LAS VEGAS — Rep. Susie Lee was breaking down a potential Donald Trump win in Nevada to specific blocks and individual houses.
“I mean, he comes down to 10 votes a precinct, right?” she said in the Teamsters Local 14 union hall in Las Vegas. “Like I said, this will be a turnout election.”
The ground game is where Nevada Democrats make their mark. It’s a place where field is not a theory, it’s a kind of political religion — one established by the late Harry Reid. A spokesperson for the powerful Culinary Union local said in 2022, the field operation knocked on “more than half” of the Black and Latino doors and “more than a third” of AAPI doors in the entire state. These are the voters Harris will need to turn out big if she wants to win this state. The machine helped make Nevada the only swing state Hillary Clinton won in 2016. It helped hand the state to Joe Biden in 2020.
Kamala Harris has “been able to make this race winnable,” Ted Pappageorge, president of the Culinary Workers local, whose GOTV operation is in full swing. His members are taking monthslong leaves of absence from their jobs in Nevada’s tourism industry to work the doors instead.
The Senate race is looking in Democrats’ favor; Sen. Jacky Rosen appears to be running ahead of Republican Sam Brown. Polls show the presidential race in Nevada is essentially a coin flip, and operatives said that feels right to them.
“If the election was held right now, Trump would win,” Pappageorge said of Nevada. “The difference is that we’re gearing up.”
The Reid machine is rumbling to life.
But it’s taken a confusing shape at times. Teamster’s national union didn’t endorse this cycle. Instead, the locals are. The massive Joint Councils of Teamsters 7 and 42, representing locals in Southern California and Nevada, among other places, endorsed Harris. Locals in Vegas don’t list that endorsement on their website. But, the Local 14 hall was used for an organizing event that included other unions who have endorsed and were hitting the doors for the VP. Is this labor chaos a challenge for the Reid machine, which was built on unifying the various Democratic allied groups into a single force?
Susie Martinez, secretary treasurer of the state AFL-CIO, said the national Teamsters non-endorsement still frustrates.
“Honestly, I’m not sure what to say,” Martinez, a veteran of labor politics whose first run for state legislature came while she was working the front desk at a hotel on the Strip. “Just keep in mind the Teamsters in Nevada have endorsed her.”
Machine principles are at work, but the years have frayed some of the tight connections between groups that make the Reid machine work.
Prominent progressive organizer Laura Martin’s group, PLAN Action, which is focused on low-propensity voters, is already hitting some doors the fourth time, in a coordinated plan with other progressive groups. Though in her own work, Martin often asks, “How do we recreate that leadership pipeline?”
Reid called her himself in 2009 to support his tough reelection bid, and Reid’s campaign would check in regularly to get her rowing in the same direction as every other Dem ally, large and small. That kind of constant communication — “that’s gone,” she said.
On Sunday, Harris spoke in downtown Las Vegas to a packed, diverse crowd of thousands. Her rallying cry: It’s going to be tight in Nevada.
“Let’s level set,” the vice president said onstage. “We are the underdog … and we have some hard work ahead.”
Throughout the crowd, people were dressed in the telltale T-shirts of the Culinary Union’s local heather gray with their motto: It’s up to us.
Those charged with running the turnout machine were dreading it before Harris came on the scene. Martinez recalled the world as it existed on the day of the first presidential debate, when Biden squared off against Trump.
“We were going to have a debate watch party. And I was in St. Paul at the time on a training, so I’m calling my staff, and I’m like, ‘Hey guys, how many people do you have?’ And they’re like, ‘I think we have eight people coming,’” she said. She worked her own phone magic and got the number to “about 15,” six of them her own staff.
“Then it was a disaster. Well, it was just horrible, right?” she said. “And then we had the watch party for Vice President Harris, and it was standing room only. I always take pride in having enough food, and we ran out of food. And I was so embarrassed.”
It’s a boost in energy that the Reid machine requires to run. Martin says her voter program would be in trouble if Biden was at the top of the ticket. Now, she says she’s seeing engagement over issues like Harris’ proposals for renters and her family’s immigrant background.
“I don’t hear any more chatter about people being old,” she said.
Not every organized worker in Las Vegas feels that same energy. James Halsey is a longtime organizer with the IBEW, part of this city’s large number of union members from the building trades. Massive projects, such as The Sphere and the new Fontainebleau hotel and casino, don’t just mean changes to the skyline, they mean thousands of jobs for people who build things. When the projects end, those people are laid off. Harris is making her case in a fallow period.
“The local economy” is the biggest persuasion block for some of these people, Halsey said. Though the Vegas economy is pretty good, a laid-off worker is not going to be feeling great about the state of things. That can make Trump attractive.
“Our biggest challenge here with our members is letting them know that the economy comes and goes, but you know, good labor law is only created by a Democratic president,” he said.
Several hours before Harris spoke in Las Vegas, Reyez Delgado and Morlaina Bruce were out in 100-plus degree heat, walking the gem-named streets of a Vegas neighborhood. Both have day jobs making Circus Circus run for hotel guests. But through November, they’re full-time canvassers, part of teams hitting doors six days a week. This walk was to deliver literature intended to persuade voters and talk up Harris.
The pair was working on a list made of Culinary members, labor households and Democratic base voters who don’t regularly come out to the polls.
They walked up to a house where the garage door was open. The woman they wanted to speak to was not available at the moment, her husband told them as he pulled stuff out of his trunk, but what was this about?
“Voting for who?” he said. “Oh, no, no, no. We’re Trump people in this house.”
There was a pause as everyone looked at each other.
“Just kidding,” he said, bursting into laughter. “We’re Harris people, of course.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS.