Is David Flippo's primary win the death blow for Old Nevada politics?

Two days after his preferred successor got trounced in the primary to replace him, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) throws open the door of his D.C. office. The entryway of the suite, which he will depart in seven months, is decorated with posters of old Westerns. 

It's Thursday, and in a few minutes, the congressman will release his first statement on the results in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, where onetime presumed front-runner and former state Sen. James Settelmeyer (R-Minden) lost handily to retired Lt. Col. David Flippo (R). 

Settelmeyer, a fourth-generation rancher, had nearly two decades of experience in the state Legislature, plus Amodei's endorsement and that of Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo (R). Flippo, who moved to the district from Las Vegas just months ago, after Amodei announced he wouldn't run again, had the one that mattered more: President Donald Trump's. 

In his statement, Amodei will not name Flippo. Instead, he will suggest that the MAGA pick's win means the seat, which a Democrat has never won, "isn't a Republican guarantee" in November. The Democratic nominee, former state Assembly leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson (D-Reno), could beat him. 

Nevada GOP strategists who spoke to The Nevada Independent think Amodei is wrong. The same goes for Washington Republicans, who consider the seat too safe to invest in. Inside the state, Republicans are coming around. Two former Settelmeyer supporters, Assm. PK O'Neill (R-Carson City) and Senate Minority Leader Robin Titus (R-Wellington) said Friday they'll be part of the campaign. Lombardo's campaign told The Nevada Independent the governor "looks forward to sitting down with Lt. Col. Flippo to discuss how they can work together on the issues most important to Nevada."

Flippo's victory represents the triumph of the MAGA movement that took over national politics years ago in Nevada's only safely Republican seat. While Settelmeyer's conventional campaign was slow to get off the ground, Flippo's team went in guns blazing, blowing past carpetbagger allegations with dozens of prominent national conservative supporters, hundreds of thousands of dollars in self-funding, a robust and strategic ground game and zero qualms about attacking Settelmeyer's record in ways that distorted his views. All of that helped him secure Trump's endorsement, which sealed the deal. 

Amodei, who has represented the district for 15 years and calls himself "a team player," said he does expect to make an endorsement by November. But wounds take time to heal.

"There needs to be some more team player credentials flashed out there," Amodei said of Flippo.

Would he ever endorse the Democrat?

"No," he said softly, and paused. "Hey, but five months! … Obviously I'm not feeling really good about the team right now, since I've just watched one person who had every right to be in the race get pulled, spindled and mutilated. So I'm going to be a discerning customer."

Behind from the beginning

Back in February, Amodei's surprise retirement set off a scramble. The congressman (vocally) didn't plan to get involved. 

Most Republicans thought 2024 Senate nominee Sam Brown (R) would jump in with Trump's blessing. But eventually, Brown bowed out. Many other prominent Republicans passed, too. 

After candidate filing opened, Flippo — who'd spent the last year gearing up for a repeat bid against Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) in a district covering North Las Vegas and portions of rural Nevada — swapped races to run for Amodei's seat. Two days later, Settelmeyer finally launched his bid as the favorite. Though more than a dozen Republican candidates filed to run in the primary, most political insiders believed the deeply rooted rancher known for his trademark cowboy hat wouldn't have any trouble. 

"People who are involved politically, they looked at it and thought, 'Hey, this is James' race, this is easy,'" Settelmeyer's general consultant Greg Bailor said. "Meanwhile, we were looking at it, going, 'We need the resources, there's a short timeline. If David Flippo spends his money, it's a real campaign.'" 

Settelmeyer did not leave his job as director of Nevada's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources until the end of March, limiting his ability to campaign and raise money for the first three weeks of his campaign. More than half of his funds came in May and June, after mail ballots had already gone out. 

Meanwhile, Flippo was able to lend his campaign more than $1.2 million between April 2025 and the end of March of this year. Settelmeyer said his initial polling showed he had much better name identification, but as Flippo began to invest in ads in the district, he quickly closed that gap. Former Eureka County Sheriff Jesse Watts, another candidate in the race who eventually suspended his campaign to back Settelmeyer, said he thinks money moved the needle. 

"You throw a million dollars at something, and you have an established team before the word 'go,' and you've got a massive push to buy the seat," Watts said. 

Flippo was not available for an interview this week. 

