Catherine Cortez Masto
American lawyer and politician (born 1964)
Catherine Marie Cortez Masto (born March 29, 1964) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Nevada, a seat she has held since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Cortez Masto served as the 32nd attorney general of Nevada from 2007 to 2015.
Cortez Masto graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno and Gonzaga University School of Law. She worked four years as a civil attorney in Las Vegas and two years as a criminal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. before being elected Nevada attorney general in 2006, replacing George Chanos. Reelected in 2010, she was not eligible to run for a third term in 2014 because of lifetime term limits established by the Constitution of Nevada.
Cortez Masto narrowly defeated Republican Joe Heck in the 2016 United States Senate election in Nevada to replace outgoing Democratic senator Harry Reid, becoming the first woman elected to represent Nevada in the Senate and the first Latina elected to serve in the upper chamber. She took office on January 3, 2017, and became Nevada's senior senator in January 2019, when Dean Heller left the Senate following his defeat. She was narrowly reelected in 2022, defeating Republican nominee Adam Laxalt.
Early life and education
Cortez Masto was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, the daughter of Joanna (née Musso) and Manny Cortez. Her father, an attorney, was the longtime head of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and served as a member of the Clark County Commission.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Catherine Cortez Masto” is american lawyer and politician (born 1964). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Catherine, Cortez and Masto, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5052604. VIAF identifies the subject as 1794155411323008940006. The Library of Congress control number is no2019044452. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2017, 2007 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Catherine Cortez Masto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.