in CD 2 after unsuccessfully campaigning in 2024 against incumbent Democrat Rep. Steven Horford (D-Nev.) because no “true conservative” had entered the race for Amodei’s open seat. None, including Settelmeyer, fit that description in his view, he told The Epoch Times, so in March, he threw his hat and money into the CD 2 ring.

McShane said on June 5 that Flippo has been endorsed by the president, Turning Point, the Club for Growth, the House Conservatives Fund, the Freedom Coalition, “and the SEAL PAC, dedicated to electing warriors to Congress, just endorsed David today.” 

“You know,” he added, “the conservative movement throughout the United States, I think it’s fair to say at this point, has rallied behind David.”

But that doesn’t mean CD 2 conservatives will, Gavorsky said. “The argument that’s going on is whether the role of the representative is to represent the president in the House or is it to represent the region to Washington,” he said. “Those two aren’t mutually exclusive but they’re also not synonymous, and I think that’s what’s playing out.”

McShane refuted the “false narrative” about locals saying Flippo “is not their guy” being pushed by “the lobbyist crowd out of Carson City,” noting numerous Nevada officials and entities have endorsed him, including 2022 GOP governor candidate Joey Gilbert—tentatively considering a 2030 gubernatorial run—sheriffs, the state Republican Party, the Republican Assembly, the Nevada Freedom Coalition, myriad grassroots organizations, and numerous faith-based groups, even “the Calvary Church Outreach Group that is 200 yards from Settelmeyer’s house.”

Washoe GOP Chair Parks said those saying Flippo doesn’t understand CD 2 issues haven’t been paying much attention. “Not a single representative in Congress from the state of Nevada has a clue of what’s going on in the state of Nevada. In other words, public lands, water rights, mining, they’re clueless,” he said.

Besides, he added, any Congressional representative Washoe County voters send to Washington had better support the president’s legislative agenda, or “there’s the door.”

“You’re running for Congress, you’re going to be dealing with national issues. If you don’t know how stuff that’s Nevada-centric relates to stuff that’s national, stay home,” Parks said.