Indy 2020: Warren, Sanders and Biden return to Nevada to court the Culinary Union
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Good morning, and welcome to Indy 2020, a biweekly newsletter focused on the 2020 presidential election in Nevada. A reminder that email subscribers get early access to this newsletter, so be sure to subscribe and tell your friends. It’ll be peachy.
I know you’re probably tired of it, but I’m not. I’m not talking about the caucus. I’m talking about 2019’s greatest meme: Baby Yoda playing with the radio. I’m still not totally sold on “The Mandalorian.” I get the argument that it’s a classic Western set in space, and I can appreciate that. I just don’t know where the story is going yet and I really badly want to know. (Insert comment about impatient millennials here.)
However, what I am sold on is Baby Yoda — Baby Yoda listening to Queen. Baby Yoda going through an angsty Evanescence phase. Baby Yoda being SO READY for Christmas.
In other news, a programming note: A shorter Christmas Eve edition of this newsletter will come out on Dec. 24 and then we’ll be back after the New Year.
As always, a reminder to reach out to me with any tips, story ideas, comments, suggestions (and your favorite Baby Yoda radio meme) at [email protected].
Without further ado, a download of the recent 2020 happenings in Nevada.
TOP OF MIND
First in The Indy: South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg will be back in Nevada on Dec. 20 and 21 after the Democratic presidential debate in California on Dec. 19. Details to come.
Warren kicks off latest series of Culinary town halls: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the latest candidate to visit the Culinary Union Monday night, addressing a crowd of a couple hundred workers at their union headquarters. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden will address the union this morning and on Wednesday morning, respectively.
The first question she was asked was about her health care plan. Warren lauded the union's health plan and health center — which she toured earlier in the day — but remained vague about whether the Culinary plan would continue to exist in the health care future she imagines. The crowd was enthusiastic at points — such as when she went after Station Casinos as an example of who “Washington is working great” for — but otherwise it was a relatively subdued audience for the Massachusetts senator, especially compared to the warm reception California Sen. Kamala Harris received when she was in town last month.
More on Warren's visit here.
Culinary endorsement before the caucus? D. Taylor, international president of the Culinary Union's parent union UNITE HERE, told me after the Warren town hall his hope is that the union will endorse — as a national union — before Nevada's Feb. 22 caucus. But he didn't say whether Medicare for all would be a litmus test. Those comments are also in the Warren story here.
Bernie in the north: Ahead of his Culinary Union visit, Sanders swung through Northern Nevada on Sunday and Monday. On Sunday, he held a rally at Elko High School, where he touched on a number of issues, including rural health care.
"So it may well be that an insurance company does not make a lot of profit in rural Nevada, you know? So what? The function of healthcare is to provide healthcare to people,” he said, according to CBS News’ Alex Tin.
He also came out against oil and gas drilling in the Ruby Mountains, which tower over Elko, in a statement Monday morning. (My colleague Daniel Rothberg has reported extensively on the issue.)
“Nevadans have resoundingly opposed any attempts to open the Ruby Mountains for oil and gas drilling, which would lead to the destruction of our public lands,” Sanders said. “Scientists have also been clear that in order to solve the climate crisis, we must leave fossil fuels in the ground. When we are in the White House, we will immediately end all new and existing fossil fuel extraction on federal public lands, including Nevada’s Ruby Mountains.”
Sanders also hosted rallies in Carson City and Reno on Monday. In Carson City, Sanders was thanked by a Navy veteran who had told the Vermont senator three months ago at the campaign rally that he wanted to kill himself because of his struggle with Huntington’s disease and overwhelming medical bills. My colleague Michelle Rindels has more of his story here.
Kamala drops out: Harris dropped out of the presidential race, citing financial constraints. I just interviewed her a couple of weeks ago for our podcast, during which she told me she was “very much in the game.” She ran a good race here, though, had a team that knew Nevada well and received several endorsements from lawmakers here. She stopped by her Las Vegas office to say goodbye to her staff last week.
