GOP, Anti-Progressive Forces Team Up to Stop Amy Vilela

LAS VEGAS—Early Voting is underway in the 2022 Nevada primary elections, and Democratic Majority for Israel, a corporate Super PAC formed in 2019 and commonly referred to by the shorthand ‘DMFI,’ has increased its spending in the Democratic primary race for the state’s first congressional district in favor Dina Titus, a longtime incumbent now defending a very different seat than the one she was first elected to a decade ago. 

Titus has become a top target for the GOP with the newly redrawn district lines presenting a much more competitive general election in November, but the more immediate threat to the 72-year-old retired college professor’s tenure is progressive Democrat Amy Vilela.

Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) PAC FEC 24 Hour Report, Thursday, June 2, 2022.

Vilela, who is running on an economically populist message, has mounted the first viable primary challenge to Titus since she’s held the seat. An accountant, small business owner, active duty military spouse, and single-payer healthcare advocate, Vilela first rose to national prominence in 2019 after her first campaign for public office was featured alongside those of now-Reps. Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Netflix’s award-winning documentary Knock Down the House. 

Now, in 2022, Vilela is looking to follow in her co-stars’ footsteps by becoming the third woman featured in the film to shock the political establishment by ultimately getting elected to the United States House of Representatives; however, this wouldn’t be Vilela’s first taste of victory in the silver state. 

In 2020, she led Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid in the state as a Nevada Co-Chair for his campaign, and in 2021, she was also a galvanizing force for the Sanders-aligned progressives’ so-called takeover of the Nevada State Democratic Party—both efforts, Vilela claims, that helped her and other progressive activists and coalition groups build a “lasting organizing infrastructure” and a “long-term foundation” for their movement politics across the Las Vegas Valley.

While Dina Titus has a number of corporate special interests in her corner, Vilela has the support of Rep. Cori Bush, pictured here in Las Vegas helping launch a volunteer canvass on Saturday, June 4th.

DMFI has a history of spending massive sums of money to thwart progressive candidates by weighing-in in favor of conservative Democrats, often injecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of independent expenditures on behalf of their picks. Not limited to defending incumbent Democrats, DMFI has also spent heavily in open races as well as in favor of primary challengers running well to the right of sitting members of Congress like in the case Rep. Andy Levin this cycle in Michigan.

While DMFI's spending will likely continue to increase exponentially as Vilela’s insurgent bid gains momentum in the final week of the campaign, they are not the only outside corporate interest pouring money into Nevada to defeat Vilela’s (notably) corporate-free campaign. Another entity going by the name “Opportunity for All Action Fund” has recently started spending large sums in NV-01’s Democratic primary to support Titus via a robust direct mail independent expenditure.

Vilela called into question the motives of the new “Opportunity for All Action Fund” on Twitter Monday morning.

On Monday morning, Vilela called attention to the new group, which is technically listed as a 501(c)4 organization not registered with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), implying that they may be invested in Titus’ victory on June 14th because they see her as a weaker nominee in November’s general election for the GOP to pick off.

With little publicly available information about “Opportunity for All Action Fund” online, it is difficult to discern their motives, but Vilela has long been pointing to the “risk” that renominating Titus poses to Nevada Democrats’ ability to retain the seat in Congress in the face of what many experts believe will be a so-called red wave cycle, with Republicans likely retaking the House given the majority Party’s already-slim margins.

When asked to elaborate, Vilela points to evidence of “complacency” on the incumbent’s part. “Instead of using the safety of her deep blue district these past ten years to push the envelope when it comes to progressive policy or to invest in engaging and mobilizing her constituents to help move Nevada as a whole in a more progressive direction, she has instead taken her foot of the gas,” Vilela said. “During her time representing NV-01, she has consistently delivered 20,000 fewer general election votes—in midterm and presidential cycles alike—than her counterparts up north do in the second district, despite those candidates losing in landslides to the Republicans.”

A quick look at the math does bare out Vilela’s claims, and may well point to why Titus sticks out as the GOP’s top target in Nevada in 2022, despite her fellow incumbent Las Vegas-area Reps. Susie Lee and Steven Horsford in the 3rd and 4th districts, respectively, both defending similarly competitive seats post-redistricting. Beyond that, experts do seemingly concur that several potentially alarming trends currently developing in Nevada should give Democrats—at least those closely aligned with the “establishment wing” of the party, as Vilela puts it—cause for concern in November.

“With our Party leaders all but certain that their standard playbook is going to lead them to electoral defeat this year, in order to retain this critical seat, even in the face of GOP victories nationwide, we need a new approach. Our campaign is about deep community organizing, meeting the working people of southern Nevada where they’re at, and taking absolutely nothing for granted. It’s an approach that I believe has us well positioned to win in both June and November, and next week, I suspect the voters of Nevada’s new first district are going to show the world that they agree!”

Early voting in Nevada began on Saturday, May 28th, and runs until this Friday, June 10th. Election Day is Tuesday, June 14th.

—Team Vilela

Amy Vilela is running for Congress in Las Vegas to represent the people of Nevada's First District because we deserve more! For too long, our status quo leadership has been complacent, but working people need a champion—someone who understands the struggle and who will take that lived experience with them to Congress to fight for us. Amy knows the struggle firsthand, she has that lived experience, she's ready to fight, and she will be that champion!

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 Amy Vilela for Congress
P.O. Box 12413
Las Vegas, NV 89112
United States

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