Vote against a big labor priority? Nevada unions want to make it hurt.

As executive director of the 25,000-member Southern Nevada Building Trades Association, Vince Saavedra was disappointed when the push for millions of dollars in tax credits to incentivize film companies to build "Hollywood 2.0" in Las Vegas died during last November's special legislative session. 

He's still trying to hold the lawmakers who opposed the effort responsible. 

"I've actually been going to job sites personally, putting my boots back on, putting on the hard hat, hitting the job sites early in the morning and letting them know which candidates voted and which ones didn't for the film bill," Saavedra said in an interview with The Nevada Independent. 

Unions that supported Nevada's massive expansion of its film tax credits program have mobilized to express their dissatisfaction with the lawmakers who voted against it. This cycle, at least six Democratic candidates in legislative races are members of a building trades union — meaning they work in fields such as construction, carpentry or engineering — and at least another 11 are members of other unions. Saavedra said he believed that was a record.

Along with more union-affiliated candidates running, unions have also been endorsing, canvassing and donating in primary challenges against incumbents, some of whom they previously supported. 

That's an especially important development in Nevada, a state with a higher-than-average rate of union membership — about 14 percent of workers are represented by a union — and where unions bring reliable routes for fundraising and vote-getting. 

Soon after the bill failed, Laborers Local 872, the union for Las Vegas construction workers and one of the bill's key backers, rescinded its endorsement of several incumbent lawmakers running for re-election. Some of the candidates who lost the group's endorsement — including Sen. Edgar Flores (D-Las Vegas), Assm. Jovan Jackson (D-North Las Vegas) and Assm. Howard Watts (D-Las Vegas) — are now facing primary challengers who have indicated support for the proposal. 

Unions changing their endorsements is "both a risk and a flex," said UNR political science professor Jeremy Gelman. It's a dangerous strategy, he said, since the union-backed candidates might lose. 

But if the union's pick wins, Gelman added, "they're sending a warning shot to future legislators."

Representatives and candidates from the trade unions say their efforts in this year's primary elections do not just reflect frustrations over the film bill's failure, but gesture at labor leaders' broader dissatisfaction with the political status quo and their willingness to flex their political muscles.

"We're working closely with some of the other unions on getting the people we know we need," Tommy White, the secretary-treasurer of Laborers Local 872, said in an interview with The Indy. "I don't understand if you're Howard Watts, or if you're Jovan Jackson … I mean, come on, look at the areas that you're representing."

Incumbents have defended their votes and pointed to past work on labor rights' issues.

Selena La Rue Hatch (D-Reno), who led an attempt to kill the bill, told The Indy that the bill could have bankrupted the state. A member of the Nevada State Education Association, La Rue Hatch said unions always have "a full seat" at her table but that there were disagreements among the unions on whether the bill would truly create union jobs.

She said there was a "cauldron" of lobbyists from special interest groups who pushed for the bill because they wanted to secure a win for their clients, but added that most of the pressure didn't come from unions.

"When it comes down to it, our decision needs to be what is best for working people, what is best for the state," La Rue Hatch told The Indy.

Film bill "a major issue" 

The film tax credits bill, AB5, was one of the most controversial bills of last year's legislative session and fell just one vote short of passage. Despite a yearslong lobbying effort, progressive and conservative lawmakers ultimately formed an unlikely alliance to vote it down.

According to proponents' estimates, the plan would have generated 19,000 new construction jobs and funded more than 1,000 free pre-K seats in Clark County. Last September, in anticipation of the bill's revival during a fall special session, a coalition of 20 labor unions launched the Nevada Jobs Now PAC, which directed $1 million toward a campaign touting the tax credits' benefits.

Despite its union support, the bill raised red flags for many lawmakers. Its costs likely would have put the state budget in the red by hundreds of millions of dollars within a few years. 

Following last year's contentious debates over the bill, some opponents later accused its lobbyists of executing a "pressure campaign." 

White has rebutted this characterization. But he told The Indy that the jobs created by the proposal would have been transformative and that its failure warranted immediate political action. His union decided to automatically unendorse candidates who voted against the bill unless they gave a "good enough reason," he said.

"You don't come to my union meetings and tell my members how you're going to support jobs and how you're going to do this for the community," said White. "Then all of a sudden … you totally go against it." 

Saavedra said his group was especially frustrated with lawmakers who changed their vote at the last minute. 

"We had a lot of jobs lost," he said. "It's a major, major issue."

These unions are now endorsing challenger candidates — some in open races, some in races where incumbents are seeking re-election — who support the film tax credits. It's made some incumbent politicians suspicious of the motives behind their primary challengers' campaigns.

