At the door of his residence, in the wealthy district of Summerlin, in Las Vegas, Danime Pritchard showed this week a smile and optimism as the mid-term electoral ballot which currently animates the United States approaches.
“They can’t win. They’re not going to win. Because their leader is going to jail for everything he’s done, she blurted out. We must do everything so that this man can never represent us again. »
They ? The Republicans. Their boss ? Donald Trump, hounded by justice as much for tax cases in New York as for having deliberately sent a horde of insurgents on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but whose influence, despite everything, has not yet diminished in the within his party. And this lasting influence could well, on November 8, come to disturb the future prospects of the young African-American.
Three weeks before the election, Nevada is indeed holding its breath, now faced with the uncertainty of keeping in office the Democrats who represent this desert state in Washington: Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and three representatives, out of four, in the House of representatives. The seat of the current governor, Steve Sisolak, is also threatened by the rise of a Republican wind blowing over Nevada, a place which has not, however, since 2004, supported any candidate from this increasingly sinking conservative party. more towards authoritarianism during the presidential elections.
A purple state
“It’s a tougher ballot this year than in the past,” admits Rocio Leonardo, housekeeper at the Aria hotel-casino, located on the famous Sin City Strip, and a Democratic activist within the powerful Culinary Workers Union, the union of workers in kitchens, bars and hotels in Las Vegas, which since last August has been active on the ground, knocking door to door, to “get out” the Democratic vote. “In the last two years, people have lost their jobs, they have fallen ill, they have to live with inflation… But we have to redouble our efforts. Every vote counts, and we’ll get there one vote at a time. »
“The big problem for Nevada Democrats is that they end up in a state”purple” [violet, alliant les couleurs rouge des républicains et bleue des démocrates] that Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, explains political scientist Dan Lee of the University of Nevada in an interview. The three members of the House of Representatives are also in districts that lean only slightly towards the Democratic Party. And in an election year like this, which favors the party that isn’t in power, it takes very little to tip the scales in favor of the Republicans in these races. »
Donald Trump’s training has understood this well: it is betting big on Nevada to regain a majority within the legislative apparatus in Washington, with great blows of television advertisements denigrating the spending made by the State’s Democrats for supporting social programs or associating them with the price spikes of the last few months, for which Joe Biden, according to the party, must be held entirely responsible.
Radicalism in the running
Part of the Republicans’ hope rests with Adam Laxalt, a little guy from Reno, the capital, ex-state attorney general who chaired Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and participated in the attempt to overturn the result of the vote that made Joe Biden win, in the wake of the defeat of the populist. He dreams of the seat of Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Hispanic woman to enter the upper house of Congress, in 2017.
Facing Governor Sisolak, the party presented itself as a candidate in the primaries Joe Lombardo, sheriff of Clark County – which includes the greater Las Vegas area – who publicly questioned the result of the 2020 presidential election. He also called a “fraud-prone environment” the state’s recent adoption of the universal mail-in ballot that is routinely sent to every voter. Statistically, however, an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud during a postal vote.
Thursday, in the north of the city, a trio made up of two women and a man in his thirties went from door to door to hang cards extolling the virtues of these candidates. They also politely refused to comment on the current campaign, following the principle of a discreet and localized campaign that Adam Laxalt seems to share. This far-right candidate prefers rallies in previously conquered land, such as Minden, in rural Nevada, where Donald Trump came to support his campaign earlier this month. He also refused to debate with his opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto, during a televised meeting scheduled for this week and planned since last August.
On the paper hanging on the doors, Adam Laxalt is presented as the guarantor of policies aimed at reducing taxes, banning sanctuary cities for immigrants, cutting resources for family planning programs or even reducing access to “the ‘abortion on demand’, a risky topic in a country where more than half of the population say they are in favor of increased respect for women’s right to voluntary termination of pregnancy.
This is what the Democrats are exploiting, who several weeks ago decided to make the issue of abortion one of the engines of their campaign.
“When democracies crumble, women’s rights are always the first to fall,” declared Democratic Representative Susie Lee this week, threatened in her district south of Las Vegas, during a round table on access to abortion.
When democracies crumble, women’s rights are always the first to fall
A mobilized resistance
“A few months ago, I would never have thought that abortion would become a source of motivation to go to the polls in Nevada,” said Rebecca Gill, director of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, in an interview. An amendment to our state constitution protects access to these services. What has changed is the 15-week abortion ban proposed by Senate Republican Lindsey Graham, which would replace our constitutional provision. The limit is 24 weeks currently in Nevada. “It means losing access to abortion here if Republicans return to power. »
“This is a fight for history, for democracy, against the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, and against the extremist candidates of Trump’s Make America Great Again who threaten freedoms and the electoral process in the country” , drops Culinary Workers Union General Secretary Ted Pappageorge from his office. The union is part of what is known here as the “Reid Machine”, named after Democratic Senator Harry Reid, who died last year after representing Nevada in Washington from 1987 to 2017, a formidable weapon for mobilizing the Democratic vote.
“Without us, the Republicans would win,” he continues. We launched the biggest door-to-door campaign of our existence this year. By the time of the election, we’ll have knocked on more than a million doors, and spoken to half of our state’s Latino and African-American voters to educate them about the importance of voting. »
The union says it can bring 100,000 votes and possibly even more to Democrats in the state that Joe Biden won by just 33,000 ballots in 2020.
“The Democrats supported us during the pandemic, and we are going to need them again,” said Jean-Marc Polleveys, chef for 10 years at the Cosmopolitan, who took four months off to take part in this campaign.
A letter that speaks for itself
The 63-year-old says he met a woman on the verge of tears this week while knocking on a door in an apartment building in a working-class part of town. “She had just had her rent increased by $600 without notice. This is the world Republicans want us to live in. But there is nothing normal in a country like ours to have to work two jobs to barely be able to afford a roof. I told her she had to fight for her rights. »
And he adds: “I have good hope that we will win these elections. When I come back from a door-to-door evening, I feel even more inspired than the day before. I feel like people understand the critical importance of voting this year. »
Among them also appear to be the 14 family members of Republican candidate Adam Laxalt who, in a three-page letter obtained by The Nevada Independent, called on people last week to vote for their opponent, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, highlighting her commitment to protecting women’s rights, imposing a federal tax on mining companies and protecting the country’s public lands. “We believe that Catherine possesses a set of qualities that clearly show what we like to call ‘Nevada courage’,” the missive reads, adding that “no further comment will be made, as we believe this letter is about herself “.
It remains to be seen now if she will also speak to the people of Nevada.