LAS VEGAS — The “childless cat ladies” of Nevada aren’t purring over vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance’s visit to the Silver State on Tuesday.
A group of local politicians and activists got their claws out Monday, a day before the Ohio Republican was due to speak in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson and hold a rally in Reno.
Vance’s traditionalist comments — including resurfaced comments about “childless cat ladies” — have incited some on the left since former President Donald Trump named him as his running mate.
“I’m here to tell JD Vance, we don’t want you in Nevada,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) told a news conference Monday.
“Go back to that sofa you left behind and keep your hands off our kitties,” she added, referring to a now-discredited rumor about the “Hillbilly Elegy” author having acted inappropriately with a couch.
Titus was joined by other local pols, a doctor of pharmacy and a Texas man who said his wife nearly died under the state’s post-Roe abortion restrictions to hold a press conference in support of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The local event was part of the Harris campaign’s “week of action for reproductive freedom.” The effort coincides with the implementation of an Iowa law banning abortions after a fetus shows “cardiac activity.”
Titus, who identified as one of those “childless cat ladies,” is seeking a seventh term in the state’s 1st Congressional District. She previously represented the 3rd District for a single term.
The veteran lawmaker warned that a Trump-Vance administration would impose a nationwide abortion ban that would strip residents of their reproductive rights.
“We think that abortion is protected in Nevada, and I was in the legislature when this was first passed with question [7],” she said of the 1990 ballot initiative codifying abortion rights.
“We got it in state law. Some people think it’s in the Constitution, but that’s not true. It’s only in state law that we’re protected here.”
She said a pending state constitutional amendment — on the Nevada ballot this fall — would fully protect the procedure and dismissed claims that Trump has rejected a national ban.
“I don’t believe a thing that comes out of his mouth,” Titus said. “He will tell you one day he won’t do it that day, then tell you the next afternoon that he will. … I just don’t believe anything he says. Look at what he does.”
The Harris campaign in Nevada is pushing the issue of abortion rights even though only 8,751 abortions were reported in the state in 2021, the year before a Supreme Court majority overturned a federal standard guaranteeing access to the procedure. Nevada’s population is roughly 3.2 million.
“Since Dobbs, women across Nevada and across America have watched as our fundamental rights have been attacked and stripped away by Donald Trump and his legion of cult followers,” said Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui, a self-described “proud, childless cat lady.”
Jauregui, a Democrat and majority leader in the state Assembly, declared, “Republicans believe that women should have no rights” and promised to “fight for our fundamental freedoms in this election and every election to come, until Donald Trump and his cult of followers running for office, including JD Vance, are out of power.”
Christina Madison, a doctor of pharmacology, praised Harris for having “spent her life fighting for women’s rights,” noting her work on behalf of “reproductive rights and black maternal health as a US senator. She will continue to fight for us as president.”
But one of the most poignant accounts came from Texan Ryan Hamilton, who said his wife couldn’t get a dilation and curettage procedure following the death of her fetus this year. He claimed physicians in their rural Texas town refused to operate for fear of prosecution under state law.
“This election, the lives of the women we love are on the ballot,” Hamilton said. “This issue is deeply personal to me. Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans almost killed my wife. These bans are pushing women to the brink of death, terrorizing families like mine.”
Hamilton, who said he is a radio DJ for a British streaming station, said, “I don’t know if I’m supposed to answer” when The Post asked him if the Harris campaign is sponsoring his advocacy.
He insisted, “I’m gonna pay any expense that I need to pay for myself to get where I need to go.”
A campaign spokesperson who witnessed and recorded the exchange offered no comment.
