Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Tug-of-war among progressives and moderates continues with Nevada Democratic Party leadership on the line

Democratic

Isaac Brekken / The New York Times

Preparations take place for a Nevada Democratic Party election night party in 2018 at Caesars Palace. Saturday, March 4, 2023, members of the Nevada Democratic Party’s Central Committee will participate in hotly contested leadership elections that will decide who leads the organization into a pivotal 2024 election cycle.

Updated Friday, March 3, 2023 | 10:08 a.m.

CARSON CITY — Infighting between the moderate and progressive factions of the Nevada State Democratic Party may come to a head Saturday after weeks of public squabbling in the run up to leadership elections that will decide who leads the organization into a pivotal 2024 election cycle.

Chairwoman Judith Whitmer, a surprising winner two years ago leading a progressive slate of Bernie Sanders supporters, appears to have an uphill battle for reelection after a virtually all of the state’s top Democratic elected officials endorsed her challenger, North Las Vegas Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno, who is also Speaker Pro Tem and chair of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Whitmer led the state party through a successful 2022 election, where U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto clinched a second term and the party picked up a supermajority in the Nevada Assembly and a 13-9 edge in the state Senate. But incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his bid for reelection to Republican Joe Lombardo, the former Clark County sheriff.

Whoever wins the chair will be tasked with coalescing a splintered group while simultaneously fending off what will surely be an ultracompetitive election season, said David Damore, chair of the UNLV department of political science.That includes the 2024 presidential race and, in Nevada, another U.S. Senate election. Political analysts have pinned freshman Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen among the most vulnerable senators up for reelection, which will present its own unique challenges, Damore said.

“That’s going to be the challenge moving forward,” Damore said. “If the establishment does reassert themselves, they need that passion of the people who are willing to go knock on doors and do sort of the grunt work and the unglamorous part of the party building. Or we could also see a rerun of 2022, but to a bigger scale because it’s a presidential year.”

Whitmer, who rose to power as a vocal supporter of the Las Vegas chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, last month faced calls to resign after more than 230 members of the Nevada State Democratic Central Committee were removed from the membership roster, about 40% of the total membership. Whitmer said the membership roll was purged in accordance with the group’s bylaws, which require anyone who misses two consecutive meetings without advance notice or a proxy to attend in their place to be removed.

Among those who first called for Whitmer’s resignation were Nevada Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, both of whom were removed from the committee. Though several members were later restored after a discrepancy was discovered with the party’s online attendance system — including Yeager and Cannizzaro — about 40 people of the 230 removed filed an appeal for being improperly purged, Whitmer told the Sun on Wednesday.

“As the state party chair, I don’t keep or maintain the attendance records,” Whitmer said. “The first thing I did was take action to implement an appeals process, and that’s never been done before. I also took action to publish the attendance records so people could clearly see which meetings they missed, so that they could submit their appeal.”

Coupled with the attendance fiasco, more than 40 members of the State Central Committee have signed on to at least two letters to Whitmer and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) since January alleging misuse of party resources to promote Whitmer’s reelection and fears the party has yet to remedy past issues with electronic voting devices.

In an email sent to state central committee members this week, party officials said top DNC staff would be attending Saturday’s election in Carson City to monitor results and help administer the election. Though members who sent the letter to Whitmer called for the DNC to provide oversight, Whitmer, a DNC member, said party officials had already committed to attending even before the attendance issue.

While having DNC staff monitor a state committee’s election, Nevada is also the second state to hold its presidential primary, and DNC officials may want to monitor how the election is conducted compared to other states, Damore said.

“At the end of the day, the resources go to the swing states,” Damore said. “And the fact we’re in a swing state makes this more interesting. When this happens in California, no one cares, right?”

It also underscores the disarray that emerged in the absence of the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the former U.S. Senate majority Leader and longtime political stalwart who was the face of the Nevada Democrats for decades. Damore said Reid was largely able to coalesce the party with ease, which minimized infighting and allowed the party to focus solely on fundraising and outreach initiatives.

“What I think is so jarring for people who follow politics in Nevada, is you had this very smooth “Reid machine” and avoided primaries and avoided all the drama and just concentrated on voter registration and getting money to the candidates,” Damore said. “And that swung Nevada from leaning red to leaning blue. And now, that’s no longer here.”

