LAS VEGAS (AP) - Republican Sen. Dean Heller won’t say whether he thinks his alliance with President Donald Trump doomed his re-election chances this year and instead points to strong Democratic enthusiasm and voter registration numbers as reasons for his first-ever election loss.
“The enthusiasm gap was strong,” Heller said in an interview published Tuesday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Republican lost his re-election race in November to Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, marking Heller’s first election loss in three decades of holding state and local public offices.
He was considered the most vulnerable GOP senator coming into the 2018 election because he was the only one seeking another term in a state that Democrat Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 presidential race.
Heller, a one-time Trump critic, embraced the president during his re-election campaign and appeared with him at rallies in Las Vegas and Elko, where he told Trump: “Everything you touch turns to gold.”
While the outgoing senator would not say whether Trump’s support hurt his campaign, he said the rallies were a highlight.
“The electricity that was in the air at the rallies that I attended with him,” he said. “It was the best time of the campaign.”
Heller’s name has been floated as a possible replacement for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose resignation was announced Saturday. Heller’s office did not respond an email seeking comment Tuesday about whether he is interested in the job.
The Republican senator said in the interview conducted Thursday of last week that he was not actively seeking a position with the Trump administration but would not rule one out.
Heller also did not rule out another run for elected office.
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
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