Lawmaker. Social worker. Pageant queen. Is Congress next for Teresa Benitez-Thompson?

"Hi, I'm Teresa Benitez," says the 24-year-old on stage in a shimmering halter neck dress. "My ultimate career goal — to be a senator representing the great state of Nevada."

That day, she placed fourth at Miss America. 

More than two decades later, Teresa Benitez-Thompson is knocking on doors in Sun Valley on a warm Tuesday in April, vying for a bigger prize: a seat in Congress. Canvassers have been attacked by pitbulls here, so she rattles the fences to test if a dog will come running before walking toward each house. 

She recalls the introduction she gave half a lifetime ago.

"They're like, 'What's your biggest goal? What's the biggest career goal you could ever do?'" she says. "That was the height of Sen. [Harry] Reid. That was the biggest thing that Nevada had ever done. That's how you can help your state."

Does she still want to be a senator?

"You know, we'll just see how this race goes," she says. "I'm a longshot in CD2, so there's a certain amount of hubris that would come with answering a question like that." 

Democrats have never won Northern Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses Reno and many of the state's rural areas. But this year, with the national mood in their favor and the seat open for the first time in 15 years, nine Democrats are trying to make history.

Though there's been no publicly released polling in the race, Benitez-Thompson is widely known after a decade in the Assembly and time as Attorney General Aaron Ford's chief of staff.

Her biggest competition in the primary is wealthy investor Greg Kidd (D), who earned 36 percent of the vote running as an independent in 2024. He and her other opponents, several of whom proudly call themselves "anti-establishment," don't have the political record she does. 

The race hinges on whether Democratic voters think that's a good thing. 

"This is not what a Miss Reno looks like"

Benitez-Thompson and her two sisters were born in Ventura, California. Her dad came to the U.S. from Guadalajara when he was 16. He struggled with substance abuse. 

"It became very clear to my mom when we were very young that we were going to have to exit and leave the state to keep us safe," she said. "So he wasn't part of my everyday life. Growing up, I was raised really by my grandparents." 

The whole family moved to Nevada when she was 4 years old. She lived in Kings Row, a residential suburb west of UNR.

"We would take our big wheels and ride all over the church parking lot," she recalled. "We'd pretend like we were on our way to get our nails done. 'We're going to work?' Like, 'We got to go waitress now.'"

When her sister got pregnant young, she helped advocate for women like her to qualify for government benefits while staying in school. The effort eventually turned into the Nevada Empowered Women's Project.

Benitez-Thompson got her exposure to the business world early, through Junior Achievement. Her senior year, she won the nonprofit's speech contest. The executive director also ran Miss Reno and Miss Sparks and told her she should apply. 

"He was like, 'You need to come run,'" she said. "When I was in high school, I looked like such a little chola, my bangs were so high, and I had the red lips, the brown eyeliner. And I was like, 'This is not what a Miss Reno, Miss Sparks looks like.'"

But he kept encouraging her. He knew she needed money for college.

"I funded my way through undergraduate school by losing pageants," she said. "I won Miss Sparks, and I think I won about $3,000, then I'd go to Miss Nevada, and I'd lose, but win $3,000 or $4,000 in assorted scholarships. So I'd be like, 'OK, I've got this much money,' and then I would take that many classes the next semester. 

"So that's the way I played it, and I won on my fifth time for Miss Nevada."

She did about 250 speaking appearances after winning the state title, a regular on the Rotary and Lions Club circuit. 

"I remember I went to Battle Mountain, and I spoke with their school," she said. "And the little room I was speaking to was too small to hold all the students. So they only had me meeting the girls. And then as I was leaving, the boys handed me a list and said, 'We didn't get to talk to you, so here's a list of all of our names and phone numbers.'" 

If they watched her on Miss America, they might have thought they had a chance. Onstage, she admitted to crushing on Fred Savage in The Wonder Years. But between banter about her name with host Wayne Brady and talk of chocolate ice cream were plenty of hints of the serious politician she would become. 

One was her selection for the talent competition: the court testimony of Dennis Shepard, whose son, Matthew Shepard, had been murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998. 

"When it came time to choose a talent, I was like, 'Well, I've got 90 seconds to do whatever I want,'" she recalled. "'I don't clog, I don't dance. Let's take this and put it to music. I think we can do something really beautiful.'" 

She got the family's permission to deliver the words as a monologue at the pageant. Now, she chokes up remembering how they told her afterwards how much it would have meant to him.

Another hint? Where the other contestants said they couldn't live without their journals or photos, she chose her laptop. 

