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Democrats just lost three of their most influential centrist senators in one election cycle. Catherine Cortez Masto wants to fill the void.
Thanks to retirements, attrition, and the party’s realignment, the Nevadan is now one of the Senate’s most moderate Democrats — alongside Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, she speaks for the center of the party’s ideological spectrum on Chuck Schumer’s leadership team. Outside the Capitol, she now chairs the ModSquad PAC aiming at electing more centrist candidates.
Cortez Masto, who’s known as “CCM” in the Senate, does those jobs with little interest in going viral or even making headlines. Yet the spotlight found her recently as she sought consent to pass a package of policing bills, the type of once-routine bipartisan legislation that now divides Democrats trying to find their footing against President Donald Trump.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., responded to Cortez Masto on the Senate floor by accusing his colleagues of being “complicit” by supporting law enforcement grants that Trump could control. Their public spat overshadowed a partial success: Two of Cortez Masto’s bills passed.
“I was shocked it became news,” Cortez Masto told Semafor in an interview.
A former state attorney general married to a former Secret Service agent, she has charted a path far different than Booker for years now. Cortez Masto was the first Democrat to oppose judicial nominee Adeel Mangi, who ultimately failed to get confirmed despite Booker’s defenses of him.
Her other against-the-grain centrist stands include dinging the “defund the police” movement as it peaked in 2020, opposing the Biden administration’s relaxation of pandemic-era border controls, and scuttling a mining tax that would have hurt her state.
This year, she voted to advance a government funding bill and supported the Laken Riley Act’s harsher punishment for some noncitizens accused of crimes.
“I am someone who is not shying from a fight. But I also think that you have to be strategic and you have to get things done,” Cortez Masto said of her approach.
The first Latina senator in the chamber’s history, Cortez Masto won two close elections in 2016 and 2022 against heralded GOP recruits. She’s a low-key orator who successfully ran Democrats’ campaign arm in 2020, getting vice-presidential buzz and a push to run for whip.
But she’s content to stay where she is — while making a concerted push for moderation in a party that’s still tearing at itself over how to win back Congress and the presidency.
Cortez Masto’s clash with Booker during Police Week offered a rare public window into those festering strategic disputes.
“We should have more arguments. I think it’s fun,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the party’s whip-in-waiting and a friend of Booker’s. “People are a little too precious. We’re not actually a family that’s driving to Disneyland.”
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Republicans see any public Democratic schism, however, as evidence that beneath their surface-level opposition to Trump lie huge divisions that can be exploited. With the government funding deadline approaching, the GOP believes its rivals don’t have a winning strategy.
Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., presided over the Cortez Masto-Booker floor debate with an incredulous expression. He told Semafor later that while the episode was “entertaining and helpful to Republicans, it doesn’t do much for [Democrats] in general elections.”
“We all know the private struggles of Democrats are there, but when they bring it out in the public and let everybody see it, it’s even more entertaining,” Banks said. “She was trying to compromise with Chairman [Chuck] Grassley to move forward a package of bipartisan, pro-police bills. And that’s what the country wants us to do.”
Cortez Masto’s view was shaped by representing a perennial battleground state. After twice rejecting Trump, Nevadans ousted a Democratic governor in 2022 and helped Trump back to the White House in 2024.
Paradoxically, the party reelected both of its Democratic senators in those two elections.
“This isn’t about attacking Democrats,” Cortez Masto said of her push. “I come from a state where people just want common-sense legislation. They want people to work together, pass legislation that’s going to benefit everyone.”
Don’t confuse her words with Joe Manchin-style accommodation. Cortez Masto is critical of the president’s tariff policies and savages many Trump nominees who earned bipartisan support, arguing that they say one thing behind the scenes and do another in office.
Asked if people in Nevada want Democrats to fight Trump, she replied: “Absolutely. And we should be.” She said Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric on Canada were seriously harming Nevada’s entertainment and tourism industry.
The former campaign chair is also studying Senate races as chair of Mod Squad, including contested primaries in Michigan and Minnesota. The group’s fundraising is steady, and it’s already running ads in North Carolina on behalf of former Gov. Roy Cooper.
She recently brought Democratic donor Mark Cuban to the group’s annual retreat to help strategize.
Broadly speaking, Cortez Masto — handpicked by the late Harry Reid to succeed him, and adept at winning with his coalition in the state — sees tactical debates as secondary to winning elections.
And “if we’re going to win those swing states, it is about the moderates,” she said.
Room for Disagreement
Booker said Mangi’s failed nomination was not on his mind during their confrontation (which took place as Republicans confirmed Trump’s pick for the judicial spot, Emil Bove).
And he said that the sole reason Cortez Masto got two bipartisan bills passed was because they didn’t need protection from Trump’s ability to withhold law enforcement grants from Democratic-run states.
“Cortez Masto’s two pieces of legislation passed because they weren’t going to be restricted from the so-called blue states,” Booker told Semafor. “The rest of them did.”
Burgess’s view
Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have called Cortez Masto a moderate in a caucus that also contained Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly and Manchin in its ranks. Today’s party is different.
She is moderate in both style and ideology. Her messaging relentlessly focuses on “common-sense” ideas and “kitchen-table issues.” She’s quietly involved with bipartisan bills and careful to distance herself from the left without setting off fireworks.
She’s substantively close to fellow swing-state senators like Elissa Slotkin and Ruben Gallego, though she lacks their more clear interest in media attention and potentially national office.
When asked about any higher ambitions, she replied several times with some variation of “I’m here to work on behalf of Nevadans.” That can mean supporting bipartisan nominees and legislation, even as she makes clear she’s opposed to most of what Trump is doing.
She set up a test of sorts last week by voting to confirm Sam Brown as undersecretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs for memorial services. She and fellow Nevadan Jacky Rosen were the only two Democrats to support Brown, who lost to Rosen just last year.
“This is a perfect example: Somebody who has the ability to work on a cemetery in Elko for veterans that I’ve been fighting for and I want to get done,” Cortez Masto said.
Will Brown actually do what he said? “I’m counting on it,” she replied.
Notable
- Cortez Masto headlined Senate Democrats’ counterproposal to the Republican “big, beautiful bill” and its Medicaid cuts, focused on combating fraud in the program, Semafor reported.