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- The 2026 race for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District will decide who replaces Rep. Mark Amodei.
- The district includes Reno, Sparks and Carson City and it spans the state's top half from Washoe County to Elko County.
- The winner of June 9's Republican primary will take on one of 11 Democrats also vying for the U.S. House seat.
After Republican Mark Amodei abruptly announced his retirement earlier this year from representing Northern Nevada in Congress, 25 candidates jumped into the breach hoping to replace him.
Thirteen are Republicans. They are Jennifer Billat, Tom Doyle, David Flippo, George Forbush, Bruce Grego, Andrea Lowe, Jerry Olsen, James Settelmeyer, Rick Shepherd, Fred Simon Jr., Mike Smith, Sherman Tylawsky and Jesse Watts.
Nevada’s Second Congressional District features 80,000 more Republican voters than Democrats, and the seat has never been held by another party. The Cook Political Report, a national election forecaster, lists the seat as "Solid R," meaning it doesn't think there's any chance a Republican won't win.
Even so, 11 Democrats will compete in their own primary for the seat. The top Republican and Democratic primary vote-getters will move ahead to November's general election.
Independent American candidate Lynn Chapman will be on November ballot but not June’s primary.
• Where is Nevada’s Second Congressional District: Anchored by the urban centers of Reno, Sparks and Carson City, the district is the state’s largest one geographically. It includes all of Churchill, Douglas, Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Pershing, Storey, Washoe and White Pine counties, along with Carson City and most of Lyon County.
• What does U.S. House seat pay: $174,000 a year.
• When is the primary: Primary Day is June 9. Early voting runs May 23 through June 5. Mail-in primary ballots will be sent out between May 11 and 18 for residents inside the state of Nevada.
• About the CD2 Republican candidates not interviewed: The Reno Gazette Journal did not include one candidate who had no campaign website, two who did not respond to interview requests and one who missed a scheduled interview.
Who is Jennifer Billat running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: Affordable housing, cost of living in Northern Nevada, federal ownership of public lands
- Age: 45
- Primary residence: Reno
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in business management
- Occupation: Business owner/entrepreneur
- Political experience: First-time candidate
- Family: Married with 2 sons
- Contributions: $0 reported.
Who is Tom Doyle running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: Economy, immigration, stopping fraud
- Primary residence: Reno
- Age: 70
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Nevada, Reno
- Occupation: Gaming industry consultant
- Political experience: First-time candidate; served several terms as chair of Washoe County School District’s audit committee
- Family: Married with three children and four grandchildren
- Contributions: $0 reported.
Who is David Flippo running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: Supporting President Trump's agenda, deporting illegal immigrants, securing elections and voter ID
- Primary residence: Reno
- Age: 63
- Education: Bachelor's degree in political science, master’s in public administration
- Occupation: Business owner
- Political experience: Ran for Congress and state Assembly
- Family: Married with 2 adult children
- Contributions from Jan. 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026: $1.7 million (cash on hand: $1.3 million)
- Biggest contributors: David Flippo ($1.2 million loan); Stephen Tuminello; Robey and Maria Taute; Maio and Bonita Sharp; and Stephen, Sean, Ryan, Richard, Richard Jr., Renata, Lana and Dawn Flippo
Who is George Forbush running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: Energy, immigration reform, affordable housing for the middle class
- Primary residence: Spanish Springs (Sparks)
- Age: 52
- Education: Associate’s degree in criminal justice
- Occupation: Former Sparks police officer
- Political experience: First-time candidate
- Family: Married, 3 children, 1 grandchild
- Contributions Jan. 1 to March 31, 2026: $11,000 (cash on hand: $4,400)
Who is Andrea Lowe running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: Government accountability, healthcare, putting people first
- Primary residence: Austin
- Age: 32
- Education: High school graduate
- Occupation: Homemaker
- Political experience: First-time candidate for U.S. Congress
- Family: Married with 3 boys
- Contributions: No federal financial filing.
Who is James Settelmeyer running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: Strengthening Nevada’s economy, securing the border and enforcing immigration laws, and opening more federal lands for housing while balancing growth with protection and responsible use of Nevada’s natural resources.
