The most revealing political ads are the ones that require the candidate to have amnesia about her own votes. A new spot running in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District asks voters to believe that Democrat Susie Lee has been “working with both parties to end all taxes on tips.” It’s a warm, bipartisan-sounding claim. It also happens to be the opposite of what she did.
The policy the ad brags about — ‘no tax on tips’ — became law through the Working Families Tax Cuts, the Trump-backed legislation that actually delivered it. Lee voted against that bill. She didn’t just quietly oppose it, either. She publicly dismissed the tax relief as “temporary crumbs,” a phrase that tells Nevada’s service workers exactly how much she thought their tip income was worth fighting for. Then the bill passed anyway, thanks to Republicans, the “crumbs” showed up in real paychecks, and Lee is now suddenly trying to pretend she’s been for it all along.
A new ad playing in Nevada's 3rd District tries to portray Susie Lee as a key member in the effort to end taxation on tips.
The only problem is that Lee proudly voted against the Working Families Tax Cuts that brought the policy to fruition. pic.twitter.com/wlV2UjBLMp
— Joe Chalfant (@JoeChalfant) September 5, 2026
That’s the whole maneuver, and it deserves to be named plainly. A candidate votes no on a popular tax cut, derides it in public, watches it become law and prove popular, and then produces a campaign ad claiming she helped make it happen. The ad isn’t spin around the edges of her record. It inverts the record. She’s campaigning on the accomplishment she tried to stop.
The tell is what she won’t say now. Asked whether she’d vote to repeal the Republican tax cuts if she wins in November, Lee has declined to answer. That silence is the actual answer – silence, by the way, while sporting a $2,000 handbag:
.@SusieLeeNV called tax relief for working Nevadans "crumbs."
Now she refuses to say whether she'd vote to repeal it, all while carrying a $2,000 Saint Laurent bag.
Nothing says "woman of the people" quite like sneering at your tax cut with two grand hanging off her shoulder. pic.twitter.com/XVncfz6X25
— Christian Martinez (@CDHMartinez) September 2, 2026
A candidate who genuinely championed no-tax-on-tips would promise to protect it in a heartbeat; the promise is free and the politics are easy. Refusing to make it, while running ads taking credit for the policy, means she wants the electoral benefit of the tax cut without committing to keep it. Nevada voters are being asked to trust a conversion that its own author won’t guarantee.
To be fair to Lee, “temporary crumbs” was a criticism of the bill’s sunset provisions as much as its size, and a politician is entitled to argue a tax cut should be bigger or permanent. That’s a legitimate position. But it is not the position her ad describes. There’s a canyon between “I voted no because this relief should have been made permanent” and “I worked across the aisle to deliver it.” The first is a defensible policy argument she could run on honestly. The second is what she chose instead – because it polls better than the truth.
There’s also this: The vast majority of the tax cuts contained in the Big Beautiful Bill are permanent – and Lee still voted against it.
This matters beyond one House seat. Cook Political Report rates the Lee–O’Donnell race as one of the closest in the country. A contest this tight can turn on which candidate voters believe is telling them the truth about her own record. Lee has handed her opponent the cleanest possible contrast: her own words on one side, her own ad on the other, and no way to reconcile them except to hope Nevada isn’t paying attention.
