In Nevada, Inslee tries to pull 2020 spotlight away from DC

The Democratic presidential sweepstakes might seem like a tale of Joe Biden and the Seven Senators, but there are plenty of governors and mayors looking for a chance to steal the spotlight from the former vice president and other headliners.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is headed to the early caucus state of Nevada on Saturday and will soon travel to the first primary state of New Hampshire as he mulls a White House bid. Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor and longtime Democratic power player, is showing up on cable news and writing newspaper op-eds. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock are busy with day jobs but recently finished an ambitious round of midterm campaigning. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper left office this month, and he spent part of the fall on the road.

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he'd fund his own race if he runs. Even Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is making noise.

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2018, file photo, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock walks down the main concourse during a visit to the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa. Former Vice President Joe Biden and several nationally known senators are commanding most of the attention in Democrats’ early presidential angling, but there are several governors and mayors, including Bullock, eyeing 2020 campaigns, as well. (AP PhotoCharlie Neibergall, File)

Each person is making moves that could result in a presidential campaign. But in the early days of a Democratic primary, the question is whether someone without a Washington resume can win a contest that's so far dominated by Biden, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke and several nationally known senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey. Other senators who might join the race include Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. And that number of senators may grow.

"Being an outsider governor or an outsider mayor is a good place to run from to cast yourself as somebody with executive experience and leadership at a time when people don't trust a dysfunctional Congress," said Dave Hamrick, who managed then-Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland's unsuccessful bid in 2016.

"The challenge," Hamrick said, "is figuring out whether your story is the right one for this moment and selling it when so many other people are out there."

FILE - In this Aug. 23, 2018, file photo Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti poses for a photo in front of a sprawling downtown Los Angeles landscape. Former Vice President Joe Biden and several nationally known senators are commanding most of the attention in Democrats’ early presidential angling, but there are several governors and mayors, including Garcetti, eyeing 2020 campaigns, as well.(AP PhotoRichard Vogel, File)

For now, Inslee is the most publicly active of the governors. In Nevada, he'll address activists at the Battle Born Progress convention.

Jamal Raad, an Inslee aide, said the governor will highlight Washington state's Medicaid expansion and family-leave policy while repeating his call for action on climate change. Raad notes Nevada Democrats' new combined control of the legislative and executive branches, with the governor's office being one of seven that Democrats flipped in November under Inslee's chairmanship of the Democratic Governors Association.

"He wants to lay out for them what kind of progressive agenda they can accomplish," Raad said.

Campaign finance laws give non-federal officials more leeway to raise money without having an official presidential campaign or exploratory committee, so there's less pressure on them to announce campaigns than for senators who want to travel. If those governors and mayors announce early and then fail to show fundraising prowess, their campaigns could be short-lived. But if they wait too long, they could lose out on media attention, donors and key staffers.

The sweet spot will be qualifying for the first party-sponsored debate in June. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez hasn't yet announced debate qualification rules.

Inslee is traveling now using his federal political action committee.

Garcetti's PAC raised $2.6 million for Democrats last year. He brought in $100,000 each for several state parties, including early voting states, and he recently hired the former executive director of the Democratic Party in South Carolina, which holds the South's first primary.

Bullock, a former DGA chairman like Inslee, traveled extensively in 2018 but now is dedicated to his state's legislative session. His national advisers include Jen Palmieri, a former communications director to the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

In Colorado, Hickenlooper opened a federal political action committee last fall and has made some top staff hires.

McAuliffe, who is also a former DNC chairman, is in contact with his old network of donors and aides; he has the personal wealth to pay for some of his own early travel.

Besides competing for money and staff, Hamrick said, candidates will have to choose their "lanes" — political identities that make them stand out.

The 2016 race amounted to Clinton and the non-Clinton lane, filled by Bernie Sanders. In 2020, it will be more complicated: policy distinctions; generational divides among older and younger candidates; demographic distinctions among white men, women and candidates of color; and a divide between Washington politicians and those elected to non-federal posts.

"There are overlaps, of course," Hamrick said.

So Bullock can be the 52-year-old white governor who mixes his Ivy League education with his Montana roots. McAuliffe, the 61-year-old former Virginia governor, can be the establishment liberal who restored felon voting rights and pushed Medicaid expansion but who warns against a "federal jobs guarantee" and "free college tuition."

Inslee told The Associated Press in an interview last fall that he doesn't buy into "lanes," but the 67-year-old also has made clear his intention to be the "climate change candidate" if he runs. He has a trip to New Hampshire later this month to speak on that topic at Dartmouth College.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Investigations into the Brown University mass shooting and the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor shifted Thursday when authorities discovered evidence they say indicates they were committed by the same man, who was then found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attacker at Brown killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Saturday. Some 50 miles (80 kilometers) away MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed Monday night in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.

The FBI had earlier said it knew of no links between the cases.

Here are some answers to questions about the attacks and investigations:

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a six-day search that spanned several New England states.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.

“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

Loureiro, 47, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MIT’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.

Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page.

The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Authorities released several security videos of a person thought might have carried out the Brown attack. They showed the individual standing, walking and even running along the streets, but their face is masked or turned away in all of them.

Police say a witness then gave investigators a key tip: he saw someone who looked like the person of interest with a Nissan sedan displaying Florida plates. That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.

Video footage showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s. About an hour later, he was seen entering the New Hampshire storage facility where he was later found dead, Foley said.

The two students who were killed and the nine others wounded were studying for a final in a first-floor classroom in an older section of the engineering building when the shooter walked in and opened fire.

Those killed were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook, whose funeral is Monday, was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.

As for the wounded, six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said. The other three were discharged.

Neves Valiente gained permanent residency status through a green card lottery program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X.

She said President Donald Trump ordered her to pause the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services program.

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.

The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi, Amanda Swinhart, Robert F. Bukaty, Matt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Michael Casey in Boston; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Kathy McCormack and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington.

This combo image made with photos provided by the FBI and the Providence, Rhode Island, Police Department shows a person of interest in the shooting that occurred at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI/Providence Police Department via AP)

A memorial of flowers and signs lay outside the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University, on Hope Street in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt OBrien)

A Brown University student leaves campus, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, after all classes, exams and papers were canceled for the rest of the Fall 2025 semester following the school shooting, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)