LAS VEGAS (AP) — The state Democratic Party in Nevada has for years been among the strongest in country, buttressed by the state’s powerful former senator, Harry Reid, and credited with helping Democrats chalk up wins in the swing state since 2016.
But that reputation took a hit this week after a slate of Sen. Bernie Sanders-aligned progressives backed by a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America won the party’s top leadership posts. The results prompted resignations of the party’s staff and consultants.
Nevada political operatives say the progressive takeover could diminish the power of the state party and jeopardize a push to make the state the first presidential nominating contest in 2024, ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire.
The new state party chair, Judith Whitmer, said she was surprised by the resignations and denied allegations that she had first threatened to fire staff or had suggested that Democratic elected officials should face primary challenges from the left.
“The goal obviously is still to elect Democrats, that will always be our goal, but it’s also our goal to bring more progressives into the fold and bring those progressive voices into the party,” Whitmer told The Associated Press.
It’s unlikely that Whitmer’s leadership will weaken the broader, vaunted political “Reid Machine” or the 2022 reelection prospects of Nevada’s U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, three Democrats in the U.S. House and the state’s Democratic governor. It seems likely Reid and other establishment politicians may move to work outside
the party structure to raise money, recruit candidates and run voter outreach.
The fissure, some Nevada Democrats say, dates back to the contentious 2016 presidential nominating contest between Hillary Clinton and Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist and independent, which touched off a larger ideological divide in the party between moderates and progressives.
In Nevada, Sanders lost the state’s third-in-line presidential caucuses in 2016, leaving some of his supporters frustrated by the party’s rules and leading to shouting at the state party’s convention and death threats to the party chair at the time.
While the state party and national Democratic Party have been working to smooth the ideological split since then, progressives have been organizing, winning key state party positions and pulling off Sanders’ 2020 win in Nevada’s presidential caucuses.
The outcome of Saturday’s party officer elections was not a surprise, Democrats said, because the progressives had worked to win spots on the party’s governing central committee that votes on party leaders. In apparent anticipation of the wins, the state Democratic Party transferred $450,000 from the state party’s campaign accounts to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee