Who is David Flippo, the Nevada congressional candidate Trump just endorsed?

President Donald Trump on Friday endorsed retired Lt. Col. David Flippo (R) in the hotly contested primary for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, an enormous win for the candidate who has pitched himself as the Trumpiest in the race. 

"It is my Great Honor to endorse America First Patriot, David Flippo, who is running to represent the fantastic people of Nevada's 2nd Congressional District!" Trump wrote on social media. "He is strongly supported by the most Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in Nevada, and many Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. I won Nevada in a virtual Landslide in 2024, and have always done phenomenally well there." 

The president, who won the state by slightly more than 3 percentage points two years ago, praised Flippo's military record and his business leadership. Flippo, in turn, expressed his gratitude. 

"President Trump is leading America back to greatness, and I am honored that he has chosen me to fight for him as he makes our country safe again, wealthy again, and most importantly great again," Flippo wrote in a statement to The Nevada Independent. 

Flippo and former state Sen. James Settelmeyer (R-Minden) have been considered the front-runners for the seat, which is held by retiring Rep. Mark Amodei (R). Settelmeyer previously earned endorsements from Amodei and Gov. Joe Lombardo (R).

Amodei wrote on social media Friday that Trump "made a mistake" in endorsing Flippo. 

"The time has not come for a national private political organization to pick for Nevadans, who speaks for them in the U.S. House of Representatives," Amodei wrote. "This endorsement is an incredibly curious way to say thank you to those people who have been the bedrock of your political endeavors here in original Nevada."

Settelmeyer plans to fight on.

"We are halfway through early voting, and James will continue campaigning hard until Election Day," the Settelmeyer campaign wrote in a statement to The Nevada Independent after Trump announced the Flippo endorsement. "Ultimately, Northern Nevada voters will decide this election, and they deserve a representative who knows our issues, understands our communities, and has the experience to represent them in Washington, not someone who only moved here when a political opportunity opened up."

Here's what to know about Flippo.

What does David Flippo do?

Flippo, 63, is an Air Force veteran and the owner of two small businesses. 

One of the businesses is Strategic Foundations LLC, for which he serves as an independent broker and investment adviser. He is registered with LPL Enterprise LLC, a subsidiary of one of the country's largest financial firms.

He also owns one location for a nationally franchised retail hobby store, HobbyTown, which sells scale models, among other products. One of his two sons manages the day-to-day-operations.

He also told The Nevada Independent he is a member of the Knights Hospitaller, also known as the Order of Saint John, a thousand-year-old Christian military institution that today focuses on helping the sick and poor. He leads a nonprofit, formed last year, called OSJ Food Aid USA. 

"I sent shipments of food to Israel after Oct. 7," he said, referring to a series of 2023 attacks on Israel by the militant group Hamas that triggered a broader war in the region. "I even sent a shipment of food to Libya, because they had huge flooding from two dams that broke."

Flippo has a bachelor's degree from Montana State University in Bozeman and a master's in public administration from Valdosta State University in Georgia. He previously spent a decade working in the oil industry, developing a maintenance plan for BP in Alaska. Before that, he served in the Air Force for a quarter century. He was a maintenance and logistics officer managing aircraft.

"We deploy with our aircraft, so hence all my deployments to the Middle East," he said. "Of my 24 years in the Air Force, my wife and I added it up, I was gone from home about 14 years of that time."

He shared that he was stationed in Kuwait and tasked with setting up three air bases in Iraq days before war broke out in 2003. He said he was in Nasiriyah when Jessica Lynch's convoy was attacked there that year in an ambush that killed 11 soldiers. 

Where did Flippo come from? 

It's a touchy question as Flippo's opponents have accused him of carpetbagging and contrasted him with Settelmeyer, whose family roots in the district date to the late 1800s. Flippo moved just months ago to Reno from Las Vegas — after Amodei announced his retirement from the seat.

"I'm from everywhere," Flippo told about 15 people at a campaign stop at Casey's, an American restaurant in Zephyr Cove, on Thursday. "I don't have a hometown."

Flippo explained that his ancestors were Italian artisans who helped build Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia. He said they fought in the Revolutionary War, that 58 Flippos died in the Civil War, and that the family fought in every war since. Growing up in the military meant he lived all over the world. 

He shared one of the most important lessons his mom taught him: "It's easy when you tell the truth."

"My mom told me when I was a little kid, after a few beatings, right: 'If you tell the truth, you don't have to worry about your lies,'" he said. "Some of you guys may have been raised that way too."

