We are continuing our personal, profile stories with candidates in the two biggest races.
We’ve already covered the republican nominee for Nevada Congressional District 2, and now we dive deeper into the democratic candidate, Teresa Benitez-Thompson.
Over this election cycle, we’ve been fact checking political ads and getting to know the candidates’ stances and policies.
Now, we’re essentially taking the politics out of the politician to put a microscope on a personal level.
Teresa Benitez-Thompson
We met up with Benitez-Thompson at Crissie Caughlin Park in southwest Reno.
A place that holds significance to her family.
"I feel like this is my second living room, in a way,” she said. “We live fairly close to here. And so this is where my husband, the dogs, the kids, all of us have spent a lot of time at this park.”
While Benitez-Thompson wasn’t born in Nevada, she’s lived most of her life here.
"So, my family came up to the area when I was four years old,” she said. “We were originally from Southern California, but my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, my mom, we all came up in the early 80s."
Growing up, her mother was a waitress trying to make ends meet.
Some of them included the Comstock, the Fitzgerald, Rapscallions and PJ’s.
Teresa Benitez-Thompson’s mother
"If you were leaving tips on the table at any of those places, those tips were what raised us,” Benitez-Thompson said. “Times could be tough, though. That's not a lot of money. So, there were a number of years where we actually lived with my grandparents."
Then there was a moment with her little sister that would change the rest of her life.
"I was a sophomore in high school, when she was a freshman in high school, she found herself pregnant," Benitez-Thompson said.
The family knew in order to help raise the child, they were going to need additional help.
The assistance programs her sister needed required her to work, but she was still in high school.
“We ran into other women who were in the same situation and they were advocating for policy changes,” Benitez-Thompson said. “Most importantly for my sister was we wanted her to stay in school."
This then resulted in the first domino to fall in her political journey.
"When we reached out to legislators to say, we've got a problem here and we want to advocate for education in this way, there were really just a handful of legislators who took the time to listen to us," Benitez-Thomson said.
When it came time for Benitez-Thompson to think about college, money became a hurdle again.
“I wanted to go to college and my mom said, that is great, but college costs money, honey,” she said. “College costs money and I knew it and I knew we didn't have it."
At the time, Benitez-Thompson was working for a nonprofit, Junior Achievement, where the executive director recommended she get involved in beauty pageants.
“I was like, oh no, not at all,” she then responded. “And he's like, just, just come and and listen."
What Benitez-Thompson didn’t realize at the time was, there were lots of scholarship dollars that came with it.
“So that one pageant got me $3,000,” she said. “That's how I paid for my next semester at school. So, I kept doing that. I kept showing up and neither winning or losing pageants, but winning scholarship money and funding my way through school."
There’s also a lot of community work involved, which allowed Benitez-Thompson to continue her mission.
"I leaned into that,” she said. “I had a nonprofit organization that I started and worked on the Nevada Empowered Women's Project. It was a continuation of the advocacy program that, that I started with my sister."
After finishing college, Benitez-Thompson became a licensed social worker.
She was the Special Needs Adoption Coordinator for Washoe County.
Her first child was a four year old who had suffered abuse and neglect, stopping Benitez-Thompson in her tracks.
"Her foster mom was bringing her up for me to meet her,” she said. “She had a little yellow daffodil in her hand. She was holding it, and she gave it to me and said, are you the person who's going to find me, my new mommy?”
Benitez-Thompson then became a medical social worker for critically and terminally ill patients all across the silver state.
This would eventually lead her to serving the Nevada Legislature for more than a decade.
While she’s proud of the work she did, she says improvements can always be made.
"I mean, there's always more to do,” Benitez-Thompson said. “You always needed more resources for public safety. You always needed more resources for education.”
Benitez-Thompson says being a mom of four is one of her greatest achievements.
"As my husband says, we play zone defense with our kids,” she said. “We're not man to man after we had two."
As the kids have grown, they are also her toughest critic.
"They ground me. I mean, the toughest constituent I have in my household right now is my 19 year old, and my soon to be 18 year old,” she said. “They're going to both be first time voters, right. And they're the ones that come at me with, Mom, so tell me what what you think about flock cameras. Mom, tell me what you think about data centers."
Benitez-Thompson then served as Chief of Staff for the Attorney General’s Office under Aaron Ford.
Now, she is running to be the first democrat to ever represent northern Nevada’s congressional district.
If you missed it on Tuesday, we also spoke with republican nominee, David Flippo.
