Republican Marty O'Donnell is taking another run at Susie Lee's seat in Nevada's Congressional District 3, setting up a closely watched race that could help decide how the state's congressional delegation looks after Nov. 3. Lee, the incumbent, is again running in a contest expected to be tight.
The timing matters because Nevada voters will have a chance to reshape that delegation on Nov. 3, and Lee is one of the names at the center of that fight. O'Donnell is trying to turn a second campaign into a breakthrough after his first try two years ago, while Lee is arguing that his central attack line on her finances does not add up.
Lee said the stock trades at issue involved an account controlled by her ex-husband and that the broker misunderstood instructions tied to it. She said the mistake was found and explained to authorities. O'Donnell has said Lee violated the law 200 times, but Lee called that accusation a case of conflating one mistake into a much larger charge than the facts support.
Lee also said she voted to ban stock trading by members of Congress, while members of the executive branch face no such restriction. That leaves O'Donnell pressing a line of attack that is easy to say and harder to prove at the level he claims, especially in a race where the margin could be narrow.
The contest is not just about that dispute. O'Donnell has also faced accusations of antisemitism tied to the Marty Army and to posts on Discord. An analysis of those posts found racial slurs, minimizations of Nazi Germany and defenses of white nationalist conspiracy theories, even as O'Donnell said users who espouse racist or antisemitic views will be banned and that the forum has been cleaned up, with an unknown number of people removed.
For Lee, the challenge is to hold a seat in a state where the stakes are larger than one district. For O'Donnell, the question is whether a second campaign can do what the first one did not. On Nov. 3, Nevada voters will decide whether that gamble pays off.
