Silver Lining State: How Nevada Shows The Way Forward For Labor and Democrats
It is indisputable that on almost every level, the 2016 elections were a catastrophe for the Democratic Party. Not only did Hillary Clinton suffer a stunning defeat to Donald Trump, but the Democrats were left in the worst shape they had been as a party since 1928. They had lost control of the White House, both houses of Congress, and only controlled state governments (meaning holding both the governorship and the state legislature) in six states. Signs of hope for the party were rare indeed. And yet one unlikely place seemed to defy this trend- the deserts of Nevada. Not only did Hillary Clinton prevail in the Presidential election, but Democrats enjoyed success across the board. Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto won the open U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first Latina to serve in the upper chamber. Democrats captured two House districts that had been previously held by Republicans, giving them control of three out of the state’s four House seats, as well as both houses of the state legislature. This has enabled Democrats to push forward historically progressive measures during the state legislative session this year, most notably a historic Medicaid expansion. Furthermore, progressive ballot measures expanding background checks for firearms and legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana both passed.
How were the Democrats able to pull off this success in the Silver State? Some might point to the state’s demographics, particularly its increasing Hispanic population. However, this argument had been offered as a reason for why Democrats would capture a number of other critical swing states where they fell short in 2016, most notably Florida and North Carolina. Furthermore, other demographic factors in Nevada would seem to have favored the Republicans, at least on paper. While it does have a large and growing Hispanic population, Nevada also has one of the largest populations of whites without college degrees per capita of any state. These “working class whites” were said to be the backbone of Donald Trump and the GOP’s winning 2016 coalition. The answer lies in having an incredibly strong organization on the ground, with organized labor at its core. Nevada is the flip side to the Rust Belt, where one of the key factors in Democratic defeats there in recent years has been the gutting of the labor movement.
On the face of things, Nevada was not an ideal test case for the revitalization of organized labor. The structural barriers labor faced in that state are deep and far-reaching; in 1951, Nevada became one of the first states to adopt what became known as “right to work” laws, anti-union legislation pushed by conservatives at the state level in order to counter the rise of the American union movement in the early 20th century. At the Presidential level, the resulting change in Nevada’s electoral orientation between the parties is stark. Between 1900 and 1948, Republicans only received over 50 percent of Nevada’s electoral votes in 1904, 1920 and 1928 (in 1924 Calvin Coolidge won the state with 41% of the popular vote, as the Progressive candidate Bob LaFollette split the anti-GOP vote with Democrat John Davis). After the passage of Nevada’s right to work law in 52, the reversal is stark; Between 1951 and 2004, Democrats only won over 50 percent of the vote in Nevada at the Presidential level in 1960 and 1964 (Bill Clinton won the state with 37 percent of the vote in 1992 and 43 percent in 1996).
It is quite the historical irony that the seeds for Nevada’s organized labor revival were being sown in the 1970s, as the national labor movement’s power receded, thanks in part to the efforts of U.S. Senator from Nevada Paul Laxalt, a close ally of Ronald Reagan who pushed right-to-work laws on the national level. Beginning in the 1970s, Nevada was ground zero for testing new strategies for organizing labor that would prove fruitful even as traditional labor unions struggled. Unions such as the SEIU and UNITE HERE focused on organizing service sector workers rather than miners or factory workers, and had several crucial differences from more traditional unions in their organizing strategies. As opposed to traditionally insular and hierarchical organizing practices of other unions, these “cast their net wider… welcomed energetic refugees from other unions, promising student activists, environmentalists, Democratic Party campaign operatives and exiles from abroad.”[1] The Nevada culinary workers’ union (a local falls under the UNITE HERE umbrella) has consistently been one of the few private sector based unions to grow its membership even as private-sector union membership at the national level has continued to recede. It has also emphasized organizing across racial lines,
The payoff to this organizing strategy would not immediately become apparent. As I have outlined above, Republicans maintained a grip on Nevada’s electoral votes at the Presidential level into the 21st century. The state has had Republican governors since the late 1990s. And yet recent years have finally seen the labor-backed Democratic coalition in Nevada start to yield real progressive gains.
In 2008 the state followed the national trend and swung sharply to the Democrats’ favor; it has voted Democratic on the presidential level in all three elections since then. In 2016 it seemed as though the trend might well reverse- the Christian Science Monitor listed Nevada together with Florida and Ohio (states that had also voted Democratic in 2008 and 2012) as places where “there are enough missing white working class voters to tip these battlegrounds to Trump.”[2] While this prediction would prove true in Florida and Ohio, in Nevada it was not the case in Nevada. The culinary union proved a crucial factor, knocking on over 130,000 doors in the closing weeks of the campaign.[3] As I outlined in my introduction, the results across the board were a resounding victory for Nevada progressives.
It is easy for Democrats and progressives across the country to despair at 2017’s state of affairs; Trump in the White House, Paul Ryan running Congress, and Neil Gorsuch newly confirmed to the Supreme Court. But at the level of states like Nevada we can see the blueprint for rebuilding a progressive majority. Organized labor in the US has had a long history of challenges and problems- it has been at turns corrupt, insular, and shortsighted. But it also provided the backbone of the coalition that delivered some of our most essential social benefits and progressive reforms, from Social Security to the weekend itself. In the face of massive structural challenges, an open, forward-thinking labor movement helped the Democratic Party turn Nevada into a bulwark against the right wing in 2016, and that can provide a road map for labor and the Democratic Party to do so together in 2017, 2018 and beyond.
[1] Steve Early, “Bidding Adieu to SEIU: Lessons For Young Labor Organizers,” Huffington Post, December 7, 2012
[2] Peter Grieg “Can white working class voters carry Donald Trump to White House?” Christian Science Monitor, June 7, 2016
[3] “Culinary Union Members Will Vote With Their Feet And Ballots In Presidential Election.”