- Primary residence: Gardnerville
- Age: 55
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in agricultural education with a specialty in agricultural science and engineering
- Occupation: Ranch manager
- Political experience: Nevada state assemblyman 2006 to 2010, state senator 2010 to 2022, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources 2023 to 2026
- Family: Two daughters
- Contributions Jan. 1 to March 31, 2026: $108,000 (cash on hand: $103,000)
- Biggest contributors: Richard Reviglio, Donovan Meckes, Michael Heinemann, John Stanko, Steven Spurlock
Who is Rick Shepherd running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: anti-Zionist, Epstein files, universal healthcare
- Primary residence: Reno
- Age: 54
- Education: Bachelor's degree in economics from University of Nevada, Reno
- Occupation: Implementation consultant
- Political experience: None
- Political affiliation: Republican
- Family: Single
- Contributions: $0
Who is Fred Simon Jr. running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: National debt and affordability; healthcare including enough physicians and hospitals; children’s mental health especially in rural areas
- Primary residence: Gardnerville
- Age: 73
- Education: Degrees in biology, biochemistry and medicine
- Occupation: Small-business owner, international medical legal expert, retired surgeon
- Political experience: Ran for Nevada governor in 2022 and CD2 in 2024
- Family: Married with 3 children
- Contributions: $0
Who is Sherman Tylawsky running for Nevada’s CD2 U.S. House seat in 2026 Republican primary?
- Top 3 issues: fiscal responsibility, economic uncertainty, national security
- Primary residence: Carson City
- Age: 28
- Education: bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from King’s College London, master’s in international affairs at Texas A&M University, master’s in political science at University of Alabama
- Occupation: Political science lecturer
- Political experience: first-time candidate, congressional intern in U.S. House of Representatives
- Family: Single
- Contributions: No federal financial filing.
What has U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement done right?
• Billat: ICE has come in and worked with state and local governments to ensure that everyone in the country is following the law. Whether people agree with the law or not, it is the law. You have to be in here with the right documentation and paperwork.
• Doyle: ICE is essentially trying to do their jobs. Obviously, when they get resistance, it is much more difficult. But they have deported or assisted with the self-deportation, I believe, of several million people. Being an illegal immigrant in this country remains illegal unless Congress changes the law. So therefore, they've done that right.
• Flippo: ICE is following the law. They are doing their job by deporting criminal illegals. I think we need to get rid of the criminal illegals to make sure the country is protected. That's their role — to do immigration, and that's been ignored in past administrations.
• Forbush: To my knowledge, they're going after the criminal element, the worst of the worst. So I think no one can really complain about going after guys that are drug dealers or murderers or those type of people that will hurt civilians. They've done good with that based on reports I've been getting. I think they're doing right by the American people.
• Lowe: I think ICE has done a lot right. They have helped secure our borders, enforced our laws. They've done it orderly and the way they're meant to do it.
• Settelmeyer: I believe that it's important that we find individuals that have committed crimes — beyond just the fact they're in the country illegally — in order to secure our borders.
You cannot have what has occurred in the past where, during the last administration, you had 10 million people come over in a year. That's not sustainable. It drives prices for labor down, which at times can be nice when you're hiring, but if you're earning money, that's not good.
• Shepherd: Literally nothing. It is wasteful, duplicitous, ineffective and dangerous. ICE was created in 2003 as just another one of the knee-jerk, fear-driven responses to 9/11. Prior to ICE, INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) took care of all of the stuff that ICE is supposed to be doing. They put up better numbers, they did it with less money, and they didn't do it with a body count.
• Simon: What they have gotten right is getting most of the right people. They've rounded up most of the right people.
• Tylawsky: ICE has very much sent a message on the issue of those who are illegally in the United States and have committed criminal actions.
It's also brought up a number of issues regarding this balance between enforcing the law and considering the value of humanity and also being able to utilize resources to the best of our ability.
What could ICE improve on?
• Billat: They could have better reporting and communication. I think the agency’s whole administration could communicate better and let everyone know what the actual agenda is and report on statistics of how the mission is going as far as removing illegal immigrants and illegal aliens from the United States.
• Doyle: What they've done wrong is probably they have not been communicating sufficiently to be able to tell people what they are, and they probably have not been strong enough on changing the policies of sanctuary cities, which mean that criminals get let out onto the street after they've served their sentences without calling ICE to have them picked up and deported, allowing many illegals to remain in the U.S. So they have been focusing on criminal illegals, but they do sweep up others during the process.
• Flippo: I wish that they could do more to deport the illegals. I'm not sure they've done anything wrong. The incidents that have happened were caused because of people who should not have been obstructing their performance. They just need to continue doing their job and enforcing the laws that we have in this country.
• Forbush: It doesn't seem like they know how to really do crowd control. That might be because they don't have enough people or they lack of training. That’s when things can get out of hand.
