Meet the longtime lawmaker from Reno who thinks 2026 is Democrats best chance to flip Nevada’s only GOP-held congressional seat.
“Hi, I’m Teresa Benitez,” says the 24-year-old on stage in a shimmering halter neck dress. “My ultimate career goal — to be a senator representing the great state of Nevada.”
That day, she placed fourth at Miss America.
More than two decades later, Teresa Benitez-Thompson is knocking on doors in Sun Valley on a warm Tuesday in April, vying for a bigger prize: a seat in Congress. Canvassers have been attacked by pitbulls here, so she rattles the fences to test if a dog will come running before walking toward each house.
She recalls the introduction she gave half a lifetime ago.
“They’re like, ‘What’s your biggest goal? What’s the biggest career goal you could ever do?'” she says. “That was the height of Sen. [Harry] Reid. That was the biggest thing that Nevada had ever done. That’s how you can help your state.”
Does she still want to be a senator?
“You know, we’ll just see how this race goes,” she says. “I’m a longshot in CD2, so there’s a certain amount of hubris that would come with answering a question like that.”
Democrats have never won Northern Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses Reno and many of the state’s rural areas. But this year, with the national mood in their favor and the seat open for the first time in 15 years, nine Democrats are trying to make history.
Though there’s been no publicly released polling in the race, Benitez-Thompson is widely known after a decade in the Assembly and time as Attorney General Aaron Ford’s chief of staff.
Her biggest competition in the primary is wealthy investor Greg Kidd (D), who earned 36 percent of the vote running as an independent in 2024. He and her other opponents, several of whom proudly call themselves “anti-establishment,” don’t have the political record she does.
The race hinges on whether Democratic voters think that’s a good thing.
