Political smarts: Why some candidates love to be seen at Las Vegas schools

By Ian Whitaker

Friday, Feb. 26, 2016 | 2 a.m.

The instructions came directly from the Clinton campaign.

The event at Del Sol High School was going to be low-key and town-hall style, not raucous like political rallies at schools tend to be.

After a security check, the Secret Service chose to carry out the event in the band room, a nondescript but spacious place with a side door exiting to the parking lot. The school replaced marimbas and drums with school desks and chairs and threw together a red “Welcome Hillary” banner to hang on the wall behind Clinton.

Around 4 p.m. on Friday, the day of the event, a number of seniors who'd been told to “dress nicely” by school staff asked Clinton questions rehearsed days before during a student council meeting. By 6 p.m., she was whisked away by handlers to appearances at New York-New York and Planet Hollywood.

Welcome to Las Vegas, where racially diverse public schools are a popular stage in the national political theater that surrounds the state’s caucuses and its role in helping determine presidential elections.

It turns out you can tell a lot about a presidential candidate from the Las Vegas school they choose to visit.

For example, it’s not hard to figure out why Clinton chose Del Sol. With a student body that’s nearly 65 percent Hispanic, it’s prime Dreamer territory as well as a chance to bolster her credentials with young people, who have generally sided with Bernie Sanders.

“It was very intimate with students,” Del Sol assistant principal Nadia Steger said. “That’s the way she wanted it.”

It’s the same reason President Barack Obama chose Del Sol as the place to announce not only his decision to pursue comprehensive immigration reform in 2013, but his formal plan a year later.

It also doesn’t hurt, adds Steger, that Del Sol is the closest high school to McCarran International Airport, making it convenient for visiting politicians to get there.

Occasionally, candidates will venture deeper into the city. A month after announcing her second run for the presidency last April, Clinton flew to Las Vegas for a highly publicized meeting with Dreamers at Rancho High School, where 70 percent of students are Hispanic or Latino.

Hispanic voters are seen as a key group in not only winning the Nevada caucus — particularly on the Democrat side — but the presidency as well. A recent study by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at City University of New York projected that enough Hispanics would register to vote in small swing states like Nevada to tip the balance of the 2016 presidential election.

“It’s a logical choice. If you’re Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders, you have been pushing for immigration reform,” said UNLV associate history professor Michael Green. “It certainly does no harm to the cause to be seen in a sea of diversity.”

Almost half of the students in the Clark County School District are Hispanic, and Obama’s decision to appear at places like Desert Pines High School (80 percent Hispanic) and Canyon Springs High School (60 percent Hispanic, 30 percent black) as a campaigner certainly helped him come Election Day, when his support among the community was a major factor in his victories over John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In fact, of the eight schools Obama visited during campaign seasons, only two have been majority white — Coronado High School and Silverado High School.

On the Republican side, school appearances are relatively rare. An analysis of past news reports showed only five in the last 15 years. All were in majority white schools save two, when Laura Bush visited ATech in 2004 and when Marco Rubio, stumping for Romney in 2012, visited his childhood school C.C. Ronnow Elementary.

“Republican candidates are more likely to range from Rubio talking about immigration reform and then backing away from it, to Donald Trump wanting to build the second Great Wall of China,” Green said. “For Republicans ... the risk [of going to Rancho or Del Sol] is that you are going to confront people who may ask you questions you don’t want to be asked.”

Republican candidates’ hesitation to venture into Hispanic-heavy inner city schools also belies what has been their go-to strategy in Las Vegas: courting older voters and fundraising.

It explains why, after spending part of a Monday reading Dr. Seuss to kindergartners at Henderson’s C.T. Sewell Elementary, where kids complimented her on her jewelry, Ann Romney appeared at a private fundraiser at the home of casino magnate and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Tickets were $1,000 a pop.

After a 2012 rally at the mostly white Palo Verde High School in largely wealthy Summerlin, Paul Ryan went to a private fundraiser at the Venetian, managed by Adelson and his Las Vegas Sands Corp.

That didn’t change much during the caucuses this year. The Sun could find no news reports of a Republican political event at Las Vegas schools, though Trump stopped by Palo Verde on the night of voting while Ben Carson made an appearance at Coronado.

For school staff, hosting political rallies is an honor but one best enjoyed sparingly. Their highly publicized nature often means additional headaches coordinating schedules, accommodating security personnel and dealing with the public. Whenever a candidate appears at a school gym, the facility is unusable for days while stage components and lighting is set up.

“It’s very much a disruption to the educational setting,” said Steger. “But we feel very honored that candidates want to come here and that our kids are able to have that experience.

“A lot of times, many other schools don’t get that."