In law enforcement, if I am out with one person by myself and I know I'm going to get into a fight with that person, I'm more likely to have to use more force to protect myself. If there were three or four of us, we have more strength there and we can take him into custody without the risk of hurting him or us. That's where ICE needs to improve so they don't get into situations where it looks like they've lost control or they have to resort to more force than what would have been needed if they had the right amount of people.
• Lowe: More transparent investigations.
• Settelmeyer: It's important that we look at individuals that have been in this country for 20-odd years. Yes, it was illegal of them to enter the United States without permission and authorization. But I know a guy who was 4 years old when that happened. I don't think individuals like that are serious threats.
I'd prefer if we could prioritize individuals they go after and focus more on those that are less than stellar examples of individuals we'd like to see in our society.
• Simon: Communication. The federal government needed to be better listeners to the local communities and see how they could integrate ICE. And I think they came on too strong.
• Shepherd: Like all agencies created post 9/11, the best thing it can do is go away entirely. ICE today isn't even putting up Obama numbers. They're not deporting in high numbers like they said they would. They've picked up people who were here legally. It's been used as a Gestapo force by (Donald) Trump. When you've got armed thugs wearing masks, roaming the streets and grabbing people off the street and shooting Americans in the face, that is absolutely nothing I'm willing to tolerate.
• Tylawsky: When people do not understand the role of an agency, there tends to be more skepticism. Something that I think ICE could do better is to be more responsive to not only those from Capitol Hill who asked for inquiries, but also to work more closely with local communities. Both the agency and local communities need to find ways to see where the agency fits within larger law enforcement goals and purposes.
There should never be an agency that just does things on its own. It must respond to all levels of government, whether it be federal, state or local, so everyone knows where that agency fits in with everyone's objectives and there is clear communication.
Where has your own party has gone too far?
• Billat: I think that my party's gone too far — and I think it's on both sides — with the absolute attack against democracy. We have to work together. I think our party's gone too far in fighting against each other. We will never have progress if we continue to fight red versus blue.
• Doyle: Within the Voter ID act. I think they went too far in trying to pass legislation requiring citizenship to be proven as part of the registration. I think that should have been phased in over multiple years as opposed to right away because some people, especially married women, might have to get their birth certificates or something of that nature. So I believe that that could have been phased in over a number of years.
• Flippo: We have a state legislator that voted for driver's licenses for illegals and a number of Republicans voted for that. That strikes me as strange. On that end of the spectrum, they went too far — that is not protecting our country and not allowing the citizens of this country to be safe.
• Forbush: Republicans have gone too far in pushing their own agendas as opposed to working with Democrats and vice versa. They just want to score political points and therefore they're not doing anything for the American people. People are sick and tired of Republicans and Democrats fighting all the time and not doing the right thing.
• Lowe: Healthcare — Republicans don’t talk about it enough, how expensive it is.
• Settelmeyer: I tend to be more of a libertarian in many respects when it comes to what people do in their own home. It's your castle, it's your home. What you decide to do in your home, as long as it doesn't injure or harm another individual, is none of my business — (such as) marriage. That's a personal thing between you and your God. That's not something the government should necessarily be involved in, to me.
• Shepherd: The argument itself presupposes that there's a meaningful difference between red team and blue team. I'm here to tell you at an operational level, there is none. Specifically for the Republican Party, I would say the clear and easy answer is we started World War III and we funded a genocide in Gaza and we failed to arrest, prosecute and publicly execute the pedophiles on the (Jeffrey) Epstein list. And all of this is tied to the fact that we are ruled by terrible people who are blackmailed by Israel.
• Simon: How about where the party hasn't gone? They've got the Congress and they've got the Senate and they keep on spending money and they keep on putting up these omnibus bills — the Big Beautiful Bill — and they don't balance the budget. I think that's abhorrent.
I'm going to be a very independent congressman when it comes to a lot of issues. There's no way you can sit there and say, “I want $200 billion more for the military.” We're going to be overspending again. They're thinking about cutting back on health care to provide money for this war. The American people have got to be first.
• Tylawsky: The difference between what was promised by the party in terms of economic gains in the 2024 campaign and how people are perceiving those economic benefits.
I hope our party gets a chance to regroup and to figure out how to realign when it comes to trade policy or just giving people a sense that voters can express their grievances about the economy and that our party is willing to accept that certain things have not gone right and that we need to readjust. I think that's proper policymaking, and I believe that would actually not only address economic concerns, but also bring some more confidence in our political system.
How would you handle competing interests over public lands in Northern Nevada involving environmental and tribal concerns along with mining and ranching interests?
