Las Vegas voters have an opportunity on Tuesday to do something they haven’t done since Elvis was shaking his hips in spangled jumpsuits at the International Hotel: elect a Republican mayor.
Although the runoff is technically nonpartisan, the party labels are clear — city councilwoman Victoria Seaman, a Republican, and former congresswoman Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, were the top two vote-getters in June’s multi-candidate election. Berkley led the field with 35.7 percent, while Seaman finished second with 28.9 percent.
Because no candidate captured a majority in the first round of voting, Berkley and Seaman face each other again in Tuesday’s runoff.
The last Republican mayor of Las Vegas was Oran Gragson, who served from 1959 until 1975. For the last 25 years, the city’s mayors have been Democrats-turned-independents: current mayor Carolyn Goodman succeeded her husband, Oscar, in the job in 2011.
Strong early-voting turnout by Republicans in Nevada this year could be a good sign for Seaman, who has received help from the new Republican Mayors Association.
“I’ve learned that mayors matter and who your mayor is makes a difference,” the association’s president, Dallas mayor Eric Johnson, said in an email, adding that “Victoria Seaman is going to make a difference here in Las Vegas.”
Seaman, who moved to Nevada from California in 2005, served one term in Nevada’s state assembly and was first elected to the city council during a 2019 special election. In the state assembly she made efforts to combat squatters and senior abuse. On the city council she helped to enact a public camping ban and supported building a children’s hospital.
As mayor, Seaman promises to advocate for increasing penalties for violent and organized crimes, expand outreach to the homeless, and prioritize incentives for builders to expand affordable housing and streamline the permitting process.
If elected, she is committed to providing “bold leaderships,” “enacting commonsense policies,” and addressing rising housing costs, she told Fox News.
“Almost 87 percent of southern Nevada is owned by the Bureau of Land Management,” she said. “It’s really important to be working with our delegation to make sure that we can get some of this land back and annex that into the city for workforce and affordable housing.”
Seaman, who has been endorsed by more than two dozen first-responder and veteran organizations, also vowed to make Las Vegas “one of the safest cities in the union.”
Berkley served seven terms in Congress but left the political stage after she lost a bitter Senate race in 2012. She similarly vows to improve public safety by working closely with the city’s police department to “ensure they have the resources to keep our families safe,” according to her campaign website.
Berkley is also focused on expanding affordable housing, bringing “smart growth” to the city, and tackling homelessness by “fostering responsibility, accountability, and self-reliance.” She was endorsed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which said Berkley’s “commitment to public service runs broad and deep” and that she has “a wealth of experience on a variety of issues that are vital to a growing municipality.”
Seaman has accused Berkley of supporting “extreme liberal policies” while in Congress.
Whoever wins the election will help settle a costly, nine-year land-use dispute between the city and a developer who was illegally blocked from building a housing community on the defunct Badlands golf course, greatly devaluing the property. Earlier this year, Nevada’s supreme court upheld a $48 million award to the property owner.