‘Unity’ vs. ‘Victory’

Among the biggest differences between Whitmer’s proposed slate of executive board candidates and Monroe-Moreno’s is the philosophy of how to engage with voters and candidates.

Whitmer’s “Democratic Victory Slate” includes Cedric Williams, a family services specialist for the Nevada Division of Welfare and Support Services from Carson City, for vice chair, educator and former U.S. House challenger Mercedes Krause as second vice chair, former Lt. Gov. candidate Kimi Cole as secretary and current treasurer Mary Sanada. Whitmer has endorsed a “bottom-up” approach she said empowered candidates at all levels of governance, while putting an increased emphasis on local down-ballot races.

“We found that by supporting local candidates in these down-ballot races, we were able to increase voter turnout,” Whitmer said. “Washoe and Clark have the top of the ticket covered, so a lot of times they become disengaged. So this was a way to reengage voters, get them excited and drive votes up the ballot. And that work was tremendously successful.”

Joining Monroe-Moreno’s “Democratic Unity Slate” is former West Wendover Mayor Daniel Corona for first vice chair, Francisco Morales — a political adviser and former staffer for Sisolak and U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (both of whom are endorsing Monroe-Moreno) — for second vice chair, Leilani Hinyard, chairwoman of the North Las Vegas Democratic Club for treasurer, and former Nevada State Democratic Party executive director Travis Brock, who helped Reid’s 2010 reelection bid, for secretary.

Monroe-Moreno told the Sun this week she’s running to restore cohesiveness, after many Democratic elected officials voiced frustration over access to the party’s voter access network, a database of constituent information that she said was a vital lifeline candidates depended on for outreach efforts. She experienced that firsthand during her own reelection bid last year, she said.

Monroe-Moreno said she and other Democrats wanted Whitmer to succeed when she won the chairmanship. “You want them to be successful because if they’re not successful then we’re not successful,” said Monroe-Moreno. “And there were a lot of things that happened early in her tenure as chair that were counterproductive for me as an elected leader in the state.”

That, Monroe-Moreno contends, includes a lack of backing from the state party that had always been there previously. In a statement this week, Sisolak blamed Whitmer for not sharing voter data, which drained his campaign’s resources trying to rebuild on their own.

“We didn’t have the information we would have normally had for any other election cycle,” Monroe-Moreno said. “So, we started that election cycle in a handicap position, trying to rebuild that information while still trying to win the next election.”

Whitmer claims under her leadership voter engagement in Nevada’s rural areas helped lead to “major increases” in support for Democratic candidates compared to the last midterms, with an average increase of more than 36%, she told state central committee members in a recent newsletter.

That galvanization, Whitmer said, was critical to delivering a second term to Cortez Masto, who beat Republican Senate challenger Adam Laxalt by less than 1%. But some members of the state central committee told the Sun they feel Whitmer has turned her back on certain areas within the state.

Nnedi Stephens, second vice president for the Young Democrats of Nevada who is based in Washoe County and unsuccessfully ran for a state Senate seat, slammed Whitmer over her lack of outreach to young people as well as candidates in her part of the state.

“With this latest administration, there are just fewer opportunities for young people to truly get involved and get engaged,” said Stephens, who also was an executive board member of the state party. “There has been less of a focus of strengthening the party and more focus on this weird cult of personality that Judith had cultivated.”

That sentiment was shared by Chris Miller, former chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, and also a staunch ally of Monroe-Moreno. Miller said he had been volunteering for her campaigns since about 2015, and she served as second vice chair when he was at the helm of the county party.

Miller admits his assessment is biased, but as a former party leader himself, he asserted Whitmer has simply engaged in several missteps that warrants new leadership.

“I also look at this from the perspective of having done this for six years at the county level,” said Miller, who was one of the 40 SCC members who signed onto the letter asking for DNC oversight for Saturday’s election.

Miller continued: “One of the things I used to talk about when I was chair of the party was that I have my own personal beliefs … but when you’re chair of the party, those views take a backseat to representing the entire spectrum of the Democratic party. Where I fall in that range from the middle or to the far left of the political spectrum is irrelevant to the fact, I have to represent the middle of the political map to the far left. And that’s no easy task.”

