Michele Fiore

Michele Ann Fiore (born July 29, 1970) is an American Republican politician serving as a justice of the peace for Nye County since being appointed to the position by the Nye County Commission in December 2022.

Fiore moved to Nye County in November 2022 after losing the race for Nevada State Treasurer in the 2022 election.

She was a member of the Nevada Assembly from 2012 to 2016.

Fiore, who represented much of northwestern Clark County, served two Assembly terms.

On a February 2014 edition of her radio show, discussing Right-to-Try, Fiore described the cancer treatment by Cancer is a Fungus author Tullio Simoncini as an example of treatments that the terminally ill could access under Right-to-Try: "If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can put a PICC line into your body and we're flushing, let's say, salt water, sodium carbonate, through that line, and flushing out the fungus. ... These are some procedures that are not FDA-approved in America that are very inexpensive, cost-effective."

At the top of the show Fiore raised the topic of her 2014 comments, "an issue that I have gotten a lot of questions about".

She said, "I made comments about cancer that I didn't put in the proper context."

She had had a friend with cancer who had made "radical improvement using a doctor out of Italy's treatment covered in his book and his book was called Cancer Is A Fungus ... it was a tumor therapy of some sort. The point I was trying to illustrate was that people like my friend ... should have the right to decide their own fate and try experimental treatments like this."

She did not repeat that cancer is a fungus or that salt water could flush it out.

After Fiore addressed the issue she and guest Jackie See, M.D., defended the Simoncini treatment and other alternative techniques as viable and a means by which the U.S. could lead the world medically if regulation and bureaucracy were reduced and doctors could "explor[e] all the treatments not knowing where the next breakthrough will come from."

Discussing whether the 2014 armed resistance against federal agents was justified (the agents were in Bunkerville, Nevada, to confiscate cattle owned by rancher Cliven Bundy because of defaulted grazing fees), she said,

"I would never, ever point my firearm at anyone, including an officer of the law, unless they pointed their firearm at me. Now, once you point your firearm at me, I'm sorry, then it becomes self-defense. So, whether you're a stranger, a bad guy, or an officer, and you—you point your gun at me and you're gonna shoot me and I have to decide whether it's my life or your life, well, I choose my life."

In April 2014, Fiore was interviewed by MSNBC's Chris Hayes and by Fox News's Sean Hannity about the armed confrontation at Bunkerville, Nevada, between law enforcement officers and Cliven Bundy and his supporters.

The interviews were shared thousands of times on social media.

On December 7, 2015, she confirmed that she would not seek reelection, and would instead enter the 2016 race for Nevada's 3rd congressional district in southern Clark County.

Fiore is a staunch supporter of gun rights; her 2015 Christmas card showed her family holding their guns.

She sponsored Assembly Bill 148 to allow concealed firearms on the campuses of colleges and grade schools and in day care facilities.

In an interview with The New York Times, Fiore said, "If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them. The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head."

Fiore is noted for having been the only Republican to vote to lift the ban on same-sex marriage and to legalize medical marijuana.

Fiore was a primary sponsor of the 2015 Nevada Right-to-Try bill, legislation that allows doctors to perform medical procedures that are being used in ongoing FDA-approved clinical trials but have not achieved FDA approval for terminally ill patients who are not responding to traditional medical treatment.

On her February 21, 2015, broadcast, the theme was the concept of Right-to-Try; the bill had been introduced in the Assembly the previous week.

After the 2015 broadcast, she received renewed national attention for her 2014 statements.

Using sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) as a cancer treatment is espoused by Tullio Simoncini and is known as the Simoncini cancer treatment.

This method has not been proven, and no evidence suggests that it or treatment with salt water works, but if either were to be accepted under the bill's requirements it could be legally considered a non-FDA-approved treatment that a terminally ill patient in Nevada could request.

The bill that Fiore introduced eight days before her 2015 show requires that the drug, product or device "have successfully completed Phase 1 of a clinical trial" and that it be "tested in a clinical trial that has been approved by the [FDA]."

On June 15, 2016, Fiore placed third in the primary, with 18% of the vote.

In March 2016, Fiore was interviewed by the Las Vegas Sun.

When asked about her support of militants involved in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier that year, she said,

"When the federal government feels they're going to govern Americans by gunpoint, I'm sorry. If government is going to point a gun at me, I'm going to point my gun right back. If you're going to shoot me, I'm going to shoot you back. I ain't going to shoot first, but I ain't going to let you shoot me. It's just not going to happen."

In April 2016, Fiore was interviewed for the KLAS 8 television show "Politics NOW".

In May 2016, the Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers sent a letter denouncing Fiore's statements, concluding,

"Ms. Fiore, we no longer see you as a passionate advocate for your Second Amendment rights, which we support. Rather, these comments were utterly irresponsible, an embarrassment to your District and our State, and they continue to demonstrate why you are unqualified to hold the position of United States Congresswoman."

In response, Fiore told KTNV 13 Action News that her original statement referred to federal Bureau of Land Management agents, not local police.

She described BLM law enforcement agents as "wannabe cops" and the BLM as "a bureaucratic agency of terrorism that terrorized Americans, especially ranchers."

When pressed about the meaning of her previous statement, she said,

"If a rogue, unofficial BLM agent that's literally wanting to be a cop—a wannabe police officer—points a gun at me, there's gonna be a problem."

She was elected to the Las Vegas City Council in 2017 and represented Ward 6.

Fiore has been a high-profile supporter of Cliven Bundy and Donald Trump.

She briefly ran in the Republican primary for the 2022 Nevada gubernatorial election before dropping out and winning the Republican nomination in the 2022 Nevada State Treasurer election, which she lost to Democratic nominee Zach Conine, 46.0% to 47.7%.

She is currently the Nevada Republican Party national committeewoman responsible for fund-raising in the state.