Ahead of debates, Sanders builds political operation in Nevada

By Kyle Roerink

Monday, Oct. 12, 2015 | 9:38 a.m.

Speaking to 150 of Bernie Sanders’ diehard supporters on Saturday at a rally, Electra Skrzydlewski made it official.

“This is the first day we say ‘we’re here.’ We need you. We’re here because of you.”

Sanders, a Vermont senator running challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, has been drawing crowds, raising money — $26 million in the last quarter — and holding a lead in the polls over Clinton in early-voting Vermont.

But until this week, the candidate did not have paid political staffers working in Nevada, host to the Democratic party’s first presidential debate on Tuesday and the nation’s third nominating contest.

Since Sanders announced his presidential bid, a patchwork group of Nevadans had volunteered to knock on doors and organize voters. But Saturday marked the dawn of a new strategy.This month the Sanders campaign hired a state director, Jim Farrell, a veteran campaign strategist who has worked for former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. It also secured Skrzydlewski, a local community organizer, as a field director and signed up as campaign chairman state Sen. Tick Segerblom.

The campaign hopes the organization will find a route to beat Clinton in the Nevada caucus, said Segerblom, a long-time Sanders friend.

“We basically need 50,000 people to show up for two hours on the third Saturday in February and vote Bernie,” Segerblom said to the supporters who filled the auditorium at the College of Southern Nevada. “It shouldn’t be that hard to do.”

To accomplish that, Sanders’ Nevada campaign will have to play a ground game with door knocks, phone calls, rallies, registration drives and fundraising to out compete Clinton, who has maintained ties to Nevada since narrowly losing to Barack Obama in 2008.

The organizational push showed Sanders may have legs, said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada Reno. “It shows that (he) is to be acknowledged,” Herzik said. “But the first to ripen is the first to rotten. He could easily fade as more people begin to pay attention.”

Sanders supporters are wasting no time. The campaign will host a rally at Stripburger across from the debate’s location, the Wynn, on Tuesday. Volunteers will host watch parties. Every weekend volunteers are asked to do a campaign event as part of “Revolution Saturday.” All can find training on the campaign’s online toolkit, which briefly crashed because so many people were accessing it.

At the event, Lisa Sumiyoshi, a 54-year-old small business owner, stood with a crutch under her right arm while rehabbing a fractured knee.

She vows to rally outside the debate in a wheelchair at Stripburger on Tuesday. “I go to physical therapy next week. Then I will campaign like a roadrunner,” she said.