"It has all my information on it, my email, that laptop goes with me everywhere," she said at 24. "In the future, I'm going to be Sen. Benitez. And I want to write policy on social welfare issues that deal with child welfare, the elderly, food stamps, housing. Those are the things that interest me the most."

She got to work fast. After finishing her undergraduate education at UNR and earning a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, she returned to Nevada and spent five years as a social worker helping with adoptions for special needs children. She married a local weatherman — he can't appear to endorse anyone, so he isn't in her campaign materials — and had four kids.

She spent a decade working with terminally ill Nevadans. She visited patients all across the western part of the state, sometimes driving 150 miles in a day back and forth to Gardnerville or Fallon.

What she's doing now isn't so different. Benitez-Thompson is canvassing several nights a week, 40 doors at a time.

"Walking is important," she says. "You've got to see how people are living."

Most houses are empty, but she leaves flyers rolled up in the chain link fences. An aide texts that he's found a voter who wants her to swing by. When she reaches his house, he approaches looking a bit skeptical. He asks about the Department of Veterans Affairs, and she mentions how her grandfather got care there, promising to ensure it's well funded. He asks what she will do about President Donald Trump. 

"I really, really hope, if I get elected, to be an advocate for getting dollars back to Northern Nevada and to end the federal overreach," she says. "We're Nevadans, we want the federal government to pretty much stay out of our life."

"Right, right," he says approvingly. 

She scribbles down her phone number and hands it to him.

"You do have to have a thick skin, because people tell you exactly what they think of you," she said later. "It still sounds so ostentatious, to be like, 'I'm running for Congress.' So I can't imagine my first foray into running for political office, being Congress. I'm really impressed that there's other people that are doing that, because to me, that seems really overwhelming." 

"One of the most brilliant lawmakers I've ever met" 

Benitez-Thompson always had an interest in the state Legislature. At 17, she knocked on doors for her assemblywoman, Sheila Leslie (D-Reno), before interning for Jan Evans (D-Sparks). But running? Many well-meaning people offered input.

"The advice was, 'Nevada is not ready to elect Latinas to the Legislature,'" she said. "It hadn't happened in the Assembly yet, and so the suggestions were, 'Drop Benitez, run as Teresa Thompson. The last name's not going to help you.'"

She ignored the advice and in 2011 became Assm. Benitez-Thompson. She still had student loans when she was elected. She recalled a reporter referring to her and other newly elected young women of color as "the angry women."

"I thought, 'I'm kind of the most bubbly, nicest person,'" she said.

Other legislators would frequently confuse her with colleagues. 

"Our freshman session, Olivia Diaz had a baby, and she had a baby on a Sunday," she recalled. "That Monday, I was asked, how many times, 'I can't believe you're here. Didn't you just have a baby yesterday?'"

Another time, the new lawmakers sat down in the back of a hearing room. 

"The chair stopped the meeting and said, 'Wait a minute. The Latinas have just walked in. Are we in trouble?' And we were just like, 'We're just here to learn!'"

"She had one rough session, getting her feet underneath her," said Maggie Carlton, who was elected to the state Assembly the same year after 12 years in the state Senate. "But she did great."

She was known for her work ethic. She sometimes slept on a couch in the building. She read every bill. 

"She's one of the most brilliant lawmakers I've ever met," said Assm. Selena Torres-Fossett (D-Las Vegas). "She could tell you the exact bill number that did any type of policy, and what session it was and who carried it." 

"She would dig into all the back documents," Carlton remembered. "I would be like, 'Jesus Christ, Teresa. How do you find all the time to do this?' And she was like, 'Oh, well, you're the chair. You don't have time to do this.'"

"She worked her ass off, and she has real good instincts," Carlton continued. "She knows how to read people. Social workers — there's a certain switch in their brains. … They're generous, and they like to solve problems."

From the beginning, Benitez-Thompson eyed education funding. 

"Raising revenue meant raising taxes, so it was like … 'Be forewarned, if you're proposing a tax increase, you're just not going to get elected again.'" she recalled. "And it was like, 'Well, I could not be elected. That would be fine.'"

She co-sponsored Sen. Debbie Smith's (D-Sparks) bill allowing voters to approve tax increases to fund improvements to schools outside Clark County. When Smith got sick, Benitez-Thompson worked to get it passed. She helped design WC-1, the 2016 ballot question that increased Washoe County sales tax to get the funds. 

Some schools updated their HVAC systems or beefed up security. In 2019, the funds helped open Desert Skies Middle School in Sun Valley. She still has the scissors from the ribbon cutting.

