As if Sunday’s scheduled campaign stop in Las Vegas by Vice President Kamala Harris weren’t a clear enough sign that all roads lead to Nevada in the 2024 presidential campaign, canvassers for both presidential candidates are busy searching to secure votes that just might be the difference-makers in November.
The national press is weighing in on the importance of Nevada in the electoral fight and the efforts of both candidates to pull off an effective ground game. Much of the attention is directed at the efforts of the political behemoth Culinary Workers Union Local 226. And for good reason. Its system of energetic and bilingual neighborhood sweeps is campaign tested.
More recently, the conservative Libre Initiative has also made news. Working in 13 states including Nevada, it is attempting to contact and collect votes from Latinos that Democrats have long counted on for years.
Despite ample news coverage of outreach to new constituencies, and even stories that raise the specter of former President Donald Trump’s campaign foundering in a standard door-to-door canvassing of voters, I don’t think the former president is interested in courting new constituencies much. He’s drilling deeper into the base to hook disaffected voters and attracting those who’ve never cast a ballot.
In Las Vegas, former Trump voters, including some who have mothballed their MAGA hats, are already hearing from canvassers representing Turning Point Action a 501(c)(4) group, the political arm of Turning Point USA and its founder Charlie Kirk. Once known as a wunderkind of the far right devoted to firing up conservatives on high school and college campuses, Kirk continues to expand his political brand with incendiary rhetoric and positions reflective of Project 2025 and Trump’s talking points.
In 2020, Kirk emerged as a prince of misinformation after promoting untethered voter fraud claims on Trump’s behalf. With help from GOP megadonors, Turning Point USA has seen its annual revenues grow to $40 million in recent years with its TPAction.org increasingly relied on to bolster a flat-footed, ineffective ground game.
The challenge in 2024 appears to be how best to, as they put it, “chase the votes.” Not by invoking memories of the fraudulent “Stop the Steal” effort in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. Not by waxing nostalgic about those misunderstood Jan. 6 patriots. Or by acknowledging that, for a self-styled super-Christian Trump sure sounds like a felonious flimflam man who has lost his mojo. Nothing of the sort.
At a recent Turning Point Action training seminar in Arizona, representatives from key battleground states assembled to learn the newspeak and skills believed necessary to persuade disaffected voters to set aside a mountain of contrary evidence and remember the good times during the Trump administration. Attendees received Chase the Vote “Bibles” containing impressive plot maps and instructions with a stated goal of “Mobilizing America’s Freedom Fighters to Chase Every Ballot.” Not to mention “Reclaiming America.”
This time they’re downplaying the wide-eyed outrage and veiled threats to democracy that marked 2020’s efforts.
Part of the voter targeting was pretty basic: Prioritizing underperforming precincts with low-propensity voters, reaching them, and following up during early voting when elections are increasingly won and lost.
“They want us to act middle-of-the-road,” a person who attended the Arizona training tells me. “Avoid the personality stuff. Don’t talk about conspiracies, January 6, or the last election. They tell you to make sure you don’t go down the rabbit hole with these voters.”
In other words, let’s ignore the Project 2025 nightmare scenario for America, shall we? Let’s nod in agreement when it comes to concerns about the loss of women’s reproductive rights, the Affordable Care Act, and efforts to control prescription drug prices.
Just play it cool and get that low-propensity voter off the couch and out to vote early.
That’s another irony of this campaign season. Last election’s bugaboos about the clear-and-present dangers of ballot harvesting and casting mail-in ballots have become an important part of team Trump’s 2024 game plan. In the Arizona session, there was also talk of adding ballot drop-offs at cooperating churches and using other strategies that have been effective for Democrats.
What impressed my attendee was the attention to detail and precision of the canvassing training effort. TPA volunteers and paid staff, who I’m told make as much as $1,500 a week, aren’t just knocking on doors and chatting up anyone who answers, but making specific requests. With so many registered nonpartisans in Nevada, that precision is important.
And one more thing.
“We were told to make sure you only talk to the person you’re looking for,” one attendee says. “And never talk to a Democrat, you might wind up getting them out to vote.”
That’s because the race promises to be close.
About this time four years ago President Joe Biden had a 6.4 percentage point lead over Trump, according to a fivethirtyeight.com poll analysis. Biden beat Trump by fewer than 34,000 votes, or about 2.39 percent.
Setting aside the enthusiasm that has accompanied Harris’ entry into the race, there’s a good reason an ABC News website surmises that “This could be the closest presidential election since 1876.” Entering this weekend, Harris led Trump by just 2.6 points (48.4-45.8 percent), according to the fivethirtyeight.com analysis. That’s not only within anyone’s margin of error, but it makes Biden’s 2020 late-September advantage look like a blowout in a race that finished relatively tight.
In other words, all roads lead to Nevada, but the race here will be won door by door.
If the enthusiastic Democrats plan to spread their own joy on Election Day, they’ll need to chase all their votes, and leave no one on the couch.
John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.
