Las Vegas union prepares to take on Trump again

LAS VEGAS—It is the Democrats’ not-so-secret weapon in Nevada: a vast army of maids, cooks and bartenders that helped deliver this razor-tight swing state for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in 2016 and 2020.

Now ahead of November’s election, the Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 mainly Las Vegas-based hotel and casino workers, is preparing to mobilize its formidable network against Donald Trump for a third time.

“By election day, we’ll have 500 union members—men and women that are normally cleaning rooms in hotels, or cooking food, or serving drinks—out full-time, knocking on doors, registering folks to vote, taking folks to the polls,” said the union’s secretary-treasurer, Ted Pappageorge.

Nevada has become a key battleground in presidential elections—in particular Las Vegas, home to three-quarters of the desert state’s population.

Clinton courted hotel workers and other union members in casino back rooms and cafeterias. It was one of the few swing states she won.

Author Steven Greenhouse calls them a “political juggernaut that has gone far in turning Nevada from red to blue.”

This year, the union will raise funds to pay hundreds of canvassers to take leave from their jobs and pound the streets again, said Pappageorge.

“They walk the neighborhoods every day, 10 hours a day, in 110 degrees, getting chased by dogs and all sorts of other things,” he said.

“Workers talking to workers. That’s how we move the working class vote in Nevada.”

The Culinary Union has tripled in size since the late 1980s. Guild-negotiated wage rises have afforded Nevada hospitality workers middle-class lifestyles not seen in much of the United States.

In November the union struck deals with casino giants MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts, taking average wages from $26 to $35 an hour.

Recently Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made time to march on picket lines and celebrate hard-fought new contracts with union members.

While it has backed Republicans in some past races, the union is squarely behind Biden, who Pappageorge calls “the best president for working class people and families and unions in my lifetime.”

The mobilization focuses on cities like Las Vegas and Reno, blue union-dominated bastions in a state containing vast, conservative, rural counties.

But Trump is narrowly leading most Nevada polls, while independents outnumber Democrats in the state for the first time.

And Latino and Black voters—who overwhelmingly backed Biden in 2020—are less reliably anti-Trump. Urban voters are younger and ethnically diverse—demographics less likely to vote.

With all these factors combined, “it’s going to be even closer” than previous elections, Pappageorge said.

“There’s a lot at stake,” he said. “Nevada matters.”