In GOP-held Assembly seat targeted by Democrats, both candidates avoid going negative

In Assembly District 35, the Republican candidate says she is focused on pursuing commonsense healthcare solutions and checking a majority-Democratic state Legislature, while the Democratic candidate describes himself as "a regular guy" and "working class dad" who wants to lower prices. 

It's a district that flipped from blue to red just two years ago, and both candidates say they are committed to bipartisan discussion and have so far mostly avoided going negative. 

"I'm a very moderate person," said incumbent Republican Assm. Rebecca Edgeworth, an internal medicine doctor and professor at Touro University. "Whoever wins should be a moderate person, not necessarily far right or far left."

Edgeworth assumed office in 2024, winning her race by nearly 9 points despite the district's slight Democratic lean. Her victory meant Democrats fell one vote short of a veto-proof supermajority in the state Assembly.

Now, with control of both chambers again up for grabs, Democrats hope to win back the seat, which spans a suburban, more affluent area of the southwest Las Vegas Valley, including Enterprise.

Edgeworth is facing Joe Spica, a bellman at The Cosmopolitan and a steward with the Culinary Union who says he would use the seat to support Nevadans through a difficult time. 

"The past few years have been really hard for working families, particularly mine," he said. "No one's actually standing up for people like us in government, and that's an issue."

Spica ties his interest in politics to rising costs for his family and declining visitation to the Strip — a trend some have attributed to new fees and tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump (R). 

But Spica wouldn't explicitly blame Trump or Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) for the tourism slump, saying instead it was the product of a "perfect storm" and that "you can't just blame one thing." He also initially declined to discuss Edgeworth, although in a later comment Spica wrote that he believed Edgeworth had been too supportive of Lombardo and that some of the bills vetoed by the governor last session had touched on "affordability issues."

Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, was more forceful, describing Edgeworth as a "rubber stamp for Lombardo and Trump" who is "afraid to stand up and fight for Nevadans."

Meanwhile, Edgeworth says her victory in 2024 ensured that the laws enacted last year were fairer and more bipartisan. 

"The vast majority of people would really prefer there to be balance in the Legislature, instead of everything leaning one way or another," she said.

She also says that broader economic trends are often out of lawmakers' hands, and that lawmakers should focus on more attainable interventions to help Nevadans.

The race will come down to whether Spica's support from the influential, well-endowed Culinary Union can move the needle in a district that has previously defied its voter registration numbers. In 2024, Edgeworth's sizable win was despite the district being home to more registered Democrats than Republicans. 

Since that election, the district has grown in population, but both parties have lost ground overall to nonpartisan voters, especially the Republican Party. A plurality of the district's voters are registered as nonpartisan.

Edgeworth has outraised Spica, raking in roughly $150,000 from January through June 2026 versus Spica's roughly $30,000 — a 5:1 ratio. An analysis by The Indy before the 2024 elections found that in the majority of close races for the Legislature, candidates with an early fundraising lead ultimately triumphed.

But it's a race both sides are targeting in a midterm year, which Edgeworth concedes could mean "things go a little bit the other way."

Meet the candidates

Edgeworth is the only practicing physician serving in the Legislature and is laser-focused on healthcare issues. Of the eight bills she introduced in her first session, six were related to healthcare and four became law — all but one unanimously. 

Two of those bills aimed at strengthening regulations on Medicaid and hospice care in Nevada, with the goal of protecting against fraudulent or subpar providers. 

In June, Nevada paused licensing of new hospice care providers for six months. Edgeworth said she was concerned about the issue "before it was sexy." She has already submitted a bill draft request to bring further hospice care legislation in the next session. 

She also plans to reintroduce a bill she brought last session to incentivize medical students to remain in the state after they graduate, a particularly important issue, Edgeworth said, given Nevada's shortage of providers across nearly every medical field.

Along with healthcare, another of Edgeworth's priorities for a potential second term is public safety. She said voters in her district often bring up their fears about crime.

"I realize people need to be rehabilitated and helped, but it just feels like a lot of the laws kind of went pro-criminal," Edgeworth said.

Edgeworth — who was born and raised in Las Vegas — also says she has contributed to her community in ways beyond the Legislature. Along with serving as a doctor and professor, she is involved in multiple nonprofit organizations and is chair of Project Homeless Connect, an annual fair that brings together homelessness advocates. 

Spica was also born and raised in Las Vegas, and he says his background as a casino worker and dad to three kids makes him the best choice for voters who want a family- and working-class-oriented perspective in the Legislature.

His overall focus in the Legislature, Spica said, would be "getting one thing across the finish line that people can see, that they can feel is making their lives better." 