His general consultant, Rory McShane, is known for his aggressive approach. All the Republican strategists who spoke to The Nevada Independent agreed that he ran a stellar campaign. McShane said the team knocked on 30,000 doors and made 75,000 phone calls. 

"They took nothing for granted, even after President Trump gave David Flippo his endorsement," he said. "We were very strategic about how we leveraged all of our supporters." 

He pointed to Elko County, where the Flippo campaign turned the tables after a county commission chair posted in support of Settelmeyer. 

"We took the commissioners who'd endorsed us, and we leveraged those into targeted text messages and calls to get out to voters who are not engaged in the political process to see that their local leaders were supporting David Flippo," McShane said.

Flippo quickly notched endorsements from a broad constellation of MAGA darlings: far-right members of Congress, former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino and former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The national conservative group Turning Point Action, already launching its operation in Nevada, endorsed Flippo and started mobilizing for him as well. 

Hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into attack ads against Settelmeyer, mostly in the Reno media market. The ads painted the former state senator's record in the most negative light possible. 

Settelmeyer's vote to give undocumented immigrants driver authorization cards so they had to pass tests, provide proof of identity and obtain insurance to better protect other motorists, became a vote to give them drivers' licenses. His vote to stock school bathrooms with menstrual products, which every Republican state senator supported, became a vote to put tampons in boys' bathrooms, just because the bill didn't specify which restrooms the products would go in. Decades-old domestic violence charges — of which Settelmeyer had been cleared — began circulating online and in super PAC ads. 

"We ran a traditional campaign trying to talk about the issues facing Congressional District Number 2 and the problems that it is currently facing," Settelmeyer said. "His campaign, from the get-go, five minutes after I filed, was about negative campaigning against me." 

Some political observers think Settelmeyer could have responded in kind.

"It could have been more aggressive, in my opinion," Watts said. "But you know every one of us, except for Flippo, was drinking from a fire hose."

Bailor suggested that the campaign would have been more aggressive had it been on equal financial footing. 

"When you have someone who is self-funding, it frees up the candidate and the candidate's team to do different things," Bailor said. "If time frame and resources had aligned differently, you would have seen larger pushback on some of the misinformation we felt was out there." 

Longtime Nevada GOP strategist Robert Uithoven agreed. 

"Starting with no money to counter the very aggressive entrance into the race from a well-funded David Flippo, I don't know that James Settelmeyer could have done anything differently," he told The Nevada Independent. 

According to multiple sources who saw polls, the race was close between Flippo and Settelmeyer in May, weeks before the election, with Flippo pulling ahead slightly. It tightened back up when a super PAC stepped in to run nearly half a million dollars of pro-Settelmeyer ads. That group made its last investment the day Trump endorsed Flippo.

On Election Day, the first results that came in — which many believe represent early returns — showed a much closer race than those that dropped later, suggesting the Trump endorsement, which arrived a week into early voting, played a key role in Flippo's win.

"I feel that the Trump endorsement ended the race," Settelmeyer said. 

Where did Trump's last-minute endorsement come from?

When Trump endorsed Flippo, even many of the most plugged-in Republicans in both Washington and Nevada were shocked. 

Most had expected him to stay out of the race. Trump had already posted support for his other Nevada picks weeks earlier. But the endorsement did not come about through the usual channels. 

According to multiple sources, Freedom Caucus member Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who hit the campaign trail with Flippo the day before the endorsement, was instrumental in getting Trump's buy-in. Support from numerous other Trump-aligned members of Congress and former administration officials didn't hurt, either. Though Nevada political insiders pooh-poohed the outside influence, they were key in getting the most important endorsement in the race. Settelmeyer, in spite of his lawmaker credentials, simply didn't have the national conservative advocates in his corner to match.

"The silence of House Republican leadership outside of PACs supporting James, that probably didn't help us," said Bailor. "But people weren't willing to go against the president if he were to potentially endorse. So, I think the Freedom Caucus' willingness to be louder and more aggressive with their slate of candidates definitely helped Flippo."

Others suggested Amodei's occasional criticisms of the president lost him any ability to hold Trump off. Speaking to The Nevada Independent over the past year, the congressman gave the president's second term a "B" grade and slammed the administration's immigration enforcement operation and approach to messaging on the Iran war. 

Amodei batted away that theory.

