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Democrats Worry That What Happens in Nevada Won't Stay in Nevada

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https://news.yahoo.com/democrats-worry-happens-nevada-wont-183114797.html

LAS VEGAS — Scars from the coronavirus pandemic are still visible here. 
Housing prices skyrocketed, with rents rising faster than almost anywhere 
else in the country. Roughly 10,000 casino workers remain out of work. Gas 
prices, now more than $5 a gallon, are higher than in every other state 
except California.

Amid a flagging economy, the state Democrats held up as a national model 
for more than a decade — registering and turning out first-time voters — 
has become the epitome of the party’s difficulties going into the 2022 
midterm elections.

Democrats have long relied on working-class and Latino voters to win 
Nevada, but the loyalty of both groups is now in question. Young voters 
who fueled Sen. Bernie Sanders’ biggest victory in the 2020 Democratic 
presidential primary remain skeptical about President Joe Biden. And Sen. 
Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., the country’s first Latina senator, is one 
of the party’s most endangered incumbents.

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She must overcome the president’s sagging approval ratings, 
dissatisfaction with the economy and her own relative anonymity. And she 
lacks the popularity and deep ties with Latino voters that Sen. Harry 
Reid, who died in December, harnessed to help build the state’s powerful 
Democratic machine. The state has long been a symbol of the Democratic 
Party’s future by relying on a racially diverse coalition to win 
elections, but those past gains are now at risk.

“There’s a lot of frustration on the ground that no one is listening,” 
said Leo Murrieta, director of Make the Road Nevada, a liberal advocacy 
group. “They are not wrong. It’s hard to talk about the possibility of 
tomorrow when your todays are still torn apart.”

Nevada, which Biden carried in 2020, has been a linchpin for Democrats in 
presidential elections since 2008. But an election cycle pattern that has 
alarmed Democrats has emerged. The party dominates in presidential 
elections but struggles during the midterms when a Democrat is in the 
White House. Democratic turnout takes a steep drop, largely because of the 
state’s highly transient population, and Republicans gain ground.

In 2014, the last midterm election with a Democrat in the White House, the 
state’s turnout dropped 46% compared to the previous presidential 
election, ushering in Republican control of the state Legislature. This 
year, Republican victories could unseat the Democratic governor, Steve 
Sisolak, and the state’s three Democratic members of Congress while also 
replacing Cortez Masto with a 2020 election denier in the Senate.

Beyond turnout, a deeper problem for Democrats is that the state has been 
turning, ever so slightly, less blue. The state’s share of registered 
Democrats has fallen — from 39.4% in 2016 to 33.6% in February, according 
to figures from the Nevada secretary of state. At the same time, more than 
28% of registered voters are now unaffiliated with any party, an increase 
from 20% in 2016. Officials said the spike in unaffiliated voters stems 
from an automatic voter registration system Nevada voters adopted in 2018.

The state’s economy has shown some signs of improvement. Joblessness in 
Reno is down to some of the lowest numbers in a century. Democrats are 
counting on the region, which has attracted new residents, many from 
California, and become something of a tech hub. But with more than 70% of 
the state’s population living in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, 
the election is likely to be decided on the outcome there. In interviews 
with Las Vegas voters, the economy overshadowed all other issues. There 
was a sense of optimism among some, but they worried that they would not 
have enough money for the basics: rent, food, gas.

“What I care about is opportunity and the economy,” said Angel Clavijo, 
23, who voted for the first time in 2020. Although he cast his ballot for 
Biden, Clavijo said he was not registered with either party.

Although he was able to keep his job as a housekeeper at The Venetian 
Resort through the pandemic, Clavijo watched anxiously as his parents’ 
bills stacked up. “I really can’t say I’m paying a lot of attention to 
politics right now,” he said. “I’m not just going to vote by party.”

Margarita Mejia, 68, a retired hotel worker, said she has voted for most 
of her life for Democrats but sat out the 2020 election as she helped her 
family and friends deal with the pandemic.

“It was depressing, being alone, struggling for everything,” said Mejia, 
who was selling clothing, stuffed animals and art from her front yard last 
week. “I don’t know what the government does for us, even when they say 
they want to help.”

