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“It doesn’t work when our members knock on doors and start talking about the candidates,” says Gwen Mills, the secretary-treasurer of UNITE HERE, the union of hotel employees.

This isn’t that hard to understand. The people who answer those doors—particularly in Las Vegas, which has seen more television and social media political advertising this year than perhaps any other city—have had it with the relentless, inescapable talk about the candidates. If precinct walkers introduce themselves by saying they’ve come to talk about some estimable office seeker, they’re all but certain to be greeted by a look of horror and a closing, if not slammed, door.

UNITE HERE members get this; they’ve walked the walk. In 2020, when COVID compelled most campaigns to forgo canvassing and rely on the phones for voter outreach, UNITE HERE already had special protective gear and protocols devised for its members who’d had to keep working in hotels. Donning that gear and observing those protocols, they proceeded to walk more precincts than any other organization on the Democratic side of the ledger that year. Talking to well over a million voters in Vegas, Reno, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, they played a key role in Joe Biden’s victory and in the Democrats winning control of the Senate.

This year, they have even more members knocking on doors than they did two years ago. And by listening to people on their doorsteps, they concluded well before most Democratic campaigns that they had to talk about people’s primary concern: the soaring cost of living.