Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rally energizes political canvassers deployed by the Culinary Union

Canvassing Rally at Culinary 226

Steve Marcus

Grisela Flores, center, performs a “union clap” during a canvassing rally at the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, headquarters Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020.

Canvassing Rally at Culinary 226

Union member Diana Thomas cheers during a canvassing rally at the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, headquarters Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. Launch slideshow »

Roughly 200 Culinary Workers Union Local 226 members stood from their socially distanced seats outside the organization’s headquarters in central Las Vegas Wednesday morning and raised their hands to clap in concert: “Union! Union! Union!”

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., said later. “Those numbers, 226, strike fear in the eyes of our opponents.”

The rally was to encourage the hundreds of union members who have been knocking on doors and phoning Clark County voters since Aug. 1. The 60,000-member union is a powerhouse in Nevada politics. 

In daily canvasses, the union members, most of whom are furloughed or laid off due to the pandemic, have knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors across Nevada, said union spokeswoman Bethany Khan. They’re paid positions. 

With the election 13 days away and early voting in full swing, Titus and other speakers touched on three themes: “Every day is Election Day,” “this is the most important election in our lifetimes” and the defeat of President Donald Trump. 

The union has endorsed the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the White House and other Democrats, such as Nevada Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, who is running for re-election against Republican April Becker.

Cannizzaro spoke about being born and raised in Las Vegas by union-member parents. She credited those roots for “why I am in this fight.” 

She mentioned winning the District 6 seat she said she wasn’t supposed to win and her work in the Nevada Legislature on health care, education and worker rights. 

“There is a lot of work to do,” she said, “and there’s so much on the line.” 

Khan said that the field team of 350 canvassers was the largest at this point in the campaign, and that more members were expected to join.  

“You are at the doors; you are on the phones; you are in the field,” Titus said. “It’s up to you, you’re our army and I don’t know what we’d do without you, so thank you very much.”

Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Arguello-Kline noted the 50% unemployment rate in the union caused by the pandemic.

“We cannot have four more years of Trump,” said Arguello-Kline, criticizing the White House’s COVID-19 response. “We have a crazy president who put this country in danger.” 

In his stump speech, former U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, compared the November election to the Civil Rights movement, which he said cleared the ground for him, a son of Puerto Rican parents, to be someone. 

Citing last year’s mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart — in which a purported white supremacist killed 23 people after allegedly posting an anti-immigrant screed online — Gutierrez rallied against Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants, noting that “words have consequences.”

Gutierrez said he would also be knocking on doors.

The members, who deploy in teams, target homes of registered Democrats and nonpartisans. They ask them if they’ve voted and if they need any additional voting information. 

“He is terrible,” Titus said of Trump. “He is the worst. He doesn’t care about working families, he doesn’t care if people are sick, he doesn’t care about the economy (unless) he and his rich friends are making money. He has to go.”