Latino group seeks specific commitments from candidates: I met with Hector Sanchez Barba, Mi Familia Vota’s new executive director and CEO, in Las Vegas last week. One of the organization’s biggest focuses right now, he told me, is getting presidential hopefuls on the record on immigration, and pressing them to lay out a specific roadmap for how and when they plan to implement the policies they have laid out on the trail.
“President Obama was the perfect example of lack of commitment on the issue of immigration, even though he promised that he was going to get it done in the first one hundred days,” he said. “We never saw him spending the political capital that the issue requires. He's a very sophisticated politician that if he wanted to make this a priority, he would have gotten it done.”
(He did note, however, that there was at least a relationship between the Obama administration and the Latino community, and said that the administration involved Latino leaders in discussions on a host of different issues.)
Sanchez Barba recorded the first of the organization’s presidential conversations with billionaire and Democratic presidential hopeful Tom Steyer in Las Vegas last week.
“I'm going to be very strong in getting specific answers from the candidates on how they're planning to get us to the finish line on the priorities that are so critical for our community,” he said.
The organization is planning on turning some of what is gleaned from these interviews into a voter guide. Sanchez Barba also told me that though the organization has stayed away from endorsing in the past, it is still an ongoing conversation he is having with leaders at the national level.
Steyer’s post-Thanksgiving trip: In addition to meeting with Sanchez Barba, Steyer participated in a town hall with Hispanics in Politics, co-hosted a discussion with the League of Women Voters, toured Veterans Village and made other campaign stops in Pahrump and Henderson while in town the weekend after Thanksgiving.
In Henderson, he touched on the recently-approved homeless ordinance in Las Vegas, though he also said that “no one from California can come to Nevada and start lecturing people about homelessness and how to solve it, because I think we're the center of homelessness,” according to CBS News’ Alex Tin.
ON THE INDY
App-based early voting and caucusing: The Nevada State Democratic Party released additional details about how technology will be integrated into the early voting and Caucus Day process. Early voters will be able to use an app downloaded onto party-purchased tablets stationed at early voting sites to cast their presidential preferences, and then those early votes will flow into a separate app that will be used by precinct chairs to run the actual process on Caucus Day. More on that from me here.
NextGen investing $1 million in Nevada: The progressive advocacy group NextGen America will spend $1 million on registering and turning out young people in 2020 in an effort to keep Nevada blue. The group, which was founded by Steyer, said it will focus on voter turnout ahead of the caucus but not in support of any specific candidate. Details here.
Impeachment could boost voter turnout: My colleague Humberto Sanchez looked into what effect the impeachment proceedings could have on the election in Nevada. Rep. Dina Titus, who recently endorsed Biden, told him that she thinks more people are going to turn out because of the impeachment proceedings “because they’re more fired up by what they’re hearing and what they will be hearing.”
Republicans think so too.
“All it has done is motivate Nevada Republicans to turn out in force to re-elect President Trump and hold Democrats up and down the ballot accountable next year,” Nevada Republican Party Executive Director Will Sexauer said in a statement.
More on that here.
CAMPAIGN NUGGETS
Staffing changes and office openings
- Warren will open her ninth campaign office in the state in Carson City on Saturday.
- Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang’s campaign has opened two additional offices in the state and hired Jenny Lehner as Nevada political director and Zachary Amos as Nevada field director. Lehner previously worked on Chris Giunchigliani’s gubernatorial campaign and Amos was the regional organizing director with Beto for America.
- Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has hired Matthew DeFalco as his state director. DeFalco was previously Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton’s state director for his presidential campaign.
- New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s campaign has onboarded new organizers in Clark and Washoe counties, bringing the campaign’s staff to more than 20 in Nevada.
New endorsements
- Former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan has endorsed Biden for president, as has civil rights leader Dr. Robert Green.
