Nevada’s Red Wave Is Coming: The Problem of a Pinching Latino Demographic in a State with an Urban-Rural Divide

LAS VEGAS — Nevada has long been a bellwether in national elections. The reality of a diverse state with growing minority populations and a widening urban-rural divide is not what was portrayed in the caricatures of a casino and slot machine.

In Nevada, Latino’s vote Democratic. Donald Trump won 35% of the Latino vote here in 2020, and lost the state by about 2 points. However, small inroads with this voting bloc by Republicans could swing tight races in their favor. “We believe that we’re going to have a red wave here in Nevada because we are focusing on the issues that concern Latinos,” said Jesus Marquez, a conservative activist in the state who is advising Republican Adam Laxalt’s campaign against incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina to serve in the Senate.

Progressive activist LaLo Montoya estimates he’s knocked on 10,000 doors around Las Vegas in the months leading up to Election Day. “I know that what I’m doing is with the right intentions and with my heart on my sleeve, and I’m hoping to motivate and inspire people when I do this,” he told NPR.

PLAN Action is a state based group that helps low and moderate income families. Like many Democrats in Nevada, he’s on edge. I am nervous about everything, but I think we do our best. but there’s so much misinformation that we’re going up against.”

Republican campaigns are heavily focused on the economy in a state hit hard by inflation. In a state like Florida with high housing costs and second highest gas prices in the country, it’s not hard to see why Democrats such as retiree Mike Sanchez think life is punishing. “It’s high all over. You go anywhere and it’s a problem,” Sanchez said.

“Because Democrats just kind of seem like they’re not helping them out,” she said. They’re not going to demote their pay to make them want to join the police force.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute has a scholar who studies changing demographic and how they can change politics. Democrats face two issues with the Latino community right now: they aren’t meeting their economic needs in real-time, and they feel socially left out of the party’s values. “The Democratic Party has become a much more culturally liberal party, pretty much down the line: race, gender, crime, immigration, what’s taught in the schools, you name it.”

Democrats likewise see Latinos at the heart of their party’s future. Nevada is lobbying the DNC to change the presidential nominating calendar so it can become the first state in the country to vote for a democrat in twenty four years.

The Clark County Sheriff’s Choice During COVID: A Triumph for Nevadans During a Cosmic Microwave Background Shock

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Republican popular with voters, will defeat Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak because he thinks he did not do enough to get the economy moving.

But those two voter blocs were among the hardest-hit by the economic downturn during the pandemic, which sent unemployment in Nevada soaring to 30% in April of 2020 – the highest in the nation and more than twice the US unemployment rate at that time. Inflation and gas prices both went up and hit the workers hard in a state where people have to drive long distances to get to work.

“I know it has been a challenge for many of you and I couldn’t be prouder of how this state has worked to get us to a better day,” Sisolak said. I’m proud that we made some difficult decisions during COVID that saved an estimated 30,000 Nevada lives, even if it had political ramifications.

“It’s a victory for small business owners, for parents, for students, and for law enforcement. It’s a triumph for all Nevadans who believe that our future is bright.

Lombardo was one of the rare GOP candidates backed by both Trump and the Republican establishment. He sought to keep his distance from Trump as he attempted to win over moderate and independent voters in the general election. During a debate, Lombardo said he did not agree with the idea that the presidential election was rigged and did not think that Trump was a great president.

The Campaign of Adam Laxalt Against Fraudulent Abuse and Inflaton Taxes: The Case of the Nevada Attorney General’s Office

She and her allies tried to convince the public that Laxalt would endanger abortion rights even though they are protected by a 1990 voter referendum. Laxalt wrote that abortion access was settled law in the state and that he would not support a federal ban on abortion.

Sisolak did not invite Biden to campaign with him in the final stretch, but he also argued the president was being unfairly blamed for inflation, as well as problems that he inherited from Trump.

Cortez Masto had long been viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents as she fended off a challenge from former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt in a state whose economy had been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation.

Democrats now have 50 Senate seats after CNN projected their victories in Nevada and Arizona. Although it no longer matters for control of the chamber, Georgia’s Senate runoff will determine just how big Democrats’ majority is.

Control of the US House still hangs in the balance and may not be determined for some time with ballots left to be counted in closely contested races in California, as well as other states.

