LAS VEGAS — Nevada, whose flag proclaims it “Battle Born,” galloped like Paul Revere into statehood eight days before the 1864 presidential election, its constitution having been sped to Congress by what was then history’s most costly telegraph transmission. This was done to provide President Abraham Lincoln with three electoral votes he might need: On Aug. 23, he had written a two-sentence letter saying “it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected.” Eleven days later, Gen. William T. Sherman telegraphed, “Atlanta is ours.” Lincoln, and the Union, would prevail.
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Trump vs. Harris aside, enigmatic Nevada may be the key to the Senate
Forty presidential elections later, Nevada might matter less for its six electoral votes, which Donald Trump has narrowly lost twice, than for its Senate choice, which could decide control of that chamber. It is one of five swing states (including Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania) with more-or-less competitive Senate contests. The incumbent, Democrat Jacky Rosen, 67, is seeking a second term. Her Republican opponent is Sam Brown, 40, a retired Army captain severely scarred by third-degree burns over a third of his body, including his face, from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. Their race epitomizes the uncertainties created by Joe Biden’s withdrawal, and the difficulty of taking Nevada’s political temperature.
The pandemic pancaked this state, which depends on people flying in to congregate in casinos and entertainment venues. This is a strange state, and not just because its biggest industry is what locals call “gaming,” and what, until relatively recently, most Americans considered sinful. Las Vegas’s Clark County contains 70 percent of Nevadans. More than 80 percent of the state’s land is owned by the federal government.
Las Vegas is a 24-hour town, and voters can be difficult for public opinion pollsters to reach by phone. This is a booming city of transients, with many people moving in and a substantial number moving on. The muscular Culinary Workers Union provides cohesion for 60,000 members and their families. In 2022, half of Nevada voters had registered since 2016; newcomers do not know Rosen well. The Democrats’ registration advantage was 6 points in 2016, 4.8 points in 2020 and 1.5 points this summer.
Nevada’s other U.S. senator, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, won reelection in the closest race of the 2022 cycle by 0.77 points. Rosen, energetic and talented at retail politics, was leading Brown by more than the margin of polling error — at least 4 points — before the Biden albatross was removed. Barack Obama carried Nevada by 12.5 points in 2008, but just 6.7 points in 2012. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won here with just 47.9 percent; in 2020, Biden won with just over 50 percent. As a voter-turnout measure, there is a ballot initiative to give state constitution protection to abortion rights, up to 24 weeks, which state law already protects.
Trump’s consistent leads in Nevada polls this year suggested that Nevada might be the only state he lost twice that he might win. This, however, was before Kamala Harris energized young and minority Nevadans.
Dan McLaughlin, a National Review Institute fellow, notes that in the last two presidential cycles (2016, 2020), 68 of 69 Senate elections were won by the candidates whose party carried the state’s electoral votes. And that Senate races tend “to shift after mid September in the direction of the national trend,” although presidential coattails are inconstant: Since World War II, beginning in 1948, the party winning the presidency has gained Senate seats 10 times, lost them six times and three times played to a draw. But as tribalism has increased, ticket-splitting has declined: In the most recent five cycles (2004-2020), the party winning the presidential popular vote has gained seats.
If Rosen were still running with Biden on the ballot, she would have had to count on ticket-splitting. The Democratic Party ruthlessly terminated Biden’s candidacy because the party feared down-ballot carnage. If in November Trump loses to Harris, the seeds of his swoon were sown in Milwaukee. His convention speech reprised his act that has grown stale to all but his most besotted supporters. They are the political equivalents of Deadheads who travel hither and yon to hear the Grateful Dead. (Recently in North Carolina, the Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim encountered a fellow attending his 85th Trump rally.) Trump’s logorrhea is now making Harris seem comparatively presidential.
But, then, after more than 50,000 shows and counting, Wayne Newton, 82, is still touring, and when he is not he is singing “Danke Schoen” to delighted Vegas visitors. America’s entertainment culture, which includes presidential politics, is inscrutable.