Nevada Carpetbagger? Miss USA Nia Sanchez Flubs Her ‘Home State’ Capital

Before spouting off about this or that hole in new Miss USA Nia Sanchez’s intellectual prowess or official status as a Nevada resident, let it be known that she’s easily the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth who could also take you down and make you cry.

No, America has never been represented in the Miss Universe competition by a fourth-degree black belt in Korean Taekwondo, but it’s also likely that Sanchez is the only one of the country’s 63 Miss USAs throughout history who couldn’t tell you the capital of the state she represented in the pageant.

Now she can, of course. But early Monday, during a radio interview in New York City on 95.5 WPLJ’s The Todd Show, the 25-year-old world traveler clearly didn’t have a clue. According to video of the interview recently posted at TMZ, the show’s host, in true shock-jock fashion, worked his way around to asking Miss Nevada if she could name Nevada’s capital.

Sanchez could do nothing but stall and stumble: “Oh-oh, ahhh… Um… Oh my gosh!” That’s about as long as he let her teeter uncomfortably at the edge of the on-air abyss before answering for her, “Carson City.”

“Thank you!” she said. “I was gonna say that. I was like, that one DJ host on MTV back in the day, his name, that’s how I always remembered it.”

To which the host replied, “Carson Daly. Yeah.”

This mistake more than anything else will only fuel the ongoing criticism from those who feel Sanchez chose Las Vegas, Nevada, as her residence less than a few years ago for the chances it afforded her of finally winning a state pageant crown.

Fourth time’s a charm, you see, or something like that. Born in Sacramento, California, Nia moved with her family to Washington state at 7, but returned to California to compete (and lose) the Miss California pageant three years in a row after high school was over.

According to a FOX411 source, Sanchez just barely qualified for Nevada’s pageant residency regulations and never even lived there for any stretch of time.

“She never actually moved to Nevada,” claimed the unnamed source, “but continued to work at Disney [as a princess] and live in California, setting up some minimum paper trail to appear like she was in Nevada and allow her to compete.”

So maybe they could have asked her for the capital of California as a follow-up.

Nia countered FOX’s source by saying that she lived in a house she shares with a friend in Las Vegas for the 18 months leading up to her being crowned Miss Nevada. “Las Vegas is my home,” she added.

Or it is now, anyway. Or was once. See: Nia Sanchez has the whole world in her hands. After high school, she’s lived as a nanny in Europe and gone on mission trips to Mexico. In addition to working at Disney — first the Chinese iteration then on to Disneyland — she’s modeled and vacationed far and wide, from the Middle East and Thailand to several countries in Europe.

And did we mention that Sanchez has been training since she was 12 to kick your face flat? The only way this picture down here could be more awesome is if it were taken during a swimsuit competition.

[Images courtesy of Facebook/Nia Sanchez]