LAS VEGAS, Nevada—The closely contested race between Democratic incumbent Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) and Republican challenger Sam Peters for one of three toss-up Las Vegas-area congressional seats has devolved into a tit-for-tat exchange with one candidate alleging unwarranted intrusion into his family life and the other citing threats and intimidation.
In an Oct. 31 press conference, Peters called for Horsford to resign from his Nevada Congressional District 4 seat in the wake of a series of Oct. 30 Twitter posts by his estranged wife, Dr. Sonya Douglass, who accused him of “bullying and intimidation” and “violence” during their marriage.
“I was just minding my business until Steven and his attorney demanded I sign an NDA that would ban me from speaking about my 22-year marriage, his 10-year affair, and our divorce FOREVER. It includes $10,000 fines for each remark or social post. Even to a therapist! Y’all!” she wrote.
In ensuing threads, Douglass, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York City where she is the director of the Black Education Research Center, wrote she “had no intention of posting anything and kept quiet the entire campaign. To think I would even want to mention his name is ridiculous. Who looks through the trash after you’ve taken it out? But I don’t respond well to bullying or intimidation so here we are.”
She added: “And he’s already blaming me should he lose his race. Refuses to take responsibility for his own actions. He had hundreds of chances to do the right thing but he chose violence.”
This isn’t the first time Douglass has publicly chided Horsford on Twitter. In Match, after Horsford announced he was running again, she upbraided him for wanting to return to Washington, DC, after he was forced to acknowledge in May 2020 that he had a 10-year affair with a former intern of late Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Gabriela Linder.
In his Oct. 31 press conference, Peters said he’d resisted making Horsford’s affair a campaign issue because there were “more important things for Nevada” voters to think about.
But with the latest revelations regarding domestic violence, it is now no longer just a political matter, he said.
“Steven Horsford has been engaged in bullying, intimidation, and possibly violence against his own family. Today I am calling on him to resign from office immediately,” Peters said, noting a congressional rep who “doesn’t have his own House in order” shouldn’t serve in the House.
Horsford and his campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment until he appeared Nov. 2 on Las Vegas’s KSHP AM 1400 Radio “Pushing The Limits” talk show.
Brian Shapiro, the host, asked Horsford what he thought about Peters “making it personal” by staging a press conference “just talking about your personal life,” calling the Republican challenger “the same guy who supported Donald Trump” despite his history of alleged sexual misconduct.
“Sam Peters has gone through a divorce proceeding himself. Marriages are tough and relationships are tough, especially for those of us who have and have served in public life,” Horsford said. “I love Sonya. She has blessed me with 22 years of great memories and three phenomenal and talented children.
“She’s hurt,” he continued, “and I caused some of that hurt, but for my opponent to use what is a very personal matter for his own … whatever … is despicable and says a lot about who he is, which is why I am going to kick his ass in six days.”
Shapiro asked Horsford to comment on Douglass’s references to bullying, intimidation, and violence, but he sidestepped doing so.
“What I am just going to say is we are working through a process in an amicable way to reach an agreement,” Horsford said. “There is no (NDA). Each of us has a choice about what we agree to” and neither is going to force the other to do something they don’t want to do.”
He said Douglass in her Twitter posts used “charged words because there are charged emotions” involved, adding, “I will spend the rest of my life woking to restore the relationships I have contributed to harming.”
Horsford ripped into his Republican critics, calling them “straight-up hypocrites.”
“I will talk about a lot of things,” but not his family, Horsford said. “That is private. Sam Peters and no other Republican has a right to intervene” in his family affairs.
“They don’t care about families. If they did, they would keep my family out of their politics,” he said. “They spend more time discussing my family than about Nevada families struggling with the high cost of rent.”
Horsford concluded: “If Sam Peters wants to meet me in the back to talk about my family, we will have that discussion as well.”
Before Peters was to address the Battle Born Women Republican Club at the Red Rocks Country Club on Nov. 3, he told The Epoch Times that he didn’t make Horsford’s private affairs public, his own wife did.
“What is interesting to us is, his only response was more intimidation and veiled threats,” he said.
Peters, a retired U.S. Air Force major and owner of a Las Vegas insurance firm, said his campaign has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics, which investigates allegations of misconduct against House members, in response to Horsford’s invitation “to meet me in the back.”
“I want to make something abundantly clear, violence of any kind, whether it’s directed towards a spouse, a family member, or a political opponent, has no place in our country,” Peters elaborated in a statement issued by his campaign. “One allegation is enough to be taken seriously and should be investigated.
Horsford’s response proves “he is unfit for office,” he said. “If Steven Horsford is willing to threaten violence against me in such a blatant and public manner, imagine what he is capable of behind closed doors. Is this open threat against me enough for the media to take these allegations seriously? I certainly hope so.”
Peters called Horsford “a shill of a man” and said his personal issues are now distracting focus from “the issues people care about, such as high gas prices, out of control inflation, and spiking crime on our streets.
“At the same time,” he concluded, “I will not be intimidated, and I will renew my calls for his immediate resignation.”
CD 4 is among the Nevada House seats occupied by Democrat incumbents seeking reelection against polished Republican challengers who sense a red wave coming in a state with a history of swing elections.
All four races—as well as Clark County Sheriff and GOP gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo’s contest with incumbent Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak—are tossups with elections forecasters and polls rarely giving any candidate an edge beyond margins of errors.
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