Clavijo and Mejia could not name Nevada’s incumbent senator up for 
reelection — Cortez Masto, whose seat is critical if the Democrats want to 
maintain control of the Senate.

Despite five years in the Senate and eight years as Nevada’s attorney 
general, Cortez Masto remains unknown by a broad swath of the Nevada 
electorate as a result of her longtime aversion to publicity, cautious 
political demeanor and Nevada’s transient voters.

Almost half the voters on Nevada’s rolls have registered since Cortez 
Masto was last on the ballot in 2016, according to an analysis by 
TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. Her own internal polling found that 
nearly one-quarter of Latinos did not have an opinion on the race between 
her and Adam Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general who is likely to be 
her Republican opponent in the general election.

The Cortez Masto campaign began reintroducing her to Latino audiences 
earlier this month with a Spanish-language television advertisement that 
leaned heavily on telling her life story as a political pioneer and her 
family’s history in the military.

It gave a generous interpretation of her biography: Her father, Manny 
Cortez, was one of the most powerful figures in Las Vegas during stints on 
the Clark County Commission and later as the head of the Las Vegas 
Convention and Visitors Authority. In that role, he approved the 
ubiquitous Las Vegas marketing phrase, “What happens here, stays here.”

“He didn’t start at the top,” Reid said from the Senate floor after Cortez 
died in 2006, “but he ended up there.”

Cortez, who maintained a close friendship with Reid, operated as a behind-
the-scenes player. While that served him as a political operator, it may 
not help his daughter in this year’s high-profile race that will help 
determine control of the Senate.

“He was never a guy who went out and sought attention from the media,” 
said Jon Ralston, a longtime Nevada journalist. “She is kind of an 
exaggerated version of him in many ways.”

That aversion to seeking the spotlight has left Cortez Masto as 
essentially a generic Democrat in a midterm year when being yoked to Biden 
is a political hazard. A January poll from The Nevada Independent showed 
Biden’s approval rating in the state at just 41%.

Cortez Masto declined to be interviewed.

“No state was hit harder than Nevada, and we’re recovering quickly because 
Catherine fought to get the relief our hospitality industry needed, 
supporting the tens of thousands of workers who rely on our tourism 
economy,” a spokesperson, Josh Marcus-Blank, said in a statement.

Jeremy Hughes, a Republican who was a campaign adviser to Dean Heller, the 
former Republican senator, said Cortez Masto would have difficultly 
separating herself from Biden and the national party’s diminished brand.

“Every data point I’ve seen points to Hispanic voters being more open to 
supporting a Republican this cycle than any in recent memory,” Hughes 
said. “If the economy is the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds across the 
country, in Nevada and especially among Hispanic voters, it’s the No. 1, 2 
and 3 issue.”

But Democrats say that her likely Republican opponent, Laxalt, is unlikely 
to win over moderate voters. Laxalt, whose father and grandfather both 
served in the Senate, ran the Trump campaign’s effort to overturn Nevada’s 
2020 election results.

Democrats are also counting on more economic improvement in Las Vegas, 
where the economy took a hit with the abrupt shutdown of the Strip but has 
started to be revived with crowded casinos.

On a recent sunny afternoon in east Las Vegas, Paul Madrid and Daniel 
Trujillo took a break in front of the barbershop they have run for the 
last 20 years. Business has been brisk lately, and they described 
themselves as relieved that the worst was behind them. Still, they have 
winced while watching the price of gas tick up at the station across the 
street.

Madrid, 52, called himself a “lifelong working-class Democrat” and said he 
had tried to pay less attention to politics since former President Donald 
Trump left office. As frustrated as he has been, he is likely to vote for 
Democrats in November. But he said he felt less loyal than he once did.

“Something’s got to change,” he said. “We’ve got to put the country before 
party. I’ve got to stay positive. My business is back, customers are back, 
and I just want this all to be over with.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company



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Democrats Worry That What Happens in Nevada Won't Stay in Nevada "Leroy N. Soetoro" <democrat-criminals@mail.house.gov> - 2022-04-04 18:24 +0000

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