Op-Ed: How Republicans are tossing Democratic ballots in Nevada
The Nevada Senate race may get all the attention over the presidential election, but the Nevada GOP primary may well be the most important one of all. With their new majority in the Nevada Legislature, Republicans in the state Senate have shown that they are willing to engage in the petty and divisive politics that Democrats always complain about in Nevada.
That is why every one of the candidates for the state Senate, not a single one of whom is a Democrat, is a Republican. They all seem to hold similar ideas about running the state, and they all want to win on November 6th. The Senate race is thus a proxy for who the Democrats are willing to endorse. The only question now is, who will ultimately get the endorsement of the Democrats, to form the next Nevada Senate majority.
The candidates all have good ideas, and seem to have similar plans to restore dignity and make government work for the people of Nevada once again. This is how a democracy works, after all. But none of the candidates come at the issues from the right angle. Let’s take a look at some of the issues that have divided Nevada Republicans before.
Immigration and the Latino vote
The majority of Nevada voters are Latino, but Republicans seem to have a problem with getting enough of them to the polls. In the last Senate race, for example, about 20,000 Latinos voted in 2012 in a state where the Hispanic population was only 12%. When the GOP ran that race, they got 13,000 votes in 2012. Their problems with Latino voters have only grown with the new GOP majority in the Nevada Legislature.
Immigration and the Latino vote
In Nevada, everyone is concerned about the Hispanic vote. This is not new to the GOP. In recent decades, Republicans have used immigration to win elections, and to maintain majority control over a state. Their success was built on the back of immigrant voters who worked and paid taxes.
The Republican candidates in the Senate primary all seem to think the only way to get Latinos to the polls is to make the immigrant community look bad. So they have all run against immigration reform. They all seem to believe that immigration reform is a bad thing. The state GOP has been in power in Nevada for a decade, and they have already lost elections because of the Latino vote. So they need to continue this negative campaign to try and win this election
