Pandemic, fury, fire, and flood -- and the 2022 midterm elections

They're coming sooner that we want to imagine and with them, in closely contested races, new political ads. 

In 2016, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto won a slim victory to succeed retiring Harry Reid as one of Nevada's two U.S. senators. She was the first Latina elected to the Senate. And she was a rising star -- within a couple of years, she was leading her colleagues as Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee which works to get incumbents re-elected.

She's up again this year, facing a tough run; Republicans have been gaining on the Dems in registrations in Nevada. Though Biden won there last year, state elections are always close.

So she's on the air already for her election campaign. And her ads clearly point to where she thinks her people are.

The pandemic hit Nevada workers hard. At one point, eighty percent of the state's thousands of unionized hotel and restaurant workers, members of Unite-HERE, were laid off. These are Cortez Masto's people and she speaks to them.

For Democrats to keep control of the Senate, this is an election Cortez Masto has to win.