In the swing state of Nevada, the Harris campaign needs the Vegas hotel union’s ‘army’ to overcome Donald Trump.
LAS VEGAS – When we met in his office at the sprawling and
somewhat ramshackle Las Vegas headquarters of Culinary Union Local 226 last Monday, a day when the New York Times averages of the polls in the seven swing states had Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in Nevada by less than 1 percent, Ted Pappageorge wasn’t buying it.
“We don’t really believe the polls,” said Pappageorge, who’s the secretary-treasurer of Culinary, as the local
is commonly called. “Trump’s people generally under-poll, and if we had an election today, I think Trump wins.” “But it’s not today,” he continued. “We’ve got three weeks to go and the Culinary army is out there, going to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors and talk to hundreds of thousands of people.”
In the context of actually existing American politics, the designation of his canvassers as an army is not an overstatement. With 60,000 members—the vast majority of them
housekeepers and the wait and kitchen staffers at Las Vegas’s mega-hotel/casinos—Culinary may well be the largest local union of any kind in the United States. For several decades, hundreds of its members have taken an election leave from their jobs to knock on the doors of local registered voters and engage them in discussions of the candidates. It’s a full-time job. For a few, it lasts the better part of an election year; for some, it runs from summer to Election Day; and for the rest of the 400-plus who walk the precincts, it’s a monthlong gig for seven days a week.
Also on the website today: With 15 days to go until the election, Democrats in Wisconsin are feeling the pressure. Emma Janssen has the story.
On the Prospect website
Harris and the Enthusiasm Gap Can she restore anything like the excitement of the campaign’s early days when Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate? Can she win without it?BY ROBERT KUTTNER
In Wisconsin, Democrats Are Feeling the Heat With 15 days to go, Democratic voters in the Badger State feel the pressure of the election and are organizing accordingly.BY EMMA JANSSEN
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