While Mitch McConnell’s handpicked candidate Sam Brown is trying to run away from his anti-choice record and positions this cycle, his own actions tell a different story.
Brown was just caught “quietly” attending a gala last month for Nevada Right to Life, a radical anti-choice group that “opposes abortion at all stages of pregnancy” and has praised abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest. The event’s keynote speaker has even declared that “abortion is health care the way rape is love making.”
When asked to explain his attendance at the Right to Life event and his support for banning abortion without exceptions for rape or incest, Brown refused to answer.
And just last week, Brown was caught sending out a fundraising email trying to raise money off of Senator Tuberville’s blockade of senior military positions over his own anti-choice agenda.
As longtime Nevada journalist Steve Sebelius put it today: “Voters deserve to know where a candidate stands on the issues. They should not have to guess, read tea leaves or consult a Magic 8 Ball.”
Nevada Current: Brown avoids abortion issue on campaign, but attends anti-abortion rights gala
By April Corbin Girnus
Key points:
- Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sam Brown last month quietly attended an anti-abortion rights organization’s annual gala — a hint at where he stands on an issue he has largely tried to downplay on the campaign trail.
- Brown and his campaign did not publicize his attendance at Nevada Right to Life’s 16th Annual Friends for Life Gala — held on Sept. 8 at The Reno Ballroom — but Douglas County Commissioner Mark Gardner posted a photo on social media of himself with the retired Army captain and their wives at the event.
- The Current reached out to the Brown campaign to confirm his attendance but did not receive a response.
- After coming in second to Adam Laxalt in Nevada’s 2022 GOP Senate primary, Brown is now backed by the national Republican establishment for 2024, but he faces a crowded primary that includes former state Assemblyman turned virulent election denier Jim Marchant and former Trump ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter.
- “I am pro life,” Brown states on his campaign website. The blurb goes on to say he will oppose “any bill that pushes for federal funding of abortion, late term abortions, or abortion without parental notification” and that he “will support federal judges who understand the importance of protecting life.”
- But he has avoided expressing his opinion on Nevada’s existing abortion protections or taking a position on the potential for a federal ban on abortion. When asked by KSNV in July whether he supports restricting abortion access in Nevada, Brown sidestepped answering, saying he wanted to support adoption and prenatal and postnatal care for mothers.
- The Nevada Independent last month reported that Brown, when he was a congressional candidate in Texas nearly a decade ago, expressed support for a 20-week ban on abortion there.
- The Current reached out to Brown’s campaign and asked him to clarify but did not receive a response.
- Nevada Right to Life describes its mission as “protecting life from conception to natural death” and opposes abortion at all stages of pregnancy.
- The advertised headliner at the Sept. 8 event attended by Brown was Seth Dillon, the CEO of The Babylon Bee, a right-wing satire site that posts videos with titles like “The Gender Fairy Will Grant Your Gender Wishes.” He has been outspoken about his extreme positions on abortion.
- “I don’t think murder fixes a rape,” Dillon told Joe Rogan last year after the podcaster defended the right for a 14-year-old to receive an abortion after rape.
- Brown, like many political candidates, often posts about the various events he attends. He posted about the Douglas County Rodeo, which he and his wife attended on the same weekend as the gala. He did not post about Nevada Right to Life.
