Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton
When the Democratic candidates for president take the stage for their first debate this week in Nevada, they’ll do so in a state that serves as a reminder of why Hillary Rodham Clinton is the front-runner for the nomination.
For all the excitement generated to date by Clinton’s main challenger, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and for all the anticipation about whether Vice President Joe Biden will decide to make a late entry into the race, it is the former first lady and her campaign that are set up to win Nevada, one of the first four states to cast ballots in the primary contest.
The southwestern state is home to large communities of immigrants — many who have only recently arrived in the U.S. When combined with Nevada’s baroque caucus system, which is so complex that the rules surrounding it run 51 pages, that means winning the state requires a higher degree of organization and effort to get-out-the-vote than in most others.
The Democrats gather in Las Vegas on Tuesday for their first presidential debate, with several months to go before the primary contests begin. On the Republican side, a crowded field of candidates has already held two debates, with seasoned politicians unexpectedly struggling to emerge from the shadow of billionaire Donald Trump and other insurgent contenders.
Clinton installed staff on the ground in Nevada six months ago, and she now has 22 paid operatives in the state. They have recruited more than 3,000 volunteers, who have already held events in remote desert towns as well as the state’s urban centers. Clinton herself has made wooing immigrants a keystone of her campaign; she announced her immigration policy approach at a Las Vegas high school this spring.
“That’s a lot of shoe leather, and they’ve been on the ground for 5-6 months,” Billy Vassiliadis, a veteran Democratic strategist in Nevada who isn’t involved in the current race, said of the Clinton campaign’s efforts. “That’s going to be a challenge that I don’t think a Sanders can overcome, that — God bless his heart — I don’t think Joe can overcome.”
Meanwhile, Sanders’ effort in the state has just one paid staffer, who arrived less than two weeks ago. Biden has yet to decide whether to run and does not have any formal campaign operation.
None of the other candidates Clinton will debate tomorrow (Macau time)— former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb — have a campaign organization that can match Clinton’s. All are largely afterthoughts in early preference polls.
The differences in the structural strength of the campaigns were evident this past weekend. While Sanders’ single Nevada staffer had his first meeting with hundreds of Sanders volunteers at a community college on Saturday, Clinton’s campaign flew in Democratic rising star Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas in Las Vegas and former NBA player Jason Collins in Reno to cheer on volunteers and staffers who had been knocking on doors and making calls for months.
Sanders supporters argue they can catch up. “There is a movement here, even in Nevada, for Bernie Sanders,” said Jim Farrell, Sanders’ Nevada state director. “This is not a normal election cycle.”
Clinton won the Nevada caucus in 2008 before ultimately losing the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. Yet because of the Nevada’s complex rules, she left the state with one fewer delegate than did Obama.
In U.S. presidential primaries, candidates compete in each state for the support of party delegates, who choose the nominee at a national convention. Most states have a winner-take-all system that allocates all of its delegates to the candidate who wins its primary election. But Nevada holds caucuses rather than elections, and has intricate rules that can generously apportion delegates to runners-up.
That’s something noted by some Sanders backers as they tout the potential for the enthusiasm for his campaign to ultimately trump Clinton’s structural edge.
Clinton’s team is targeting the state’s diverse electorate, hosting Filipino-style potluck dinners and courting black pastors as well as Nevada’s influential corps of immigrant-rights activists. And what the campaign does in Nevada will pay off across the country, said Marlon Marshall, the Clinton campaign’s director of public engagement. “The diversity of Nevada and the outreach programs you use there can help us reach out to those communities in other states,” he said. AP
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