Bill Theobald

USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS – An overflow crowd of several thousand jammed into what was ostensibly an outdoor rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to promote herself, Democratic Nevada congressional candidates, including Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto, and early voting.

But much of the evening was spent trashing GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose spiraling campaign appears to be creating opportunities particularly for candidates like Cortez Masto who is locked in a tight race with Republican Rep. Joe Heck to replace retiring Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid.

It’s one of a handful of races that will decide who has control of the U.S. Senate.

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus got the ball rolling by telling the crowd: “Can you just feel it? Can you taste it on your tongue…Victory.”

She said she used to refer to the Trump campaign, which has begun openly attacking GOP leaders, as a “clown car.”

“Now, I call it a freak show,” she said to a cheer from a crowd that included many wearing union shirts and caps.

Cortez Masto, the former attorney general, perhaps recognizing her newness to some voters, began by introducing herself crowd and saying she hopes to be the first woman and first Latina senator in the state’s history.

She criticized Heck for sticking by Trump until last weekend when a recording of Trump making lewd comments about women was aired.

“This is not somebody that anybody should be standing up for,” Cortez Masto said.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway caused a stir earlier in the evening when she said that Heck and other Republicans who had rejected Trump had changed their minds. But Heck's campaign spokesman Brian Baluta said that was not true.

Clinton, for her part, suggested that people do an “intervention” with those who they know plan to vote for Trump.

Several times during her speech, one or two apparent Trump supporters began shouting but they were quickly surrounded by men wearing shirts identifying themselves as with the Carpenters Local 1977, Las Vegas, and escorted away.

Clinton said she had differed with Republican presidential candidates on policy in the past, “but I never questioned their fitness to serve.”

“Donald Trump is different,” she said. “Friends don’t let friends vote for Trump.”

Ed Huggard, 68, who sat along a retaining wall with wife, Sandy, while the crowd emptied out personified the threat Trump poses to Senate candidates.

Huggard, a solid Republican, said he was planning to vote for Cortez Masto because of Heck’s previous endorsement of Trump.

What of Heck’s withdrawal of support? Huggard wasn’t buying. Political expediency, he scoffed.