What Happens in Vegas

Catherine Cortez Masto, the only Latina in the U.S. Senate, is fighting to keep her seat in one of the most watched races of the midterms.

- By Isabel González Whitaker

Turns out I, and perhaps many of us, have been saying "Nevada" wrong. I only just learned how to correctly pronounce it this summer, during a late-morning meal with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. We meet at one of her go-to's, the Las Vegas institution Vickie's Diner, a soda fountain-style spot off the Strip where Elvis used to eat steak and eggs at the long wooden lunch counter that is still in use today. After she greets the diner's namesake, Vickie Kelesis, whose family has owned the business since around 1968, Cortez Masto sits down for our interview and a Vegas-size breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and a ham steak so big it gets its own plate. In the middle of answering a long-winded question I've asked her, she stops to correct me: "Nevada. It's pronounced Ne-vad-uh," she says. I'm caught so off guard that I worry I may have said "New Mexico."

"Oh no," I respond, embarrassed at appearing like an out-of-touch East Coaster. "What did I say?" In my head, all goes quiet save for the short-order cook shuffling pots across his stove about 10 feet away from us. Pausing to take a sip of her coffee, she politely repeats my incorrect pronunciation: "Nuh-vahduh" And now I clearly hear the nuh instead of one-as in Neve Campbell-and never again will I make that mistake.