Trump to rally in Minden for Lombardo, Laxalt ahead of general election
Former President Donald Trump is headed back to Nevada for a general election campaign rally next weekend to boost Republican candidates, including U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt and gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo.
The rally is scheduled for Oct. 8, and will be held at the Minden-Tahoe Airport alongside Laxalt, Lombardo and “the entire Nevada Trump ticket,” according to an advisory issued on Friday. It marks Trump’s second visit to the state this year, after the former president came to Las Vegas in July for an event also aimed at boosting Laxalt and Lombardo.
The rally will coincide with the planned mass mailing out of ballots to most rural counties (including Douglas County, which houses Minden) in Nevada, and two weeks before the start of early voting.
Trump held a campaign rally at the Minden airport in 2020, after previous attempts by the president’s campaign to hold rallies at airports in Las Vegas and Reno were rebuffed by officials citing Nevada’s at-the-time ban on gatherings of more than 50 people during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Roughly 5,000 people attended that rally.
President Joe Biden narrowly won Nevada in the 2020 presidential race, defeating Trump by about 33,000 votes out of more than 1.4 million votes cast.
Recent polling shows that Lombardo and Laxalt are locked in tight races with their Democratic general election opponents, Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), respectively.