US elections: Will Latinos oust Catherine Cortez Masto, the first US Latina senator?

Catherine Cortez Masto was elected to the US Senate in Nevada in 2016

As dark clouds linger over the US economy, America's first Latina senator could be punished by the working-class voters who elected her.

If the city of Las Vegas is all glitz and glamour, the history-making senator from the state of Nevada is anything but.

Catherine Cortez Masto, 58, cuts a reserved figure on the campaign trail and on the job.

Even her backers admit that some voters don't know her full name and just call her "la senadora" instead.

That all spells trouble for Ms Cortez Masto, who analysts consider "the most vulnerable Democrat" in the Senate - and the Latino voters who helped to put her in office six years ago might be the ones to sink her re-election bid.

The granddaughter of a Mexican baker, she eked out a victory in 2016 thanks to strong backing from the state's growing Hispanic population.

But it's easy to see why she was well-positioned for office.

Lights on the Strip in Las Vegas

Her father Manny was a back-slapping Nevada politician who worked his way up from parking valet to lawyer to president of the powerful government agency that promotes the state's all-important tourism industry.

He was friends with the long-serving Nevada Democratic senator Harry Reid, who hand-picked Ms Cortez Masto, a former prosecutor and two-term state attorney general, as his replacement.

Mr Reid spent years building Democratic strength in the state, and his backing is widely credited with delivering victories like her 2016 win.

She lost 16 of Nevada's 17 counties but dominated in Clark County, where more than 70% of the state's population lives, including the service workers who keep the lights running in Las Vegas.

Latinos are historically a Democratic-leaning bloc and were particularly energised to vote against Republicans by Donald Trump's immigration platform in that election.

But record-high inflation and a sluggish economy in 2022 have taken their toll in a state reliant on tourism and hospitality.

"People are barely surviving today," said Leo Murrieta, a director at Make the Road Action (MRA), a Latino voter outreach group.

"They talk to us about how hard it is to get by, how hard it is to pay rent, to raise kids and save for the future."

Republican challenger Adam Laxalt polls well with Latino voters

Oftentimes "people don't know how much they like Democrats", Mr Murrieta said, as the party is "good at governing but terrible at talking about it".

That may be a problem for Ms Cortez Masto.

She is "more of a workhorse than a show horse," according to veteran Nevada politics reporter Jon Ralston.

"She's never been a high-profile figure. That's where the Republicans have capitalised - to try to define her before she can fully define herself," he said.

"They can't say Cortez Masto's name without Joe Biden's name following very closely behind. They're trying to make her responsible for all of the things the president is being held responsible for" - and that includes the sluggish economy at the top of the list.

Ms Cortez Masto is neck-and-neck with her challenger Adam Laxalt, 44, her successor as attorney general. The Republican gained notoriety two years ago for championing defeated President Trump's false claims of election fraud.

One recent poll has him inching ahead with Latinos, who make up one in five eligible voters in Nevada.

Mr Laxalt is banking on this dip in their once-robust support for Democrats to win.

Central to that effort is Operación ¡Vamos! - a massive Republican operation that has reached some 250,000 Latino voters in Nevada and hopes to turn them off what it labels the Democrats' "far-left agenda".

"So many Hispanic folks really didn't even know her," Republican consultant Ana Carbonell said of Ms Cortez Masto. "The Democratic party has systematically taken Hispanics for granted."

Several Latino groups that support the senator are now working overtime to make sure she is not voted out.

The Culinary Union, a Latino-dominated labour union of 60,000 workers, also backs her. Its canvassers have vowed to knock on a million doors by election day to turn out the vote. Its backing does carry weight: the union's support for Mr Biden in 2020 is credited with delivering him victory in the state.

But some minds are already made up.

"My life is definitely not better now than it was two, three years ago," said Iris Ramos Jones, an Ecuadorean immigrant. She is voting Republican because she feels the country is "on the wrong path," she said.

The affordability crisis in the state even prompted a Democrat-voting friend to tell Ms Ramos Jones that he and his wife "have seen the light".

"We have officially registered as Republicans," he wrote. "We hate what is happening and we know who's responsible."