Retired Army Capt. Sam Brown of Nevada, who made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2022 but amassed grassroots support within the GOP, is likely to soon announce he will challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, who is up for re-election.
An invite sent out Wednesday by Brown to potential supporters and obtained by NBC News indicates a July 10 announcement by Brown: “Join us for an event in support of Sam Brown as he considers running to represent you.”
Brown is considering a launch for the U.S. Senate seat, a source with knowledge of the event said.
Former GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt recently told NBC News that he was not running for office. Laxalt, who lost to Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in the 2022 midterms, defeated Brown in the primary that year.
But Brown still built grassroots enthusiasm in Nevada’s GOP, including drawing tens of thousands of small dollar donations. In his primary run, Brown won at least three straw polls, including one taken by the Nevada state Republican Party.
Brown was severely burned after an IED explosion in 2008, while he served in Afghanistan. It left him partially disfigured, and he leaned into that personal experience in his first Senate bid.
In an ad titled “Duty” that ran last year, he said, “I wasn’t born into power. I’m from small-town America, where duty and service still matter.”
The visibly scarred Brown described how a “Taliban bomb nearly killed” him in Afghanistan and that “after 30 surgeries, years of recovery, turns out I’m hard to kill.”
Jim Marchant, who promoted former President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and lost his bid for Nevada secretary of state in 2022, is also running for the GOP Senate nomination.
“Between Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked candidate Sam Brown, MAGA election denier Jim Marchant, and a host of other far-right candidates eyeing a Senate run,” Nevada state Democratic Party spokesperson Johanna Warshaw said, “Republicans are in for a messy primary that will expose their deeply flawed candidates as out of touch with hardworking Nevadans.”