Brown has spent the last week in the spotlight for his extreme anti-abortion stances, efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, “dismal” anti-LGBTQ+ record, and extreme economic agenda
Over the last week, Sam Brown has been in the spotlight yet again for his extreme MAGA agenda that is wildly out of step with Nevadans. This includes his long-held anti-abortion stances, his disturbing anti-LGBTQ+ record, his support for plans that would force extreme cuts to vital programs like Social Security and Medicare, and his support for efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act – threatening Nevadans’ access to quality, affordable health care.
Read Brown’s lowlights of the past week:
Nevada Current: Brown backs balanced budget amendment and cutting trillions in federal spending
April Corbin Girnus
July 8, 2024
- GOP Senate candidate Sam Brown would support cutting federal spending by at least 1% annually in order to balance the federal budget, according to previously unreported audio clips obtained by the Current of him on the campaign trail.
- “We have to reduce spending at some sort of percentage,” Brown said at a Sierra Nevada Republican Women’s luncheon in February. “(Sen.) Rand Paul’s done a lot of studying on this in the past. He used to say if we reduce spending by 1% a year for several years we can get back to a much healthier spot.”
- Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, since 2018 has proposed a “Penny Plan” that would mandate trillions of dollars in cuts to federal agencies and programs over five years in order to balance the budget.
- Brown in the audio adds, “We could also get back to something called zero-based budgeting. A balanced budget amendment is also something I would support.”
- Conservatives have long proposed a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit federal appropriations by Congress to estimated federal revenues for each fiscal year, except in times of national emergency. As recently as this year, state lawmakers across the country have passed or pitched resolutions calling for a national convention to consider such an amendment.
- Economists have largely panned a balanced budget amendment, calling it unsound fiscal policy and noting that the limit it sets is arbitrary. Brown has explicitly expressed support for a balanced budget amendment previously.
- “Congress must get back to a place where we bring fiscal accountability,” he said at a Boulder City Republican Women’s luncheon in November, the audio of which the Current also obtained. “I would love to see a balanced budget amendment get passed. I would push for a balanced budget amendment.”
- In 2022, when he was running against Adam Laxalt for the GOP Senate race nomination, Brown said he wanted to cut federal funding by eliminating entire federal departments, including the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Education and Energy.
The Nevadan News: Where Jacky Rosen and Sam Brown stand on healthcare issues
Casey Harrison
July 3, 2024
- Brown’s opposition to government efforts to lower healthcare costs and expand access contrasts sharply with that of Rosen, his Democratic opponent, who was among the key votes in support of expanding programs that cap insulin and prescription drug prices for seniors.
- During an unsuccessful run for the Texas statehouse in 2014, Sam Brown, who is now the GOP challenger to Nevada Democratic incumbent US Sen. Jacky Rosen, said the ACA should not be adopted in “any way shape or form.”
- An archive of Brown’s 2014 campaign website shows Brown promised he would “work closely with our conservative leadership to resist the expansion of Obamacare in Texas.”
- “Politicians have allowed bureaucrats to write healthcare laws, like Obamacare, that flood the marketplace with regulations — starving it of options — while driving up costs and lowering access to quality coverage,” Brown states under the healthcare section of his website’s “issues” section. “We need conservative leaders who understand that competition — not government — drives medical innovations that lead to better care and lower costs.”
- Brown has also been a vocal opponent of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a key piece of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda that included provisions that allowed the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the price it pays for certain prescription medications for Medicare recipients.
The Advocate: Nevada Republican candidate Sam Brown’s anti-LGBTQ+ record
Christopher Wiggins
July 3, 2024
- Brown’s tenure as president and chairman of the Nevada Faith and Freedom Coalition demonstrates his deep entrenchment in the anti-LGBTQ+ movement. The organization has vehemently opposed marriage equality and backed legislation that permits discrimination against same-sex couples under the guise of religious liberty.
- According to the Coalition’s statements, when President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act in December 2022, the group decried it as an assault on religious freedom, a perspective that Brown has echoed.
- During his 2022 Senate campaign, Brown praised Florida’s “don’t say gay” legislation, framing it as necessary against what he described as “indoctrination” in schools.
- In 2022, after the leak of the Dobbs opinion, Brown was asked during a debate if he was concerned about same-sex marriage being taken away after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Brown refused to say he thought same-sex marriage should be protected.
- Brown also had a history of affiliations with anti-LGBTQ+ churches. Since relocating to Nevada in 2019, he has been actively involved with Calvary Chapel Reno-Sparks, where pastor Phil McKay has denounced LGBTQ+ acknowledgment as a form of idolatry. According to McKay, government support for LGBTQ+ rights is “the kind of idolatry that destroys souls.”
Daily Kos: GOP Senate nominee tries to walk back lifetime of anti-abortion extremism
Joan McCarter
July 3, 2024
- Sam Brown, the Republican nominee for Senate in Nevada, has been backpedaling as fast as he can from his political history as an anti-abortion activist, trying to convince the pro-abortion-rights state that it’s Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen who’s the extremist.
- His latest effort is an op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun, published this past Sunday, in which … he goes on to say that the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade was good for Nevada—where abortion is legal until the 24th week of pregnancy—because the ruling “strengthened Nevada’s protections for abortion by confirming this choice is decided by states.”
- In his op-ed, Brown also warns that Rosen “supports allowing the federal government to impose new rules on abortion, rules that have the potential to go further than Nevadans may desire.” This is, unsurprisingly, a lie. Rosen supports the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify Roe protections into law.
- Brown built his political career in Texas as an extreme anti-abortion activist. While running for office there, he staunchly supported what was then the strictest abortion ban in the country, calling the abortion ban “nonnegotiable.” And after moving to Nevada, he served as chairman of the executive board for Nevada Faith and Freedom Coalition, an anti-abortion group that has backed a federal ban and called Roe v. Wade a “moral atrocity.”
- What seems likelier? Brown disavowing a political lifetime of anti-abortion extremism and activism, or him cynically pretending he’s on the side of women to win in this pro-abortion-rights state?
Nevada Current: Brown mum on position on Nevada abortion rights amendment
Dana Gentry
July 2, 2024
- … the Republican challenger to Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen won’t say how he will vote in November on a very real abortion measure on Nevada’s ballot.
- But Brown is unwilling so far to let the people know where he stands on Nevada’s ballot question. “Yeah, I’ll be one of approximately one and a half million voters at that point in time,” Brown told a Reno TV station in May when asked how he’ll vote.
- Brown’s campaign spokeswoman has ignored requests to respond to the Current’s questions on the Nevada measure.
- In his op-ed, Brown suggests the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which leaves the abortion issue to states, “strengthened Nevada’s protections for abortion.”
- Critics contend Brown, by focusing on his pledge not to support a federal ban, is gaslighting voters in Nevada.
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