Data analyst announces progressive challenge to Rep. Dina Titus in Nevada’s 1st Congressional District

A data analyst frustrated with the Democratic Party’s leadership announced today that he would challenge U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., for Nevada’s 1st Congressional District seat in 2026.

Alex Pereszlenyi, a 32-year-old UNLV graduate working for the sports data firm Inside Edge, sees himself as part of a movement of young progressive insurgents sprouting up in the wake of President Donald Trump’s recent victory. Interest groups, wealthy donors and corporations have captured Congress, Pereszlenyi said.

“All career politicians and some of the Democratic leadership are for sure out of touch,” he said. “I feel you have especially a lot of young people that don’t really understand why Democratic leaders are trying to placate a mythical moderate voter.”

Titus has served the district since 2013.

Pereszlenyi said he was pushing for longtime progressive goals like universal health care, taxing the rich and getting money out of politics.

Recent polling backs up some of Pereszlenyi’s criticisms of the party. Just over half of Democratic voters disapprove of their party’s work in Congress, with two-thirds of independents saying the same, according to a May poll from Marquette University. 

And unlike 2017, when Republicans also had control of the White House and Congress, a March CNN poll found that the majority of Democratic voters would rather the party “stop the Republican agenda” instead of working with the GOP. Eight years ago, nearly three-quarters wanted further collaboration. 

Pereszlenyi, who also filed to run for Congress as an independent in 2020, credits the party’s poor reputation to neglecting voter blocs that have historically made up the party’s base: the working class, young people and Latino voters.

“Democratic leaders have been more concerned with trying to pick up people outside of their party instead of focusing on their party and on their base,” he said, “specifically, the more left part of their base.”

While Pereszlenyi is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America — which helped propel another affordability-focused outsider candidate, Zohran Mamdani, to the Democratic nomination to be New York City’s mayor — he’s volunteered with them in the past. He told the Sun he “definitely” wanted to reach out to the local DSA chapter.

He said his “role model” at the state level wasn’t a sitting member of the Legislature, but Val Thomason, a DSA-backed candidate who in 2024 lost a primary to Assemblymember Venise Karris, D-Las Vegas.

Mamdani “really focused on the issues that matter to people. We have an affordability crisis not just in New York City, but in the state of Nevada,” he said, listing floundering housing, health care and child care in the state. “There’s a lot of things that we can see in that campaign and the issues where he was meeting (voters) where they’re at.”

But Pereszlenyi isn’t running against a candidate like Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace in his final year as New York’s governor. Titus is deeply entrenched within Nevada’s Democratic Party and has trounced each primary challenger by over 50 points since 2014.

A spokesperson for Titus declined to comment on Pereszlenyi entering the race. The representative defeated a similarly positioned progressive candidate, Amy Vilela, in a 2022 primary.

While Pereszlenyi said he and Titus agree on some policies such as curtailing corporate ownership of housing, he criticized the congresswoman for joining Republicans and other Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act. The act, which passed with bipartisan support and the backing of Nevada's entire congressional delegation, requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants for certain crimes, even if those crimes are considered minor. 

In Las Vegas, the bill’s passage prompted Metro Police to alter its policy on “foreign born individuals.” The department previously only contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a “foreign born” person drove while under the influence, committed domestic violence or engaged in a violent felony. The act broadened that to include crimes such as burglary, assaulting a police officer and, most notable to immigrant advocates, shoplifting.

The legislation “enabled Donald Trump and ICE to violate our rights and to put fear into our communities,” Pereszlenyi said. 

He also took aim at the party’s pro-Israel tendencies, first naming the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying organization focused on Israeli-American relations, as an interest group with outsized influence in Congress.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, when an attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups killed around 1,200 people in Israel, the country has bombarded the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Health Ministry put the death toll at over 58,000, and the United Nations has reported hundreds being killed in recent weeks attempting to get aid.

Titus, who has emphasized that Israel must minimize civilian casualties, previously voted in favor of sending aid to the country. During the last election cycle, political action committees and individuals associated with AIPAC donated over $70,000 to her campaign, according to watchdog OpenSecrets.

“Genocide is not OK, starving and killing people is not OK, no matter what happened on Oct. 7, which was wrong,” Pereszlenyi said. “If we can’t stand up for what is right there, that can carry over to our own country and our most vulnerable populations.”

Pereszlenyi said he was looking to build out his staff and sign up volunteers as he continues his campaign.

“Donald Trump being elected was a monumental moment for a lot of us … and, despite those unprecedented times, I feel like our leaders were accepting a status quo,” he said. It is a status quo in which “Nevadans are struggling to afford basic necessities like health care and housing. A status quo that has enabled ICE and Donald Trump to trample our rights.”