"What are my criticisms of the president?" Amodei asked, pointing out that he votes with Trump approximately 98 percent of the time. "My criticisms of the president aren't a gnat on a fly's ass."

After Trump endorsed Flippo, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) set to follow suit, the speaker called the congressman.

"We had a very, very helpful discussion," Amodei said. "I left it with, 'I know you got to do what you got to do for the team, with you and the president and leadership over here, and I get that. But I'm just telling you that this is an unproven commodity.'" 

Subsequent results showed voters overwhelmingly opted for the unknown. Though about 5 percent of the district's registered Republicans made the difference in the outcome, Flippo won nearly every county in the district, with Settelmeyer performing best in Douglas County, his home and a region he represented in the state Senate. 

The biggest blowout was in Washoe, where Republican primary voters — many of them recent transplants without deep Northern Nevada roots — saw a steady stream of Flippo's TV ads. The Washoe County GOP's endorsement of Flippo was also influential. Plus, when the county's young Republicans backed Settelmeyer, they were shunned by the state group, whose leader works for Flippo. 

"I'm very grateful to the Washoe County Young Republicans who gave me their endorsement," Settelmeyer said. "It's sad that they were not allowed to get their charter." 

'He thinks this is the 1990s'

McShane said that voters knew what they were doing when they backed Flippo.

"Our polling showed that by the end of the race, both candidates had almost complete name ID and one of the lowest amounts of undecideds I've ever seen in a congressional primary," he told The Nevada Independent. 

But other Nevada GOP strategists who spoke to The Nevada Independent said that voters this primary cycle are extremely disengaged and need campaigns to spell out the candidates' stories, exactly the way Flippo's team did. 

"What people who are not true operatives don't understand is nobody knows who's running for office," said one strategist. "Voters are so disengaged and they do not know anything. … A lot of people don't even know what a primary is. … You'll call somebody, they'll be like, 'Oh, I always vote Republican.' We're like, 'Yeah, dumbass.'" 

A Settelmeyer win would have carried on Amodei's legacy. Both live within miles of where they were born, did their time in the state Legislature and think their work should speak for itself. Many say Settelmeyer lost because Amodei wasn't thinking strategically.

"He thinks this is the 1990s," said a different operative. "He thinks that everybody knows everybody. They don't. He thinks that consultants are terrible, and spending money is terrible. He does these goofy radio ads, and he does these goofy TV ads and he thinks it's cute. Well, I guess we'll see if he thinks it's cute now, because his way of running campaigns got boat raced."

Amodei noted his folksy approach to campaigning has worked — until now. 

"I'm a guy who hasn't had a consultant in seven re-elects," Amodei said. "I don't need a general consultant. I think the record has proven that out, and it's not because I'm a general consultant in candidate's clothing. It's like, you have a feel. And that's why I was very confident in this campaign."

He admitted the results surprised him. He had heard about the polls that showed Settelmeyer in trouble, but he had taken for granted that Settelmeyer's pedigree would carry weight.

"Evidently, I'm out of touch," Amodei said. "Listen, I'm a stick in the mud. Qualifications, voting records, straight up that sort of stuff. Here's the Trump rating, here's the Right to Life stuff. How a guy loses things when he's got Right to Life, NRA, blah blah blah. It's like, hey, I missed something."

Still, the congressman doesn't have regrets. He said he did everything he was asked. And he's glad that he didn't pull any tricks, such as announcing his retirement at the last minute in order to give only his preferred successor enough time to file for the seat.

"For people who think that's a good way to go, I simply disagree, and I've watched other candidates do that," Amodei said. "I really don't feel guilty about much of anything, because I feel like I've been transparent." 

A decade after Trump was first elected, sometimes-maverick Amodei is likely to be supplanted by a congressman committed to supporting the president's national agenda above all else. 

"I do think this was potentially a wake-up call for many people in Northern Nevada that you're not on an island any longer," Bailor said. "I don't see it going back. You look at Districts 1, 3, and 4 in Clark County and they've been in this theme for quite a while. So now it's arrived in NV-02."

Settelmeyer said he believes the negative campaign will have "a chilling effect" on the legislative process, limiting lawmakers' willingness to work across the aisle on making bad bills better.

He gave no hints about his own future. 

"My family has worked hard for generations and so have I," he said. "Been working with the soil, been working with animals, my whole life. And I'm lucky and blessed to have a great life."