Laxalt was a co-chairman of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign in Nevada and played a leading role in legal efforts to reverse the results in that election, which he said was “rigged.” The attack on the US Capitol was caused by lies and election conspiracy theories embraced by the Trump and Laxalt group, according to a proposal from Cortez Masto.

She also tried to remind voters of Laxalt’s history as one of Trump’s campaign co-chairs, and accused him of pushing an “extreme agenda” and conspiracy theories in the wake of the storming of the US Capitol.

Defying political gravity: The 2016 presidential election of Joe Biden, a Democratic Senator, has won a very strong majority in the Senate

Democrats defy political gravity and deliver a surprisingly strong showing. CNN exit polls showed that 49% of voters who said they somewhat disapprove of Biden voted for Democrats while 45% backed Republicans; of the 38% of voters who said the condition of the economy is “not so good,” 62% voted Democratic compared to 35% for the GOP.

Senate control is a huge boost to President Joe Biden over the next two years of his first term in the White House, with one more Senate race outstanding potentially determining the final balance of power in the chamber, and how much leverage the president’s party will eventually have.

“I think it’s a reflection of the quality of our candidates,” Biden told reporters in Cambodia shortly after CNN and other news outlets projected Democrats would keep their Senate majority. “They’re all running on the same program. Wasn’t anybody who wasn’t running on what we did,” Biden went on.

The Democratic senator and his Republican opponent are facing each other in a debate on December 6.

Biden said he was “looking forward to the next couple of years” with Democrats, and said he was now focused on the Senate runoff in Georgia, acknowledging it would be better to have 51 seats in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Saturday night called the Democrats’ hold on the Senate a ‘vindication’ of the party’s agenda and said it amounted to a rejection of “Anti-Democratic, extremist, Magnolia Republicans”.

Schumer said that they defended a woman’s right to choose after the Supreme Court overturned the case concerning abortion rights.

“Because the American people turned out to elect Democrats in the Senate, there’s now a firewall against a nationwide abortion ban threat that so many Republicans have talked about.”

The Republicans were able to retain seats in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, while the Democrats held on to seats in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.

In Arizona, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will defeat Republican Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who was endorsed by Trump and supported by tech mogul and emerging GOP megadonor Peter Thiel.

Masters shaved his website of the false claim that the election was stolen after winning the Senate primary. In a debate with Kelly, he also conceded that he had not seen evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election. The phone call from Trump to the Republican nominee was captured in a Fox documentary and he seems to have reversed his stance on election denialism.

Aguilar, Trump and the State: How Hillary Clinton Became the First Latina to Govern in Nevada’s Secretary of State

She beat Trump-backed Republican Adam Laxalt by roughly 7,000 votes — a much slimmer margin than in 2016, when she was first elected to the Senate (and notably became the first Latina woman to do so).

NPR has previously reported that a Republican candidate referred to Trump as the current president during a phone call earlier this summer, in opposition to the former president’s claims that the 2020 election was a sham.

That wasn’t the first time Laxalt’s family spoke up about his role in politics. The relatives wrote a letter opposing his run for governor.

“We believe Catherine has a set of qualities that make her stand out, and speak to what we love to call ‘Nevada grit,’ ” the letter said. “No further comments will be made, as we believe this letter speaks for itself.”

Laxalt said he wasn’t surprised that some Democratic members of his family were supporting another Democrat despite living out of state.

According to a race call by The Associated Press, the Democrat has won the secretary of state position in Nevada, a blow to someone who supported Donald Trump.

Aguilar, an attorney who spent a number of years on the state’s Athletic Commission, defeated Republican Jim Marchant, who has long baselessly maintained the 2020 election was stolen.

Aguilar — and election experts nationally — painted the race for Nevada’s top voting official as existential for the future of democracy in the swing state.

“Everything is based on truth and honesty and trust. And it’s my responsibility if I’m elected secretary of state to build that trust from scratch,” Aguilar told NPR on Tuesday, before voting ended. My opponent has built a false foundation of lies and misinformation.

Their closely watched race was considered a toss-up in the battleground state. Nevada voters chose a Democrat as Secretary of State, over a Republican who baselessly claimed the 2020 election was stolen, making Steve Sisolak, the state’s first Democrat in two decades, the governor.

