The Republican primary for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District won’t be an easy fight with a crowded field of candidates and the earliest strains of bitterness already seeping into social media, though little of that was on display at the candidates’ first forum Tuesday night.

In general, the three candidates — state Sen. Scott Hammond, former television reporter Michelle Mortensen and former Assemblywoman Victoria Seaman — at the forum agreed on more than they disagreed on. They all support the Republican-backed tax package passed by Congress last year, want to cut spending, think vocational training needs to be an option for high schoolers and don’t support storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

But the fault lines between them showed some of their earliest cracks at the Tuesday forum, which was hosted by the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Nevada and the Nevada Republican Black Caucus at a furniture showroom at the World Market Center. The seat is a significant pickup opportunity for Republicans as Democrats only have a slight voter registration advantage in the largely suburban district that stretches from Summerlin down to the southernmost tip of the state.

The first big topic of the night: immigration — specifically, a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, who were brought to the country illegally as children.

Hammond, a former Spanish and government high school teacher, said that he would support such a proposal as a way to get border security.

“We all know that we elected Donald Trump as the great negotiator, someone who can go in a room and figure out how to get the number one priority which is border security,” Hammond said. “If he has to create a pathway to citizenship in order to do that, then I’d be willing to do that, but I think you have to consider all of that.”

Seaman, a businesswoman, said she wouldn’t consider giving citizenship to DACA recipients at all until E-Verify — a federal government website used to determine eligibility for employment in the U.S. — is expanded, the borders are secure and sanctuary cities are ended. Mortensen praised President Donald Trump’s four-point plan for immigration and lamented Republicans and Democrats not being able to come together to pass a bill as indicative of the “dysfunction” in Washington, D.C.

“(Trump’s plan) was a wonderful compromise, but what has Washington done? They’ve said non-stop that’s not enough,” Mortensen said.

Asked how she would address black unemployment, Mortensen pointed to the tax bill and infrastructure projects in Las Vegas, including Project Neon, the Raiders stadium and Resorts World. Hammond referenced his time up at the Legislature, saying he had made “tough decisions” but that lawmakers have created a business-friendly environment that led to the creation of 250,000 jobs over the last six years. Seaman said that Trump’s “America First” policies had already reduced black and Hispanic unemployment.

“I will put those policies first,” Seaman promised.

Both Seaman and Mortensen mentioned Trump’s “America First” policy multiple times during the hour-and-a-half-long forum, with both of them saying they would be happy for the president to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Hammond also agreed that the implementation of NAFTA had been “horrible” and that he’s on board with getting a better deal for U.S. workers and leveling the playing field.

But Hammond took a different tack than the other two when it came to a question about how to encourage Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to give more political freedoms to their citizens. While Mortensen suggested that the U.S. use economic sanctions and set an example of honoring freedom and human rights and Seaman suggested the U.S. isolate the countries until they implement reforms, Hammond suggested opening avenues of dialogue with other countries and providing for a cultural exchange.

"Change happens when the citizens of that country are ready to change,” Hammond said. “You have to give them the ability to feel the need to change."

While Hammond and Seaman both said the biggest threat to national security is terrorism, Mortensen took it one step further, decrying the ongoing threat of cyberterrorism.

“Whenever there’s a big data breach everyone is up in arms and the media says the sky is falling,” Mortensen said. “A month later everyone has forgotten about it.”

Hammond and Seaman also expressed concerns with civil asset forfeiture, the process by which law enforcement officers take assets from people suspected of being involved with a crime, with Hammond saying that it creates a “perverse incentive” for law enforcement to seize assets and Seaman arguing that there should be no forfeiture without a conviction. Mortensen agreed that it can lead to abuses of power but said it can also be used to stop crimes before they happen.

Asked about the tax climate for small businesses, Hammond touted that Nevada is the “fifth-best tax structure state in the union — and our potential is going up and up and up.” But Seaman got in a subtle dig at Hammond, who voted for a $1.1 billion tax package for education in 2015, saying that as a businesswoman she isn’t “going to tax and regulate my way out of anything.”

“It isn’t good for business no matter how you want to spin it,” Seaman said of the 2015 bill, which she voted against.

Still, Hammond promised that he had the most electability in the general election, saying that “no one can take on the Democrats on the issue of education” as he can, pointing to a bill on Education Savings Accounts that he spearheaded in the 2015 session. Seaman, too, praised ESAs while also suggesting disbanding the Department of Education, while Mortensen talked about empowering parents on the local level.

“We need to cut the regulation, cut the bureaucracy, cut all the red tape,” Mortensen said. “Who knows better than a parent where to send their child? Who knows better than a parent?”

Mortensen countered that she was the most electable, pointing to her consumer advocacy work on television and promising that she would fight the liberal media because “you can’t fight the media if you don’t know anything about the media.” Seaman, meanwhile, said that she has proven she can win in Democratic districts, having won the Assembly District 34 seat where Democrats had a 12 percent voter registration advantage in the red wave of 2014.

The three candidates are the top fundraisers in an even wider field of Republican primary contenders, including former Clark County Republican Party Chairman Dave McKeon and Regent Patrick Carter. The eventual Republican nominee will likely go on to challenge Democratic education advocate and philanthropist Susie Lee, who hasn’t attracted any serious primary challengers yet.

The primary election will be held June 12.