In Assembly District 15, Watts is facing a primary challenge from urban planner and union member Miguel Dávila.

"It's obviously interesting that Miguel's early supporters were the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union and the Laborers [Local 872], who were leading backers of the film tax credit proposal, which I was an opponent of," Watts told The Indy. 

Watts cited a conversation between The Indy and Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Henderson) where Stone said the bill's opponents were warned that their "no" votes could result in them facing primary challenges, although he said he never received any direct threats of retaliation.

Of the $15,000 Dávila raised in the first quarter of 2026, more than a quarter was donated by just two unions that were proponents of the film bill. 

Another vulnerable incumbent is Flores, who is being challenged by North Las Vegas City Councilman Isaac Barron. Flores told The Indy he believed some candidates don't consider film tax credits their hill to die on, but are capitalizing on union anger over the bill's outcome to boost their own political ambitions and oust lawmakers they dislike. 

"I think there's folks who just kind of jumped in and have a separate agenda unrelated to film," Flores said, emphasizing that he was always transparent with the unions about his disapproval of the tax credits.

Nevada's unions span a broad political spectrum, and not all unions supported the film bill. Some unions that did support the bill have not necessarily used it to influence their primary endorsements. The Culinary Workers' Union and the Clark County Education Association supported the bill, for example, but have endorsed Flores and Watts, respectively. 

And in another handful of races, progressive activists are challenging incumbents who voted for the film tax bill, saying the lawmakers supported a corporate handout.

"Not big on supporting the party" 

Unions have always been close to Nevada's political establishment, particularly its Democratic one. Labor groups were the biggest source of funding in 2022's legislative races — and 96 percent of the $1.4 million they donated went to Democrats. 

But labor leaders said these days, they're more willing to support insurgent candidates.

The highest-profile recent example of this shift came in 2024, when Culinary revoked  endorsements and ran one of its own members against a lawmaker after the Legislature overturned pandemic-era hotel cleaning requirements. 

The results were mixed. The Culinary member lost to incumbent Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D-Las Vegas) in the Democratic primary, although a Culinary-endorsed Republican candidate successfully ousted Sen. Dallas Harris (D-Las Vegas) in the general election. 

It was a notable political break by a union that has long been harnessed as an organizing machine for Democrats and that was partially credited with causing the election of now-Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) in 2022. 

"The Democratic Party has a lot of competing interests to balance, and sometimes that supports and helps the trade unions, and sometimes it doesn't," said Gelman. "When it doesn't, the trade unions need to sort of express their dissatisfaction in some way."

Local 872, which is more politically moderate than unions such as Culinary, had already used a selective endorsement strategy for years.

In 2018, the construction group's vice president nearly beat then-state Sen. Tick Segerblom (D-Las Vegas) in his bid to join the Clark County Commission. The Laborers had pushed for public financing of a stadium for the Raiders; Segerblom had voted against the bill in 2016. The same candidate, Marco Hernandez, is challenging Segerblom again this year. 

And in the last election cycle, the group tried to unseat Las Vegas City Councilwoman Olivia Diaz after she voted to keep additional requirements on construction projects. 

"We're not big on supporting the party," White said. "We're big on supporting the individual."

Beyond the film tax credits, representatives for trade unions said they also felt Democrats were leaving them behind on issues such as automation, prevailing wage and the use of non-union labor. 

"When we have our meetings internally, it feels like labor has lost its voice in the party," said Saavedra, who chairs the state party's Labor Caucus. "It's not just the Legislature or one particular bill." 

Douglas Candido, a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters running for Jackson's Assembly District 6 seat, told The Indy he believed "newer progressives are very against unions." 

Instead of seeing unions as representing the interests of workers, Candido said he feels today's Democrats tend to view unions as "bought out" or as corporate machines. Public opinion polling shows Democrats report overwhelming support for unions, although some progressive candidates told The Indy in March that they viewed Nevada's unions as beholden to incumbents.

Candido also said he is "a Democrat 100 percent" but holds values more associated with conservative culture, such as living on a ranch or being pro-police. Politicians such as him are needed, he said, so Democrats can reconnect with residents across Nevada. 

Saavedra said he isn't worried if the candidates that unions back eventually lose, and they have to work with an incumbent who they antagonized during election season. 

"Culinary ran a candidate and they didn't get her across the finish line," he said, referencing the 2024 primary outcome. "But Culinary's still strong, they're still powerful.

"When people say that you better not miss when you go after incumbents, I think that's a scare tactic, and a fearmongering way to get labor out," Saavedra continued. "Labor hasn't been around this long because we quit after the first loss. We're here to stay."