After becoming majority leader — the second-highest ranking role in the Assembly — six years into her tenure, Benitez-Thompson implemented a policy that the Democratic and Republican caucuses could not lunch separately. She said they had productive conversations while they ate. 

"I talk a lot, and I talk to everyone," she said. "I had to work a bill, I worked a bill, I talked to everyone that was in that building who could cast a vote, D or R."

"She worked her ass off, and she has real good instincts. She knows how to read people. Social workers — there's a certain switch in their brains. … They're generous, and they like to solve problems."

- Assm. Maggie Carlton (D-Las Vegas)

She regularly sought GOP co-sponsors. 

"The fact that she sat with some of these folks and worked with them — I would not have had the patience," Carlton said. 

Many former legislative colleagues remembered her fondly, regardless of party. Former state Sen. Pete Goicoechea (R-Eureka), called her "a lovely lady" and said they are "good friends." 

Former Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson (D-Las Vegas), who worked closely with Benitez-Thompson deemed her "Bill-Raggioesque," praise he wouldn't use for almost anyone. She was also often the one to remind him that they were working with human beings.

"People assume that when you're in leadership, you're lock-step, and there's no drama, and you're only fighting against the enemy," he said. "Teresa is fearless, and people should not think for one second she didn't step to me when she thought I was wrong or when she didn't feel heard."

He recalled her saying something like, "Are you getting an attitude with me?" during one particularly stressful session. "I caught myself, and I kind of just, like, shrunk a little bit and said, 'Nooo.'"

But she also helped him navigate difficult issues. In 2021, her last session, Torres-Fossett introduced a bill to terminate the working relationship between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and various state law enforcement agencies. Frierson said he liked to get a heads up on bills that were likely to get attention, and he was "pretty annoyed" that he hadn't. 

"Teresa intervened, and she pulled Assemblywoman Torres aside and said, 'We can't do that, but let's talk about what we can do,'" Frierson recalled.  

Torres-Fosset remembers being a little upset that her original bill was not going to move forward, but was ultimately pleased with the outcome. The legislation ultimately created a task force focused on building trust between immigrant communities and the government. 

"Without her work, that would have never been possible," Torres-Fosset said. "I was a sophomore lawmaker at the time. That wouldn't have been a piece of legislation I could have carried."

Caroline Mello Roberson, former state director for a reproductive rights organization, remembers how Benitez-Thompson took up a thorny issue lawmakers had not touched since 1999: birth control. 

In 2017, Benitez-Thompson led a law codifying part of the Affordable Care Act requiring insurers to cover 12 months of contraception without a copay. She pushed to remove the existing religious exemption and to ensure women could use the method they preferred. 

"I was so young, I didn't really understand what a big deal it was to do that," Mello Roberson said. "She has a lot of children, and understood how it is to raise people and to be a person that needs access to healthcare."

Her empathy came out with her colleagues too. Torres-Fosset, a teacher who didn't have much money for a work wardrobe when she was elected, still has some suit pieces Benitez-Thompson gave her.

"She was just like, 'Oh, I'm cleaning my closet, I brought these things if you want any of them,'" Torres-Fosset recalled. "But she must have known."

Benitez-Thompson was instrumental in taking on sexual harassment within the Legislature. She said the philosophy behind the new rules was reframing the building as a place of employment, since, "too often, the electeds feel like they are a sovereign." She's also responsible for the law requiring elected officials accused of misconduct to pay out settlements with their own money.

If elected to Congress, she said she'd "bloom where [she's] planted" but is interested in accountability.

"Something like the Ethics Committee I would love to be on," she said. "I'm a budget hawk by nature, so anything like Ways and Means or Budget would be great."

In the state Legislature, she spent a decade on the budget committee, where she — as she promised at Miss America decades prior — advocated for social safety net programs. 

"I frequently — toward the end of session, when we were closing budgets — would find money for the Truckee Meadow Boys and Girls Club or for the UNR School of Medicine," Frierson said. "It was because she was steadily in my ear, wanting to make sure that we had balance."

Just shy of a decade after being labelled an angry woman, Benitez-Thompson helped lead the first female-majority Legislature in U.S. history.

After hitting her term limit in 2022, she became chief of staff to the attorney general. She was serving in that role when the Trump administration gummed up grants for survivors of domestic violence.

"If you look at the work that DOGE did, that Elon Musk had his DOGE bros do, they pretty much ran an AI program and said, 'Hey, Siri, give me a list of all the programs that mention women in them,'" is how she described it later. "Then they cut 'em."

She helped get the money backfilled. Two months later, Rep. Mark Amodei (R) announced his retirement.

"Nice isn't going to settle it"

Afterwards, Benitez-Thompson began looking at the vote tallies for recent statewide races in the congressional district. 

