2022/2024 Watch: Pompeo heading to Nevada to campaign with GOP Senate front-runner Adam Laxalt
Pompeo becomes third potential GOP 2024 contender to campaign with Laxalt in Nevada
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}FIRST ON FOX: Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is heading to Nevada to team up with the state’s former attorney general, Adam Laxalt, who’s the front-runner for the GOP Senate nomination in the key battleground state.
Pompeo, a former congressman from Kansas who served as CIA director and later America’s top diplomat during former President Donald Trump’s administration, will join Laxalt on Friday at a roundtable event with supporters in Las Vegas. Word of Pompeo’s trip to Nevada was shared first with Fox News on Wednesday.
REPUBLICANS TARGET NEVADA IN MIDTERM ELECTIONS
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Laxalt, an Iraq war veteran and grandson of the late Nevada governor and senator Paul Laxalt, is the polling and fundraising leader for the GOP Senate nomination in a race that also includes retired Army officer and Afghanistan War veteran Sam Brown. Nevada’s primary is on June 14.
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt campaigns for the 2022 GOP Senate nomination in the key western battleground state. (Adam Laxalt Senate campaign)
Republicans need a net gain of just one seat in November's midterms to recapture the Senate majority they lost in the 2020 election cycle. The GOP is playing plenty of defense – they're defending 20 of the 34 seats up for grabs in 2022, including five open seats, with two of them in the key battlegrounds of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But they also see strong pickup potentials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada, where Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is running for a second six-year term.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Pompeo, through his Champion American Values PAC, or CAVPAC, has crisscrossed the country since early last year, campaigning and helping to raise funds for fellow Republicans running in the midterm elections.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo keynotes the Hillsborough County GOP's annual Lincoln-Reagan fundraising dinner, in Manchester, New Hampshire, on April 7, 2022. (Fox News )
"Secretary Pompeo is excited to join Adam Laxalt and support him to be the next United States senator from Nevada. He endorsed Adam because he believes that he will best represent conservative values in the United States Senate," a Pompeo adviser told Fox News Digital.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Laxalt is also backed by Trump – who remains the most popular and influential politician in the GOP nearly 16 months removed from the White House – as well as other top Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mike Lee of Utah, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Sen. Ted Cruz joined Adam Laxalt at a rally on April 22, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Ashley Soriano/Fox News)
Pompeo becomes the third potential 2024 GOP White House contender in recent weeks to travel to Nevada to campaign with Laxalt, following Cruz and DeSantis. And it’s possible Trump may visit Nevada to headline a rally with Laxalt ahead of next month’s primary. The Silver State holds the fourth contest in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating calendar.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Pompeo, a Fox News contributor, has also made numerous stops since early last year in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which hold the first three contests in the GOP's caucus and primary schedule.