Republicans see several encouraging signs. While the Cook Political Report rates the seat as “Likely Democrat,” the district has moved steadily toward the GOP over the past two presidential elections.

In 2020, Joe Biden carried the district by 8 percentage points on his way to the White House. In 2024, then-Vice President Kamala Harris won it narrowly by only two percentage points, even as President Donald Trump won the state of Nevada.

Titus, meanwhile, has failed to break more than 52% in her two most recent reelection wins in 2022 and 2024. GOP officials are bullish that Buck, a former educator who represents a purple state senate district covering much of the seat, can win in 2026.

GOP strategist Jeremy Hughes told the Washington Examiner that he believes Buck’s ability to win in Democratic terrain means Titus’s “incumbency advantage is less than it’s ever been.”

“Carrie helps negate that advantage that Dina would have from being the incumbent,” Hughes said.

Pointing to her 2020 state senate run, Hughes said Buck has been able to win a swing senate district despite Democrats “targeting her pretty heavily.” The seat had been held by Democrats for eight years prior.

In 2024, Buck was reelected to the state senate and even outperformed Trump as well as the congressional and Senate Republican nominees that cycle. Buck ran ahead of Trump by 2 points, the GOP congressional candidate by 5 points, and Senate nominee Sam Brown by 6 points.

Buck told the Washington Examiner in an interview that her political success stemmed from being an “independent thinker.”

“I’ve served and breathed life into this community for 30 years,” she said. “I’ve been delivering results for Nevadans on the ground in the trenches every day in and day out, and so I’d like to do that for them in D.C., and I have a way of winning over independents, nonpartisans.”

Democrats argue the race will ultimately be shaped less by Buck than by Trump’s presidency.

Dick Cooper, a Titus spokesman, told the Washington Examiner that the lawmaker does not agree with “anything Trump has done,” and that Nevada is being hit hard by cuts made under his administration.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Cooper asserted. “So you know we’ve seen cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, energy assistance, public housing assistance. The list goes on and on. … So, people’s lives under the Trump administration have not gotten better here.”

Cooper pointed to high gas prices amid the Iran war as a sticking point in the district as well, saying “people are just, they’re they’re they’re fed up with this administration, and she’s fought back against everything that they have proposed.”

“She would continue to do that, you know, in her next term, and hopefully that will be a Democratic House,” Cooper said.

Yet, as much as Titus can point to parts of Trump’s record that might be unpopular, she also has to deal with the parts that are popular — some of which she voted against. Topping the list is Trump’s signature no tax on tips policy, which the president said was inspired by a conversation with a Las Vegas waitress on the 2024 campaign trail. Titus voted against the tax bill that included the provision.

Trump briefly mentioned Buck during his campaign stop in Las Vegas’s Red Rock Casino on Wednesday, but he spent a significant portion of the speech praising no tax on tips.

“I want to make things easier for Nevadans,” Buck told the Washington Examiner. “I want more money in Nevadans’ pockets.”

Cooper noted that Titus had her own proposal to support tipped workers, which included an increase in the minimum wage for all workers.

ABDUL EL SAYED DEFEATS HALEY STEVENS IN MICHIGAN SENATE PRIMARY

“She felt that that was a more effective proposal in terms of again uplifting people in their lives here,” Cooper told the Washington Examiner. “Now there are a lot of people here in Las Vegas who don’t make enough to actually get tax relief on their tips. … They don’t have enough tips to have to report. So they would benefit from, you know, an increase in the minimum wage.”

The disagreement over No Tax on Tips underscores what is likely to become one of the central debates in the race: whether voters are more motivated by Trump’s broader record or by the targeted economic policies that helped him make gains in Nevada.