Regardless of who wins, Whitmer said the party was in a good spot and hoped that whatever the leadership election outcome is, her colleagues can put their differences aside to focus on the 2024 races. Even if she loses, Whitmer said she would commit to supporting Monroe-Moreno.

“We’re ready to do the work because the state has permanent, year-round infrastructure,” Whitmer said. “I’m confident in our abilities going into 2024 and absolutely confident we’re ready to take the spotlight and we’re ready to be successful in our primary and we’re ready to elect the next president.”

Monroe-Moreno agrees that the infighting is counterproductive to the party’s ultimate goals.

“The infighting doesn’t benefit anyone,” she said. “I know we’re not going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya on Day One, but I think having the slate that we have, the people who are committed to rebuilding those relationships.

“There is an appetite. People are yearning for us to come back together to be that Democratic family. It’s there, it just needs the right leader to lead it.”

‘Lingering reverberations’

Whitmer’s tenure as the party’s chair started on bad terms, she said, because some in the party rejected her leadership before taking office. In March 2021, Whitmer topped Democratic Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom for the chair seat, and even before assuming the position, former leaders of the state party drained its coffers and transferred the money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Whitmer’s slate, which was backed by the Las Vegas Democratic Socialists, swept all five-leadership positions, prompting nearly every employee with the party to resign, she said. Those who quit started a new group, Nevada Democratic Victory, which emphasized top-of-the-ticket races like Sisolak’s and Cortez Masto’s. Whitmer says those who left instead coordinated with the Washoe County Democratic Party.

“From the very beginning, there was an effort to set us up to fail by emptying the treasury, by making arrangements with Washoe County in advance to secretly house the coordinated campaign under Washoe County,” Whitmer said. “All that was done because their polling or the information was telling them there was a good chance I was going to win. And that was put into place even before I won the office, so they never had any intention of working with us.”This fight marks the latest chapter in what’s been a yearslong tug-of-war between progressives and moderates in the state Democratic Party, Damore said. That can be attributed to grassroots activists joining the party ahead of the 2016 Nevada Democratic presidential caucuses, where presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton barely eked out a win over Vermont U.S. Sen. Sanders.

Sanders was viewed as a far-left candidate, but after nearly winning Nevada, it springboarded him to national prominence, coalescing activists and energizing voters who had otherwise been turned off by establishment Democratic messaging, Damore said.

“This is sort of lingering reverberations of the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders caucus from way back in 2016,” Damore said. “That’s when all these sorts of progressives started getting engaged in the state party. That continued through 2020 and when they kicked out the establishment folks in 2021.”

It was Reid who ultimately convinced caucus participants to favor Clinton, who of course became the 2016 nominee and lost to Donald Trump in the general election. But the two sides of the Democratic party have been at odds ever since, Damore said.

Coupled with the recent identity struggles Damore said the Nevada Republican Party has seen since the emergence of the Tea Party movement and later Trump, it appears both entities are reckoning with their identities, while projecting outward dysfunction in the process. That extends to the national organizations, too, he said.

“Now we have two dysfunctional state parties,” Damore said. “The Democrats are doing essentially what the Republicans have been doing since at least 2012. And that is just to create a whole separate campaign organization and ensure that no funds go to that formal party organization. It creates all kinds of issues with cohesion and collaboration, but that’s been the work-around here.” Since 2016, progressives have become an ever-growing stronghold of the Democratic Party.

In addition to the emergence of Sanders nationally, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts all stunned Democratic incumbents and gave rise to a new era of progressivism for the party. Damore says it’s only grown since then.

As a Black woman, a former police officer and union representative, Monroe-Moreno says all of these confounding factors make her uniquely suited to lead the party into 2024. A moderate, sure, but she said she was neither of the ilk of conventional “establishment” politicians.

“I’m just a Democrat,” Monroe-Moreno said. “I’m a lot of things, I don’t think I’m establishment. I’m a Black woman in America, and I’m far from being what the establishment would be.”

Labels aside, the party finds itself at a crossroads. And Saturday’s vote might very well be a determining factor in who will hold office in Washington — and across Nevada — for the years to come.

“This sort of progressive challenging the establishment lives on,” Damore said. “It’s just sort of the shift from the pros who want to win campaigns versus the amateurs, for lack of a better word, who are much more interested in ideological purity.”

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correctly identify Cedric Williams. | (March 3, 2023)