Brown to Snub Miners to Hang with Crypto Bros.

Rural Nevada is deeply red politically. However, a good politician of either stripe knows a trip to mining country is important. If you’re a Republican you go because you know you must run up the score in the rurals in hopes of offsetting the Clark country and Washoe county blue waves. It’s the opposite with Democrats. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, like her mentor the late Harry Reid, campaigned in Elko, knowing how important gold and silver mining is to the Silver State.  She recently co-sponsored the Mining Schools Act led by Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.),

Not being from Nevada, Senate candidate MAGA hopeful Sam Brown has canceled a trip scheduled for Elko this weekend to attend a conference in Nashville  promoting gold’s digital competitor, Bitcoin. Brown will participate in a Saturday morning panel at “Bitcoin24” with fellow Republican Senate hopefuls Bernie Moreno of Ohio and John Deaton of Massachusetts. South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott will also be on the morning panel with Brown, as will David McIntosh, a former Republican member of Congress and the president of the Republican-aligned Club for Growth Super PAC. What these gentlemen know about the digital ducat is unknown.

Cryptic-speech maker Donald Trump is the crypto confab’s headliner, along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., celebrated whistleblower/classified documents leaker Edwin Snowden, Russel Brand, and Vivek Ramaswamy.   

The Nevada Current’s Hugh Jackson cynically writes “(As an aside… Cryptocurrency “mining,” by one analysis, requires the same amount of electricity as that used by all the lighting and refrigerators in U.S. homes. That may help explain Nevada bipartisan support for the industry – the word “mining” is guaranteed to trigger Pavlovian approval from Nevada elected officials.)” 

Mining is a $9 billion industry representing 6% of the state’s GDP, the second-most important industry in Nevada (after gambling), providing more than 80,000 jobs in 2020 (direct and supporting employees). 

Candidate Brown is thumbing his nose at this important industry and instead will shill in Nashville for something legendary investor Warren Buffett called “probably rat poison squared.”