I've Been Fighting for Nevada My Whole Life. This Is Just the Next Round.
I grew up in Las Vegas, the son of a single immigrant mother. Growing up, I worked whatever jobs I could find — delivering newspapers, making pizzas, cleaning up a veterinary clinic after hours — all to help my mom keep the family together and make sure my younger siblings were taken care of. I was the first in my family to go to college, and I never forgot what it took to get there.
That upbringing gave me something no amount of political experience could: a real understanding of what work means to a family, and what happens when it isn’t enough. When I got the opportunity to lead the Culinary Training Academy, Nevada’s largest job-training program, it felt like a natural extension of everything I’d already lived. I’d spent years helping thousands of Nevadans find good-paying work in hospitality and other industries, and what I learned in that role stayed with me. You can’t celebrate some families thriving because of a livable paycheck, while watching hardworking neighbors struggle without one. That alone was reason enough to pursue public service.
My path into elected office began with the Nevada State Senate in 2004, where I rose to become the youngest Majority Leaders in the state’s history. It wasn’t always easy: the recession forced some of the most painful budget decisions Nevada had ever faced at the time. But my approach was straightforward: the people who were already struggling the most were not going to be the ones asked to bear the heaviest burden of a crisis they didn’t create.
In 2012, I was elected to represent Nevada’s 4th District in Congress, where I fought hard to lower costs for working families, protect the programs people depend on, and create real economic opportunity in Nevada. But that work couldn’t be finished in a single term; so in 2018 I returned to Washington to finish the job. I went on to chair the Congressional Black Caucus, where I used my platform to push maternal health protections, expand access to capital for small businesses, and press for federal accountability on the economic and healthcare issues my constituents had been raising for years. The higher that platform got, the more I felt the weight of our decisions in Washington.
Today, my work is centered on the House Ways & Means Committee, the only committee specifically named in the U.S. Constitution, because it controls the policies that shape everyday life: taxes, healthcare, Social Security, and Medicare. Of 435 members of Congress, only 41 serve on Ways & Means, and I serve on both the Health and Social Security subcommittees, where I’m directly responsible for protecting benefits that 143,000 people in this district spent their entire working lives earning. Every vote, every hearing, and every bill traces back to the same instinct I developed long before I ever held office. That when your community is depending on you, you show up and you get results. That’s what my upbringing taught me, and that’s what I bring to Congress every single day.
Why This Seat Matters in 2026
The road to a Democratic House majority runs through Nevada. Republicans and extremist PACs know it, which is why they’re already spending to flip it. I’m running because I’ve seen what this seat can do when it’s filled by someone who genuinely fights for working families. And I’m not ready to hand that back.
But I can’t do it alone. If you believe that one job should be enough, that healthcare isn’t a privilege, that Social Security is a promise that doesn’t get broken, that workers deserve dignity and a fair wage…