"There's a path with an open seat to flip this district blue," she said. "It might be 30 votes or 300 votes, but there's a way for a Democrat to get there. Then I thought, 'Well, now we got to find a Democrat to do this.'"

Soon enough, she was running. Asked if she sought endorsements from Nevada's congressional delegation, she said she hadn't. But she does have support from several groups, including the Teamsters. Andrew Rivas, who sits on the Teamsters' committee that chose to endorse her, said the union wanted to know how candidates felt about everyone's right to organize.

"She just told us, flat out, 'I'm just gonna make it real quick. Everybody should be allowed to organize, and nobody should be allowed to interfere with that,'" he said. "We're like, 'Oh, OK. Actually, that was the fastest answer we've ever had.'"

She indicated she would support repealing right to work laws through federal legislation. 

"Having sat in some offices for senators and congressmen to lobby them in D.C., it's a completely different conversation," he said of talking with her. "You're actually having a discussion." 

Discussions are essential to her policy approach. Unlike Amodei, she promised to hold town halls. On public lands, she praised Sen. Jacky Rosen's (D-NV) Carson City lands bill and said she would focus on the possibility of "additional work that either the state or the local governments have to do in order to help affordable housing pencil out."

She noted a new public option that 10,000 Nevadans are using, but said, "I'm really agnostic about how we get there. I'm not married to one program. We just need healthcare to be a lot cheaper, and we need it to be a lot more accessible."

On Israel, she said, "I feel very strongly that there has to be voices within our Democratic caucus, in Congress, who are going to advocate for resources to get to Gaza for Gazan-led civilian infrastructure rebuild." 

Pressed about if she considers what has happened in Gaza a genocide, she said, "The United Nations said it was a genocide. They said that factually, and then they had the opportunity to leverage sanctions. They put the rhetoric out there, but they didn't move forward with any action." She added that she read both recent Senate resolutions to block sales of military equipment to Israel, one for military bulldozers, the other for 1,000 pound bombs, and said they have "a lot of logic" to them. Both Nevada senators voted against the resolutions.

Asked if she would commit to not taking money from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, she said, "I'm not gonna be taking AIPAC money," but added that she's not beholden to lobbyists. 

"I have a record of voting for the public option even when healthcare companies were coming out in lobbyist droves to try to kill it," she said. "I have a record of voting for the silver and gold mining tax even when mining had very effectively killed that same proposal just months before in a special session. I voted for the minimum wage increase twice, even though there was a huge lobby corps coming at you, saying, 'Don't do it.'"

She firmly supports the Reno moratorium on data centers, saying it was time for the state to "end a lot of the sweetheart deals on abatements." 

 "I voted for some of those 10 years ago, because we were in the throes of the recession and we absolutely had to get jobs here," she said. "They've overperformed. It is time to end the incentive." 

But the foundation of her campaign has historically been the calling card of Republicans — fighting back against federal overreach.

"You see the U.S. Forest Service … having some big cuts and having their missions retooled to pretty much timber production," she said. "To me, that means they're pulling up stakes in our rural communities and moving them somewhere else."

She's worried it could get worse, pulling up a chart describing the president's proposed 2027 budget that shows huge increases in defense spending and cuts to health and housing. 

If Democrats win the majority, would she support impeaching Trump?

"I think every conversation regarding accountability of this administration has to be on the table," she said. 

After hours driving around town, she stops at home, where her husband and teenaged son are chatting around the kitchen island. The walls are decorated with pictures of their kids. A framed story from Edible Reno-Tahoe refers to the two as a "power couple." Benitez-Thompson's husband has sauce going in the slow cooker so the kids can make themselves dinner.

She ends the workday at a house party hosted by her friend, Reno City Councilmember Brandi Anderson. She gives a short stump speech mentioning how inflation has driven her family to talk about reducing investments in their retirement accounts. 

Then, she takes a few tough questions. Asked about Israel, she closely repeats her earlier answer. Asked about the Democratic congressional leaders, she praises Rep. Hakeem Jeffries' (D-NY) push for Virginia redistricting. She's less pleased by last year's government shutdown.

"I thought, you know, 'At some point, I don't know that this is going to work for Nevada,'" she recounted. 

When she says that she will be Nevada's best advocate, the 40-person crowd eats it up.

 "I know how to close a deal, and I know how to land a deal; I want you to send me to D.C. to do that," she says. "The Republicans are not going to give us a candidate that will do that. The front-runner right now on his web page talks about how he plans to toe the Trump line. He might be a nice guy, but nice isn't going to settle it when our communities are falling apart."