Pressed on specifics, Spica said his primary goals would be securing good-paying jobs — he said he thinks it's imperative that no Nevadan needs to work multiple jobs to survive — and lowering the cost of renting or buying homes. Spica said doing so requires a variety of reforms, including slashing bureaucratic requirements around building new housing, making more land available and banning large, corporate investors from buying up units. 

"All of our working families and people who are just trying to live in the city they work in, they have to compete against these billionaires on Wall Street," he said. "That's a huge disadvantage, and that causes all kinds of ripple effects that affect every person, whether you're trying to buy or rent."

Research is mixed on whether corporate-owned housing contributes to rising home prices, with some studies finding that corporate landlords charge higher rents while other studies find that they purchase and flip units that would otherwise be expensive to rehabilitate. 

When pressed on the arguments against investor-owned housing, Spica said he is "always ready to learn. I'm smart enough to know I'm not smartest, so I'm always willing to listen and learn."

During last fall's special session, Edgeworth had to miss a vote on a bill that would have limited corporate-owned housing to attend a homelessness event she was organizing. The bill narrowly failed, and Edgeworth said she probably would have voted "no" had she been present.

"I lean quite a bit on my colleagues that are in real estate that know far more about it than I do," she said.

Agreement on no taxes, more targeted spending

Spica and Edgeworth agree on some economic policy questions, including the need for Nevada to diversify its economy and cut red tape on businesses. Both also say it's difficult to blame the affordability crisis on any single factor. 

"I don't like to talk about blame," Spica said, "I like to talk about solutions."

He said a variety of factors contribute to the affordability crisis and what matters most is that working families need more support, fast.

Edgeworth also said she wanted to help regular Nevadans and that the public often fails to understand that economic woes are broadly out of state lawmakers' hands.

The Legislature should focus on "making it easier for businesses to do business," Edgeworth said, describing this as one of the few ways lawmakers could put a dent in the high cost of living. 

The Vegas Chamber of Commerce endorsed Edgeworth in 2024 and 2026, and Chamber lobbyist Paul Moradkhan told The Indy the group was pleased with Edgeworth's first-term record, including her support for small businesses and bipartisan approach to policymaking.

"We view her as a collaborative convener, trying to get folks to work together and find a resolution that makes pragmatic sense," Moradkhan said.

Both candidates also said they were staunchly against raising taxes and instead want the state government to fund new programs by reconsidering its current allocations.

Edgeworth said she was disappointed at the failure, in the 2025 session, of a bill brought by state controller Andy Matthews (R) that would have created a state inspector general tasked with auditing agencies' budgets.

She said she was particularly concerned about how funding for education was being spent, saying it felt like the state is "putting more and more money in, and it's not resulting in more graduations or smaller classes or happier teachers." Nevada has one of the lowest per-pupil spending amounts in the U.S.

Spica did not give specifics on elements of the state budget he believed needed to be reduced or redirected, saying he needed to do more research.

A competitive fight

In 2024, the state Senate seat that overlaps with AD35 — Senate District 11 — also elected a Republican, now-state Sen. Lori Rogich. She had the backing of the Culinary Union against then-state Sen. Dallas Harris (D-Las Vegas), who had voted against a Culinary priority in 2023 — daily hotel room cleaning requirements.

That dynamic is reversed this year, with Culinary backing Spica, the Democrat. Pappageorge said the union would be conducting door-to-door canvassing on Spica's behalf and said members were fired up about supporting "an independent, strong leader who will lead for all middle-class and working-class folks."

Edgeworth said she's confident in her victory while admitting that this year could be harder because it's a midterm year, when the national party in power traditionally loses ground. But she pointed to her connections with voters across the political spectrum, forged during the coffee chats she's held monthly during the last two years.

"I don't think that canvassers on the other side would be able to come after me for my record or for what I do for a living or how much I care about my state," she said.

Neither candidate criticized their opponents. Edgeworth said she didn't know much about Spica's policy positions, but said she felt she was different from him in that she was more "pro-mining and pro-gaming" and "for people being able to make as much money as they can." 

Spica said during his interview that he didn't have thoughts on Edgeworth's tenure in the Legislature and has been "focusing on my campaign."

Edgeworth's predecessor was former Assm. Michelle Gorelow (D-Las Vegas), who first won the seat in 2018 and announced her resignation in 2023. 

Gorelow told The Indy the district has been "kind of finicky for a while" politically, and that in 2024 Edgeworth benefited from voters rejecting the Democratic Party, which at the time held the presidency. 

This year, the opposite is true. Gorelow said she could imagine Edgeworth losing if voters frustrated with Republican leadership at the national level "throw the baby out with the bathwater."

For her part, Gorelow is voting for Spica, who she said had an impressive vision for and understanding of the district as a father and union member.

On the issues

Both candidates also completed The Nevada Independent's policy questionnaire on issues from data centers to school funding. Their full responses are below.