Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

How the Harry Reid-Culinary Union machine could shape Nevada’s general election

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Steve Marcus

Members of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, celebrate early returns showing Democratic Congressional candidate Ruben Kihuen with a strong lead during a primary election watch party at union headquarters Tuesday, June 14, 2016. Union rep Diana Thomas is at bottom right.

If the caucuses and primary were dress rehearsals, Nevada Democrats are starting to feel well-positioned for Nov. 8.

Those were main events in their own right, deciding who would carry the party’s banner in the general election. But they also enabled Democratic forces to flex their political muscle.

Two years ago, the state’s Democratic machine faltered: Republicans swept offices statewide, took control of both houses of the Legislature and, in a shocking blow, spirited away Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford’s Congressional seat.

No one expected poor turnout by Democrats, or the last-minute wave of support for then-Assemblyman Cresent Hardy.

The pain was perhaps most acute for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who mentored Horsford, and for Nevada’s most powerful union, the Culinary Union, which campaigned hard for Horsford when it became clear his seat was in jeopardy.

In 2010, though, the union helped Reid win what seemed an impossible battle for re-election. And their collective force is keenly focused on 2016, committed to righting the Democratic ship blown off course in 2014.

•••

First came the caucuses: Reid and the union were both officially neutral on the presidential candidates but together used their political capital to make sure hotel workers represented by the union showed up to caucus.

For Culinary, it wasn’t about supporting a candidate, anyway; it was mobilizing members and showing labor’s strong presence in Nevada — which was important to Reid, too. But he also thought encouraging Culinary workers to caucus would give Hillary Clinton a needed boost, though he wasn’t sure, according to a source close to Reid.

Clinton’s Nevada firewall had begun crumbling after a close race in Iowa and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ landslide win in New Hampshire. The week before the caucuses, Reid called D. Taylor, head of Culinary’s parent union, to make sure members (generally thought to be pro-Clinton) would be encouraged to turn out. Reid also spoke with the heads of several Strip resorts to push for workers to be allowed time off to caucus.

The Culinary Union had planned to message its workers about the caucuses, but Reid’s call to Taylor served as a “reconfirmation,” said Yvanna Cancela, the union’s political director.

Asked about Culinary members favoring Clinton, Cancela said Clinton had better name recognition than Sanders at that point. “It wasn’t a question of who the union supported or didn’t support,” Cancela said. “It was folks making a decision based on a history of interaction with Clinton as a candidate.”

Clinton won all six Strip precincts, 88 delegates to Sanders’ 52. She also won Nevada overall by about 6 points, a much better margin than in Iowa.

•••

Battle No. 2 for the Reid-Culinary machine was securing the Democratic nomination for state Sen. Ruben Kihuen in a very competitive primary in Horsford’s old district, which covers North Las Vegas and several rural counties.

Just days after Horsford announced he wouldn’t fight Hardy for re-election to the seat, Kihuen stepped up. Over the next few months three other major contenders did, too: former Assemblywoman Lucy Flores in April, philanthropist Susie Lee in May, and former Assembly Speaker John Oceguera in July.

Kihuen faced a significant problem early on: The voters in the 4th District didn’t know him, despite the decade he’d spent in the Legislature and serving in Senate Democratic leadership.

Flores didn’t have that problem. A poll last June showed she had 76 percent name recognition over Kihuen’s 11 percent and Lee’s 9 percent. She wasn’t just a known quantity to those she’d represented through the Assembly; she was known statewide, owing to her 2014 run for lieutenant governor.

By fall, the campaigns had begun to ramp up, and Reid’s endorsement in September was seen as a massive early boost for Kihuen. The Culinary Union followed suit, endorsing him in early February.

Other major union endorsements, including from the state AFL-CIO, poured in for Kihuen, while Flores secured endorsements from progressive organizations like NARAL and Planned Parenthood and Lee captured the support of pro-choice advocate EMILY’s List. (Oceguera dropped out in mid-March.)

Members of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, celebrate early returns showing Democratic Congressional candidate Ruben Kihuen with a strong lead during a primary election watch party at union headquarters Tuesday, June 14, 2016.

Members of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, celebrate early returns showing Democratic Congressional candidate Ruben Kihuen with a strong lead during a primary election watch party at union headquarters Tuesday, June 14, 2016.

But Flores held her lead: A February poll showed her 20 points ahead. When that gap began to narrow, it wasn’t Kihuen who was gaining; it was Lee. So how did Kihuen turn it around to win the primary more than 14 points ahead of Flores?

Reid and Culinary. Though they had endorsed months earlier, their support didn’t really start bearing full fruit until the weeks just before the primary.

For instance, when Kihuen appeared in TV spots in mid-May, Reid was the dominant feature. Reid also asked former President Bill Clinton to endorse Kihuen, though that wouldn’t have happened had Kihuen not put himself on the line by backing Hillary Clinton in 2008, says the source close to Reid.

The day after the Culinary Union endorsed Barack Obama, Kihuen took Clinton on a tour of a Hispanic neighborhood in the Assembly district he represented at the time. His endorsement caused considerable friction between him and the union, a rift Culinary says has since healed through Kihuen’s commitment to their members.

In interviews at polling sites across the valley, at least a dozen voters mentioned Reid’s endorsement as the primary reason they were supporting Kihuen. And the Culinary factor mattered. The union went all out for Kihuen in what Cancela said was its largest primary battle in recent memory.

To wit, in the month before the primary, union members knocked on 52,974 doors and made 37,619 phone calls in support of Kihuen over 11,457 hours of volunteering. And union organizers were in the field for his campaign as early as March. The endorsements by Reid and Bill Clinton were powerful motivation for members to turn out.

“It wasn’t about Reid alone or the Culinary alone or Bill Clinton alone,” Cancela said. “It was really about all of these validators agreeing that Ruben would be an excellent leader for the district.”

Other unions mobilized for Kihuen, but not on the same scale. The AFL-CIO, for instance, had about 40 of its members do two labor walks leading up to the primary.

Asked whether Kihuen would’ve won without Reid’s and Culinary’s support, his campaign manager, Dave Chase, said he didn’t think so. “I don’t think there’s any question when you get Team Reid and Culinary together, it’s a powerful combination,” Chase said. “Certainly, it’s the dominant reason we won this primary.”

•••

Looking to November, Culinary is focused on voter registration, communicating with its members and recruiting them to take leaves of absence to work on the fall campaign.

Reid, meanwhile, is doing everything in his power to ensure that voters elect Kihuen and two other Democrats he backed, Congressional candidate Jacky Rosen and U.S. Senate candidate Catherine Cortez Masto, as well as Democratic contenders down ballot.

“Senator Reid and the Culinary Union have a long partnership of fighting for economic and social fairness,” said Reid spokeswoman Kristen Orthman. “Fairness in local, state and federal government can only be achieved by electing public officials who share this commitment.”

They face competition from the Republican Party, which seeks to emulate Obama’s approach in 2008 and 2012 by focusing on its door-knocking strategy. The national party has about 40 paid staffers in the state and 193 core volunteers and has knocked on 40,000 doors so far.

“Face-to-face voter contact is a lot more valuable than phone calls,” party spokeswoman Sara Sendek said.

But it won’t be easy for the Republican Party to match the Culinary Union’s turnout operation coupled with Reid’s resources, said UNLV professor David Damore.

Democrats are “not going to beat them on the airwaves; they’re going to beat them at the door,” Damore said. “They’re not going to be able to go dollar for dollar against the Koch brothers, but Culinary is the best ‘get out the vote’ in town.”

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