Trump bids for Nevada
LAS VEGAS, Oct 18, (AP): Democrats have kept Nevada in their column in every presidential election since 2004. In the 2018 midterm election, Democrats delivered a “blue wave,” flipping a US Senate seat and bolstering their dominance of the congressional delegation and Legislature.
But this year, political strategists and organizers warn Nevada is still a swing state. And it could swing.
“I don’t know where this state goes,” said Annette Magnus-Marquart, executive director of the Nevada progressive group Battle Born Progress. “Nevada is still a purple state. Nevada is still a battleground. No matter what your party is, you have to fight when you’re running in this state.”
President Donald Trump, who narrowly lost here in 2016, scheduled a campaign rally Sunday night in Carson City, his second in the state in as many months as the first big wave of voting kicks off.
Nevada’s Democrat-controlled state government is automatically mailing ballots to all active registered voters because of the coronavirus pandemic, but in-person voting that started Saturday is typically when most people vote. It’s expected to remain a popular choice this year, with long lines forming at several sites Saturday.
Democrat Leigh Natale, a 65-year-old retired paralegal, waited outside a polling place tent set up in a parking lot south of the Las Vegas Strip, She called Trump “a crazy man” and said his handling of the pandemic “just exacerbated what was already a really horrible administration.” A Joe Biden supporter, Natale said, ”It’s time we had some forwardlooking policies and got back on track in this country.”
Toward the back of the line, 55-year-old Tom Johnson, a corporate trainer who says he is an unaffiliated voter, was going to vote for the president. “He’s doing better than anybody else could” in fighting the virus, Johnson said.
The pandemic has pummeled the tourism-dependent economy. The unemployment rate is the highest in the nation.
For the vaunted Democratic political machine, it’s shifted inperson campaigning and knocking of voters’ doors to a virtual effort for much of this year.