• Billat: I would bring them in and we would communicate better to show that in Congress, our ultimate goal is to work with everyone to understand that Northern Nevada is landlocked, and we have to work with the federal government to give the public true access, which means conserving, hunting, tribal lands.
If we had better and clearer objectives of what we're actually doing, I don't think there would be such a push against each other, especially when it comes to conserving and tribal lands. We want to provide enough land for the state of Nevada for generations to come where we can conserve the land that needs it while making sure the tribes have their land and we can take care of it in Nevada without having federal government overreach.
• Doyle: I strongly support mining and ranching. I don't believe that minor things like some sagebrush should hold up mining for major items needed these days for AI and for other technological reasons.
What I do believe is they need to allow the communities, miners, the ranchers and everybody to provide a lot of input regardless of exactly what they are planning to do with the lands. The federal government should not do anything with public lands or turn over public lands to private entities without strong community input, and that would include development of housing. I don't think it should be turned over to private entities without a community saying we don't have resources to support another 5,000 houses or something of that nature.
• Flippo: We need to be cognizant of the ranchers, miners and farmers. The environmentalists and all these other organizations that are getting involved in public land usage have gone too far. The federal departments have conceded a lot to the environmentalists that has impacted ranchers with how many cattle they can put out there. That's a detriment especially with the meat prices going up right now and getting our meat from overseas.
I'm a limited government guy. I think the best decisions possible are made at the lowest level. The county commissioners and the city councils of Northern Nevada should be determining how that BLM land is used and how it's released. If you release too much too quickly, you can decimate the economy of a city or county. You could end up with the wrong people and the wrong nations buying this land.
• Forbush: I want the public land to be accessible to the public. So even if it's a mining thing, I'm going to ask questions like: What are you going to do to allow people to have access to the mountain range behind it or next to it?
I would probably be asking those same questions for tribal land as well. We've given land back to the tribe recently — Mark Amodei did that over in Hungry Valley. As soon as that happened, there were people who just wanted to go ride their four-wheelers like they've always done — and then tribal police would stop them and say, “No, you can't do it anymore, you need to leave.” That was a bad rub on a lot of people who were used to having access to that land.
• Lowe: I firmly believe that public land should be managed by local input. We're Nevadans, we know it best. Most people in Washington don't know. It needs to be more local. Everybody needs to come together and figure out together what we need to do.
• Settelmeyer: We have the ability to utilize our natural resources for the betterment of the state of Nevada and the nation, and there's no reason we all can't get along. We have lands out there being grazed upon by cattle, by sheep and even horses. But those numbers have to be managed. We have lands used for mining. We have to make sure they follow Environmental Protection Agency rules and procedures to ensure that we're not destroying the environment. And that applies to everything.
But in that guise, there's no reason we can't have multiple use as long as we respect each other's use. And if somebody gets out of line, well, then they get in trouble. We have to do what's best for the environment. The idea is that it'll live on forever so you can pass it on not only for your generation but it’ll go to the next, and to the next, and to the next.
• Shepherd: We've got tons of public land. That's good because when they're public lands, then the federal government pays for its stewardship. We can't just grab a bunch of land because now we're responsible for its stewardship.
The Amodei tenure has been quick to give away land to military or mining, but any other kind of legitimate development seemed to have been hamstrung. The focus hasn't been on making Nevadans’ lives better.
It is the intent that's behind it. It starts with who are you trying to help? Are you trying to help foreign nations extract our resources? Are you trying to help the war machine do more war? Or are you trying to help the people?
• Simon: I ran a major trauma center with hundreds of employees and complex services. The bottom line is you’ve got to sit down and communicate. As a congressman, I would sit there and I would have meetings with each stakeholder. If it took every month, we'd be sitting working through this and look at the lands and see what's reasonable and what people really need versus what they want and what's in the best interest of Nevada. That's how I do things. All I've done my whole life is work, and that's what I love to do. I'd be right there in the middle of it. We'll get it done at the table.
• Tylawsky: We have a number of neighboring states that also share those issues. So I would first consider forming some coalitions. That's what Congress is all about. It's about forming coalitions and to recognize that this problem is not unique and that we need to find fellow states and fellow delegations to work on these issues together.
I prioritize the value of civility so that when we make decisions, we make people feel heard. If we get people with good faith to come to the table to ensure that our public land is accessible, but also does not affect people's properties and prices, we can sustain that land for not just a few years, but for decades. Those considerations are important for any kind of discussion on public lands so that we can achieve something that's much larger than any one stakeholder in this process.
Candidate responses were edited for length and clarity from phone interviews.
Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics. Email comments to