Nevada
Dueling GOP presidential nominating contests in Nevada raise concerns about voter confusion
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Republicans in Nevada could have two chances next year to decide who they want to be their party’s presidential nominee. The catch: Only one will count.
The Nevada GOP is insisting on holding its own caucus despite a new state law calling for a primary election, a move critics say is designed to benefit former President Donald Trump. The competing contests are likely to confuse some and require GOP campaigns to spend extra time and money educating voters in one of the earliest states to cast ballots for the presidential nomination.
The results in the GOP primary are unlikely to matter because the state Republican Party has said it will use its party-run caucus to determine which candidate will receive the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention. An official caucus date has not yet been set but is expected to be around the same time as the Feb. 6 primary, which falls after the Iowa caucus and primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“I do believe it’s going to create confusion among the voters,” said Tami Rae Spero, the state’s longest-serving county clerk who is based in rural Humboldt County, which leans heavily Republican.
Spero said she already is preparing a voter-education strategy that will include interviews with local news outlets and social media posts, although she’s not quite sure how to explain that the primary results may not matter in nominating a Republican presidential candidate.
It’s not the first time states and political parties have proposed dueling nominating methods. In 2016, Washington state spent $9 million on a meaningless primary after the state Democratic Party held its own caucus to determine a nominee and Trump’s Republican challengers had all dropped out by the time voters were scheduled to cast ballots.
Some state parties have even relied on multiple contests. For years, the “Texas Two-Step” featured both a caucus and presidential primary to divide delegates before it was discontinued before the 2016 election. A similar strategy is likely to play out next year in Michigan, one of several states where the Republican Party is controlled by Trump allies who have altered delegate rules in ways seen as favorable to the former president.
In Nevada, caucuses had been the preferred method until state Democrats pushed through a law in 2021 moving to a primary, a system that tends to get higher rates of voter participation. Primaries allow early voting and mail voting while using polling places that are familiar to voters.
A caucus has traditionally been limited to in-person participation, although parties experimented with alternative voting methods during the COVID-19 pandemic. While primaries are run by local election officials and paid for by the state, political parties are responsible for planning and administering caucuses.
With primaries, campaigns can rely more on TV ads to generate support. For a caucus, campaigns must organize their backers locally — from Las Vegas and Reno to Nevada’s far-flung rural communities.
Nevada Republicans had sought to block the primary, but a state judge last month denied the request. State Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald said the Nevada GOP is considering other options to eliminate the presidential primary, including appealing the case to the Nevada Supreme Court.
McDonald has long been friendly with Trump and was among those who signed certificates falsely stating Trump had won Nevada in 2020. In a recent interview, he criticized Democrats for failing to consider Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s proposal to implement a voter ID requirement and said the party-run caucus was a “more pure process for the electorate to be involved in.”
“They have that opportunity to come and voice their opinions about their candidate, and also to hear about the other candidates,” he said.
Critics from both parties have said caucuses make it harder for many people to vote, particularly those who don’t have the time to spend hours debating their picks, work irregular hours or have limited English skills. Some said the tight-knit settings are ripe environments for groups to exert political pressure or even intimidate their opponents — although McDonald said caucus ballots will be private.
The Nevada attorney general’s office made similar points when arguing on behalf of the state’s top election official to defend the 2021 law in court.
Former Nevada GOP chair Amy Tarkanian, who helped organize the party’s 2012 caucus, cited a number of problems with a caucus system, including voters who are unable to participate or who can’t stay throughout the drawn-out process.
“We left a caucus for a good reason,” she said. “It was confusing.”
A frequent critic of the state party she once ran, she said she was disappointed to see Nevada pushing a nominating process that appears to benefit Trump.
McDonald said he has spoken to Trump’s campaign about the party’s effort to stop the primary, but said the team did not express a preference for one over the other. Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Zachary Moyle, a GOP strategist who was the state party’s executive director from 2006 to 2009, said a primary system is better organized. He said caucuses can be confusing for voters, especially those who are not as active, and have less stringent rules against electioneering.
While running then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign in Nevada, Moyle said GOP voters told him that many of those who were working the caucuses had hats, buttons and shirts supporting Trump. He called that an example of “indirect voter intimidation” that is a byproduct of a state party rather than election officials running the nominating process.
