Smart, early organizing in communities of color helped propel Sanders to victory in Nevada

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders notched a decisive victory in Nevada’s presidential caucus on Saturday, cementing his frontrunner status and paving a clear road heading into South Carolina’s primary next week and Super Tuesday soon after.

The hour before Nevada’s Democratic caucus was set to convene, Rose Rosenwach, a retired international law and diplomacy attorney, had taped up her caucus math poster, studied her script and reviewed her contingency plans.

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign, in a letter sent to the Nevada State Democratic Party just before midnight on Sunday, is alleging numerous errors in how early vote totals were folded into the Caucus Day process.

Months of organizing and television ads, a frantic two-week rush after New Hampshire, and Nevada Democrats are finally heading to caucus on Saturday morning to determine allocation of the state’s 36 unpledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Although the delegate haul is small, almost all of the party’s presidential hopefuls have made a concentrated effort to perform well in the caucus to continue or regain their campaign’s momentum.

Somehow, the likeliest thing heading into Nevada’s first-in-the-West nominating contest on Saturday is that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will win, likelier even than the chance the Democratic Party voting goes off without a hitch in the wake of Iowa’s problem plagued-contest earlier this month.

After a frantic two-week rush, Democratic presidential hopefuls fanned out across Nevada to hold events and campaign rallies in a final push before the state’s presidential caucus on Saturday.

Outside of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who held events in Elko and Reno, every major Democratic candidate held their events Friday evening throughout the Las Vegas valley. Even President Donald Trump, who is avoiding a competitive primary in the state, held a mass rally Friday afternoon in Las Vegas while predicting chaotic results from the Democratic process.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, more than a month after hinting his opposition to President Barack Obama’s controversial deportation policy, is walking back those comments.

After Iowa Democrats declined to correct obvious math errors on caucus reporting sheets, Nevada Democrats are signaling that they will take a more even-handed approach to their post-caucus review, including correcting any miscalculations and adjusting delegates accordingly.

The Nevada State Democratic Party has been asking some of its volunteers to sign non-disclosure agreements in the lead-up to the state’s first-in-the-West Democratic nominating contest on Saturday, barring them from sharing sensitive voter data or speaking with the media about the caucus process.

Trump, who rallied roughly 15,000 supporters inside and outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center on Friday, made the case for his 2020 re-election effort by touting high job numbers and low unemployment. But he took multiple asides to insult Democratic presidential candidates, tout his administration’s efforts to stop licensing for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, celebrate the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” men’s Olympic Hockey team and complain about a South Korean film (Parasite) winning Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards.

Inside the Nevada State Democratic Party’s ballot hubs, a massive data processing operation is working overtime to ensure that the presidential preferences of 75,000 caucusgoers who chose to vote early make it to the right precincts to be counted on Caucus Day.

The Nevada State Democratic Party is in the process of notifying roughly 1,000 early-voting caucusgoers that their ballots have been voided for errors, just two days before Caucus Day.

That’s why for the next week, The Nevada Independent will publish a daily list of all scheduled presidential candidate events. A full list of all future scheduled events will remain on the presidential candidate tracker.

Several campaigns, especially those that have been knocking on doors in Nevada for months, believe that rural caucusgoers could drive up a candidate’s delegate count in a close contest. Overall, there are fewer potential delegates in rural counties. But Nevada law, by ensuring that rural voters are included, apportions delegates differently and gives more weight to rural voters.

President Donald Trump delivered a meandering speech Thursday at a Hope for Prisoners graduation ceremony in Las Vegas, at points riffing on the “unbelievable” treatment of Roger Stone and touting the nation’s economy under his watch.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, at one point during Wednesday’s raucous presidential debate on the Las Vegas Strip, suggested her opponents take their sparring down to the MGM Grand for fight night. It was an apt comparison. The eight previous Democratic debates were marked by relatively civil policy disagreements interrupted by occasional dustups and memorable one-liners. On Wednesday night, the gloves came off.