Joe Biden, Joey Aguilar and the Case for Changing the House of Representatives: The Case for President Barack Obama and the Senate Minority

Marchant lost a race for a U.S. House seat in 2020, and he claimed afterward that the election was fraudulent, though he never provided evidence to support that claim. He gained Trump’s endorsement, and the former president rallied with him in October.

Marchant, a radical candidate, was one of the favorites to win the secretary of state position. The coalition he started said eliminating early voting was one of its key goals, and on Tuesday Aguilar told NPR Marchant was “the most dangerous candidate in America.”

Marchant was the reason for the push to have counties hand count ballots instead of using machines in the state, even though research has shown that is less accurate than using machines.

Editor’s Note: David Axelrod, a senior CNN political commentator and host of “The Axe Files,” was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

That politician was Joe Biden, who whispered that salty line (in fuller form) to then-President Barack Obama a dozen years ago at the signing of the Affordable Care Act, only to have it captured on a hot mic.

While Biden is in Cambodia for a summit he could have shouted it again from the rooftops of Phnom Penh, which would have guaranteed Democrats continued control of the US Senate.

It was the most recent turn in an election week of surprises for the Democrats, who overcame history and a raft of downbeat metrics to pick up surprising victories across the country.

On the night that Democrat Cortez Masto won the Senate, nobody would have guessed that the Republicans wouldn’t be able to seize control of the House of Representatives.

If Republicans win the house, the agenda will change because Democrats will control the Senate floor and committees.

By allowing Trump, and not Obama, to fill the Supreme Court vacancy and speeding Barrett through in record time, McConnell and his Senate majority changed history.

Barrett and the two other conservative justices Trump named have profoundly reshaped the high court and opened the door to radical decisions such as the ruling that upended abortion rights, a half-century after the Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed them. A backlash might have had something to do with Democratic wins in Nevada and elsewhere this year.

Every vote counts: What happened after the election of Biden (1945) in New England, and the role of the American presidency in defending reproductive rights

After losing his majority in the 1945 parliamentary elections in Britain, the Prime Minister allegedly received assurances from his wife that it was a blessing in disguise.

Trump’s intervention in primaries across the nation saddled Republicans with a series of losing candidates, chosen for their fealty to him and the election denial canard, rather than a broader appeal. The weakness of John Fetterman’s opponent Mehmet Oz has helped the Republicans hold on to an open seat in Pennsylvania. That was one of many examples.

Usually the incumbent president’s party is punished in midterm elections when the public has a bad view of the economy and his performance. The Democrats lost a lot in past elections.

But this year, the typical referendum on the ruling party and President became equally a judgment of the opposition and its putative leader, Trump. It was a repudiation of election denialism, extremism and coarseness.

That verdict was not lost on some Republican politicians who, out of fear and opportunism, have stuck with Trump despite knowing better. Watching their quick post-primary exodus from his camp, led by Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing media empire, has been something to behold. For them, trespasses against democracy and decency may be tolerated, but losing cannot.

The verdict from Nevada came while Biden was overseas, meeting with his peers from around the world and poised for a sidebar meeting with China’s Xi Jinping.

The President might have been hobbled going into these discussions by a thumping in the midterms. It would have intensified growing doubts among our allies and adversaries about the durability of American democracy and about Biden’s political viability.

The people had their say, thumbed their nose at the purveyors of conventional wisdom and dealt a blow to Trump and extremists and election-denying Republicans.

This election shows that every vote counts, says Cortez Masto, who campaigned on women’s reproductive rights. She recalls her grandmother, the oldest of 13 children, who would walk to her local polling place even when she could no longer drive because she knew how important it was to exercise that right and make her voice heard.

Bringing Broadband to Rural Nevada Families: What I’ve Learned in the Last Two Years of Electing a Democratic Governor

15 of Nevada’s 17 counties are rural and Republicans, so it’s a purple state. People assume it’s blue, because “we’ve done a really good job of electing Democrats here,” she says.

She says that to most Nevadans, this is not about blue or red. “This is about fighting for Nevada families and working families and standing up with them and making sure that not only do you understand them, but you’re willing to take on those challenges that they’re dealing with to make their lives a little easier.”

I was able to accomplish a number of things, including bringing broadband to so many of our unconnected communities in this state, as well as the CHIPS and Science Act. I was able to let people in Nevada know that this was a comprehensive approach to helping families and that the things that we achieved were things that not only did we do, but I was also able to talk to.