Still, Moyle cautioned against blaming the party for intentionally tailoring the election process to favor Trump.
While caucuses may have lower turnout and benefit the former president because of his campaign’s experience in 2016, he said the state party may have other interests in mind. The party runs the caucus, puts on its own events and decides how much each candidate must pay to be on the ballot.
“It’s the ability to be able to control the process, but it’s also a money process,” he said.
As the Nevada GOP considers its next steps to block the state-run primary, McDonald has helped lead an effort to educate conservative voters about the caucus, including media appearances, text notifications and community outreach.
Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert in the presidential nominating system, said a caucus ultimately boils down to the candidates themselves and how well they are able to organize and turn out supporters.
“It sounds like it would be massively confusing to the voters, but in practice it isn’t,” she said. “It’s in the interest of every single candidate to make sure voters know how to participate.”
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Cassidy reported from Atlanta.
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Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326.
The semi-celebrities and quacks (not that they’re mutually exclusive) get a lot of attention, but one recent appointment announced by Donald Trump is cause for even more concern, and especially for historically anti-government states like Nevada.
Trump on Friday named Russ Vought his director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Of all the Project 2025 authors, none is more eager to create chaos within and dismantle much of the federal bureaucracy than Vought
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought has declared. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
Minimizing the the federal workforce and traumatizing what’s left of it is Vought’s raison d’etre.
That might sound all “ooh, cool, that’ll teach ’em” — until the federal government can’t competently distribute grandma’s monthly Social Security benefit or process your federal income tax refund.
In Nevada, there are many dedicated state and local government employees who work hard to deliver a vast array of programs and services – from nutrition programs for low-income families to processing tax abatements for multi-billion-dollar corporations.
As in every state, those myriad programs and services and initiatives are contingent on federal money, or federal cooperation, or clarity and timeliness of federal rules and regulations.
And while there are many dedicated Nevadans working to provide and/or administer government programs and services the best they can, there are very rarely enough of them. Nevada can be very generous to big business. But when it comes to financing government, Nevada has always been a notoriously cheap state – bottom of the good lists, top of the bad lists, etc.
Vought’s – and Trump’s – crusade against federal civil servants promises to wreak havoc on the delivery of programs and services in every state, red and blue alike.
All states will struggle to compensate for the carnage Vought vows to inflict on the United States civil service.
The states that will have the best fighting chance of safeguarding continued and competent delivery of vital services will be those with something approaching adequately funded and staffed state and local government. Nevada has never been one of those.
***
A pleasant (if short-lived) surprise. But back to the aforementioned quacks and semi-celebrities… it’s as if Trump has been deliberately debasing his own supporters, nominating obviously outlandish and offensive people to jobs they have no business being anywhere near, for the depraved satisfaction of watching his followers – both those who are elected and those within the electorate – obsequiously go along with whatever he says or does.
Initially it looked as if Republican senators were prepared to surrender unconditionally, and grovel in submission while Trump insults their intelligence and rubs their noses in it.
So their willingness to tell Trump to shove his nomination of Matt Gaetz you know where, is a fine thing.
So that’s on the bright side.
On the not so bright side… Yes, though it’s a low bar – subterranean, even – Pam Bondi, the person Trump has named to be AG instead of Gaetz, is far more competent than Gaetz. But she’s also no less loyal to Dear Leader, meaning she could be even worse for the nation and the rule of law than Gaetz. And not surprisingly – her being an extreme Trump loyalist and all – she has documented dalliances with corruption (shielding the Trump University grift) and rejecting reality (election denier).
Stay strong, Republican senators,
Portions of this column were originally published in recent editions of the Daily Current newsletter, which is free and which you can subscribe to here.
A majority of Nevada voters rejected Question 3 on the Nov. 5 ballot. This complex amendment would have eliminated party primaries, advanced five candidates to general elections and introduced a new voting method in general elections
I moved to Nevada in 2021 to care for my aging mother. Before that time, I lived in Maine, where I led efforts that opened Maine’s primaries to all voters and protected the nation’s first statewide ranked-choice voting law.