As audience members in camouflage "Flippo for Congress" hats ate lunch, he said that he lived on a farm in rural Virginia while he was in high school, where he met his now-wife, Dawn. They have been married for 42 years and are grandparents. 

"If the litmus test is, 'Well, you're not a fourth generation from here, well, then we would have no veterans in Congress right now,'" he said. "I've made Nevada my home. I've lived here longer than anywhere else, other than maybe the Middle East, and I've lived here over a decade. So, I spent a lot of time in the Middle East, but I can't run for Congress in the Middle East."

Flippo previously lived in Las Vegas. Business information for his nonprofit lists his and his wife's address, last updated at the end of January, in Lone Mountain. He said he moved to his house in Reno sometime around February, soon after Amodei bowed out.

He said that he and his wife plan to stay in Northern Nevada and are renting in Reno while they look for their "forever home," a pattern common for veterans.

"We're rural people," he told the audience, mentioning Douglas County, Fernley and Fallon as places where they may settle. 

How did he get into politics? 

"What got me off the couch is what Biden did to our economy," Flippo said in Zephyr Cove. "If any of you guys are business owners, you understand what happened."

He said that oil prices went up under the Biden administration, driving up logistics costs across industries. 

He blames what he calls the COVID "plandemic" for further economic woes.

"Labor costs went up overnight. I was paying seven bucks, now I'm paying 15 to 17 bucks an hour for labor, because guess what they did? They could not get minimum wage to $15 an hour in Congress, so they do it through COVID and unemployment," he said. 

Flippo ran for Congress in Nevada's Las Vegas-based 4th Congressional District in 2024, taking second in the primary to former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee (R). 

He was running for that Southern Nevada seat again this cycle until the 2nd Congressional seat opened up. Flippo has said the drive to have a conservative represent the seat motivated his decision to swap races. 

What is Flippo running on?

Flippo says his top issues are "the economy, immigration and Shariah law." 

He suggested that fuel might be more readily available in Nevada if the state were to tap into lines in Arizona or Utah or if the government were to cut regulations on the oil industry. As it stands, Nevada is heavily reliant on fuel from California, which is ratcheting up its carbon emission regulations in ways that have contributed to refinery closures.

"Nobody's going to build another refinery in this country unless we do something about that," Flippo argued.  

He previously told The Nevada Independent that while Trump has faced criticism for "starting a forever war," Flippo believes "he's ending one."

Flippo has campaigned relentlessly on deporting undocumented immigrants, slamming Settelmeyer for voting as a state senator in 2013 to allow them to sign up for driver authorization cards. 

Speaking about Shariah law, which refers to Islam's moral code, he brought up a recent forum with other candidates.

"There's three Republicans that said, 'That's unconstitutional to ban Shariah law,'" he said. "I just — I couldn't believe that three Republicans would say that. We're not saying that you can't be a Muslim, we're not saying you can't practice your religion. Shariah law is not that. Shariah law would mean that our laws do not apply to them, and we can't allow that. That's what's happening in Paris and London and all over the world right now." 

Most of all, though, Flippo is running to support the president's agenda. Flippo previously told The Nevada Independent he wished the president "was a little bit stronger, maybe on the Second Amendment," but that he otherwise gave Trump an "A-plus" and is eager to codify his executive orders into law. 

"This district deserves a strong conservative," Flippo said, arguing he would not be a Republican in Name Only. "You don't need to be a RINO in this seat." 

Who are his supporters? 

Flippo has endorsements from Turning Point USA, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Freedom Caucus and several other conservative groups, as well as former Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino and several individual members of Congress. 

In Zephyr Cove, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), a far-right member of the Freedom Caucus, joined Flippo for a multiday stint on the trail. He told The Nevada Independent the two were acquainted in 2024 and became friends because they share a campaign manager, Rory McShane. McShane's firm ran campaigns for 2022 GOP secretary of state nominee and 2024 Senate candidate Jim Marchant, a 2020 election denier, as well as 2022 GOP treasurer nominee Michelle Fiore, and 2022 GOP 4th Congressional District nominee Sam Peters. 

Gosar said Flippo would be a strong ally in Congress.

"We need him in Congress because he's a guy who's making the right moves," Gosar said. "We need more people that are military, have business backgrounds, that see what the average person has done, time and time again, and he meets that standard. And he's as honest as they come."

This story was updated on May 29th, 2026 at 11:22 a.m. with comment from the Settelmeyer campaign. It was updated again at 4:49 p.m. with a statement from Amodei and additional information about Flippo and his campaign.