With candidate filing finally underway here in Nevada, it would be nice if we could start focusing primarily on the sort of local politicking and policies that don’t normally plague national headlines.

Lamentably, however, all politics are national to one degree or another in our modern era — which means that even local races are likely to be colored by absurdist national partisan trends.  

Part of the reason for this dynamic is undoubtedly related to the way we consume political news in the 21st century. Social media and cable news networks increasingly dominate our limited attention spans, leading to an inherent nationalization of political narratives — a nationalization that results in greater partisan animosity, division and radicalization. 

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that another contributing reason for this phenomenon is that, thanks to the overbearing nature of the federal government, policy happenings on the federal level do, in fact, have an outsized affect on our daily lives. 

When President Donald Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court for daring to rule against his tariff-by-diktat policy, for example, it wasn’t merely the type of narcissistic whinging one has come to expect from his administration. Instead, it was a signal that he wasn’t about to let his policy ambitions be constrained by constitutional limits. 

Within hours of the Supreme Court rebuking Trump’s “emergency” tariffs — “emergencies” that included foreign nations refusing to placate Trump’s ego — the White House decided to adopt a ludicrous interpretation of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to reimplement its tax on imports unilaterally. 

Even conservative outlets such as National Review argue that the new mechanism for sweeping tariffs is likely just as dubious as the one already rejected by the high court, but it’s not as if this White House is particularly concerned with constitutional limits on its power. Even after the court ruled the former tariff regime unconstitutional, for example, the Trump administration immediately began looking for ways to avoid refunding the taxes it had illegally collected from American businesses. 

The consequence of such a contemptuous White House isn’t mere political noise. Instead, it’s an all-too-real continuation of the chaos, instability and economic uncertainty that has been an incessant strain on our communities. Visitation to Las Vegas, for example, continues to struggle in such an environment and huge swaths of our local economy remain uncertain about future costs due to ongoing trade disagreements on the international stage. 

As it turns out, a White House hell-bent on centrally planning the nation’s entire economy has decidedly local concerns. No wonder local politics are burdened with the dissatisfaction and frustration voters feel toward increasingly volatile national happenings. 

Unfortunately, as a result, it’s easy to see how activists within each party’s political base would expect candidates to filter through a bunch of litmus tests set by such trending topics of the day. 

No wonder activist Republican primary voters increasingly demand unbridled MAGA loyalty from candidates, while many Democratic activists hope for their own local versions of Zohran Mamdani to rise up and become the new standardbearer of their party. If all politics are filtered through national attitudes and news cycles, such extreme polarization would seem to be a natural consequence. 

However, neither extreme will likely serve the parties electorally well in a decidedly purple state such as Nevada, where partisan expectations are routinely flouted by voters. 

Somewhere amid all the noise of primary bickering there had better be a contingent of primary voters willing to consider the more moderate pragmatism that is often needed to actually win in general elections. After all, despite our strong Democratic majorities in the Legislature, we’re not a far-left land of radical resistance fighters — nor are we some bastion of deep-red MAGA loyalty, despite Trump’s recent electoral victory in the Silver State. 

Historically, the Democratic Party in Nevada seems to understand this concept fairly well, having largely repelled previous attempts by the more radical elements of its base to commandeer the party. The Republican Party, however, has been less willing to moderate itself for the sake of local popularity, with numerous GOP leaders even facing criminal charges for their role in trying to falsely award the state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump in 2020. 

Thankfully, not all Republicans have surrendered to such political insanity. Gov. Joe Lombardo, for example, has managed to remain independent from such national commotion, as is evidenced by his dependably strong popularity among voters. 

Nonetheless, in our closed primary system, the extremists within each party will try to wield outsized influence over the process as they cater to the whims of social media, cable news and online influencers — constituencies that are hardly representative of the nonpartisan voters who are actually needed to win local general elections. 

So, while it certainly seems as if all politics are now inescapably “national” to one degree or another, Rep. Tip O’Neill’s (D-MA) axiom that “all politics is local” might be a pretty useful thing to keep in mind for politicians who want to appeal to voters from beyond their party’s increasingly narrow base. 

At the very least, such politicking would break up the monotony of our nationally obsessed news feeds — and that alone would be a welcome change of pace, regardless of one’s partisan leanings. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichaelor on Substack @creativediscourse.