My values and experience inform me that initiatives to change how we elect our leaders should make their way to voters as the result of home-grown and grassroots movements that are thoughtful, collaborative, strategic and patient.
I am dumbfounded that out-of-state donors and advocates would come into Nevada, steamroll stakeholders and potential allies, rush a constitutional amendment to ballot and spend millions to score a quick win for their preferred policy prescription to our political ills.
As a recent Review-Journal editorial noted, the national coalition behind Question 3 pushed similar initiatives in other states in 2024. Voters rejected each of these proposals.
Here are a few of my takeaways from these failed efforts:
■ Mission and strategy must align. Election reform is inherently hopeful and optimistic. Ramming through policy changes and seeking to buy elections are anti-democratic and deeply cynical approaches to politics. Coalitions with antithetical missions and strategies will almost always fail to achieve the real and lasting change that they seek.
■ Patience is practical. Process matters. How change is made can be as important as what change is made, especially when it comes to process reforms. Elections and voting reform initiatives must be organized by local leaders who will build coalitions and recruit volunteers to secure majority support for their cause, one voter and one conversation at a time. The proper role of national groups is not to lead or dictate, but to support.
■ There is no single solution to fix our broken politics. There are 50 states and more than 50 ways of conducting elections and voting in the United States. While policymakers and advocates should learn from one another, we should be skeptical of anyone or any group that promises a silver bullet or pushes a one-size-fits-all solution.
Voters aren’t stupid. We have a sense when politicians and special interests are trying to put one over on us. Question 3 didn’t pass the straight-face test.
That’s too bad because my experience with ranked-choice voting in Maine has taught me that it works to eliminate vote-splitting and ensure majority winners. You have the freedom to vote for the candidate you like best without worrying that your vote will be “wasted” or that you will help to elect the candidate you like least. In both Maine and Alaska, ranked-choice voting has stopped extreme candidates from winning congressional races.
Ranked-choice voting also increases voter turnout, reduces negative campaigning and encourages more women and minorities to run for office.
Surveys from the states and cities in which millions of Americans rank their vote indicate that voters find it to be simple and easy to use and preferable.
One of the most disappointing false attacks on ranked-choice voting is that communities of color might find it difficult to rank candidates. To suggest that white voters are intellectually superior to voters of color is a racist argument.
Nevadans are frustrated with politics as usual. We know that our system isn’t working like it should. We know that billionaires and corporations have too much power and influence over decisions that affect us all. We want to strengthen our democracy for future generations.
Had the national advocates behind Question 3 approached this effort differently, I believe that there might have been a different outcome.
Kyle Bailey moved to Nevada in 2021 and previously served in the Maine House of Representatives.
The Nevada state high school football championships are here. Here’s how you can watch any of the championship games online on NFHS network.
Watch: Nevada High School football championships
The NIAA state football championships will air from Nov. 23 to Nov. 26 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
How can I watch Nevada high school football? Fans can subscribe to NFHS Sports Network, a nationwide streaming platform for more than 9,000 high school sports. You can find the list of available schools here.
How much does an NFHS subscription cost? Is there a free trial to NFHS Network? An annual subscription costs $79.99, or you can pay monthly for $11.99 per month.
Can you watch NFHS on your phone or TV? NFHS Network is available on smart TVs like Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire and Google Chromecast, as well as on iOS and Android smartphones.
Nov. 23:
10 a.m. PT: 2024 NIAA 2A Football Championship Incline Vs. Pershing County
1:30 p.m. PT: 2024 NIAA 5A Div. II Football Championship Faith Lutheran Vs. Bishop Manogue
Nov. 25:
Noon PT: 2024 NIAA 5A Div. III Football Championship Galena Vs. Centennial
Nov. 26:
9 a.m. PT: 2024 NIAA 1A Football Championship Pahranagat Valley Vs. Tonopah
12:20 p.m. PT: 2024 NIAA 3A Football Championship Truckee Vs. SLAM Nevada
3:40 p.m. PT: 2024 NIAA 4A Football Championship Canyon Springs Vs. Mojave
7 p.m. PT: 2024 NIAA 5A Div. I Football Championship Arbor View Vs. Bishop Gorman
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust.
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