- The Clark County Black Caucus has endorsed Booker, though it has picked Sanders as its second choice candidate. (Second place actually matters in Nevada because of the realignment process that happens during the caucus should a candidate at a given precinct not reach a certain threshold of support to be considered a “viable” candidate.)
- Phillip Washington, senior pastor of Promised Land Community Church and co-founder of the Nevada Faith and Health Coalition, has endorsed Warren.
- Joe Oddo, past president of the LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada, has endorsed Buttigieg.
- For the latest on presidential endorsements, check out our tracker.
Upcoming candidate visits
- Sanders and Biden will speak to Culinary Union members at town halls this morning and on Wednesday morning, respectively.
- Sanders will attend a community meeting at St. Simeon Serbian Orthodox Church this afternoon.
- Warren will hold a town hall at Truckee Meadows Community College this evening.
- Yang will be back in Las Vegas on Sunday for a fundraiser at Mosaic Theater. There will be a cocktail reception followed by a high roller poker tournament with World Series Champions.
- For the latest on presidential candidate visits, check out our visit tracker.
Surrogate stops
- Delaware Sen. Chris Coons was in Nevada campaigning for Biden this weekend.
- Michael Lighty, Sanders’ health care constituency director, hosted a Medicare-for-all tour over the weekend, which also included surrogates Jose La Luz and Brianna Westbrook, as well as Sanders Nevada Co-Chair Amy Vilela. Events on Saturday included canvass launches in Carson City, Reno and Henderson, a “Unidos con Bernie” conversation in Carson City, a Medicare-for-all forum at UNR and a LGBTQIA+ happy hour at Hamburger Mary’s in Las Vegas. On Sunday, the team also hosted another canvass launch in East Las Vegas, a LGBTQIA+ Medicare-for-all town hall at the Clark County Library, a “Salud y Trabajo” roundtable with Mi Familia Vota and SEIU 1107 in Las Vegas and a happy hour at Milo’s Cellar in Boulder City.
- California Assemblywoman and California Legislative Latino Caucus Chair Lorena Gonzalez will campaign for Warren in Las Vegas on Sunday. She’ll attend a canvass kickoff at Warren’s East Las Vegas office and later headline a house party with Latinx activists, caucusgoers and community leaders.
- John Bessler, husband of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, will be making his first surrogate visit to Las Vegas on Dec. 20 and 21.
Other election news
- Three former Nevada State Democratic Party chairs who have endorsed Biden — Roberta Lange, Sam Lieberman and Adriana Martinez — have cut a video touting their support for the former vice president.
- Yang’s campaign started sending out rather elaborate mail pieces — there is a pocket and a “MATH” sticker — around Thanksgiving to Nevadans.
- The Klobuchar campaign, which recently staffed up in Nevada, began hosting organizing events last week.
- Steyer’s campaign held a community Healthlink fair in partnership with the Asian Community Resource Center on Friday, planted 10 fruit trees at the Vegas Roots Community Garden on Saturday and invited the community to a play of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at the Steyer headquarters on Sunday.
- Booker’s millennial engagement director is coming into town for a few events this week, including a young leaders happy hour on Thursday. The campaign is also continuing to do volunteer caucus trainings in English and Spanish and will be officially launching its Spanish caucus program this week.
- Buttigieg released a video last week calling on Station Casinos to negotiate with workers who have voted to join the Culinary Union.
DOWN BALLOT NEWS
Impeachment in CD3: A poll by a conservative nonprofit organization linked to House Republicans found that voters in the swingy 3rd Congressional District will be less likely to vote for freshman Democratic Rep. Susie Lee if she continues to back the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. My colleague Riley Snyder has the details.
OTHER REQUIRED READING
- Harris Reid at a brokered convention? (The Atlantic)
- Does Mayor Pete have a Latino problem? (Politico)
- Candidates try to appeal to non-white voters in Nevada (Las Vegas Sun)