(Elisa Slider) Nevada is absolutely in play this election season — President Trump wouldn’t have spent an entire weekend holding rallies here if he didn’t expect his message to resonate with Silver State voters.
The last time Nevada gave its electoral votes to the Republican presidential candidate was in 2004. But there have only been three elections since then, and the Democrat margin of victory has gotten smaller each time. For all the fuss the media make about Donald Trump’s “razor thin” margins of victory in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, few people seem to remember that Hillary Clinton only eked out a win in Nevada by fewer than 30,000 votes in 2016.
Now, as we approach the end of President Trump’s first term, there are some very good reasons to believe that voters will put this state back in the GOP column on November 3. The economic boom we experienced prior to the start of the coronavirus proved the effectiveness of the America First agenda, the ongoing “V-shaped” post-pandemic recovery puts momentum on the President’s side, and the Republicans are significantly more motivated than their Democratic Party rivals to do the hard work it takes to win.
As President Trump reminded Americans on Sunday night, “Nevada was founded by pioneers, and prospectors, and miners, cowboys, innovators and trailblazers who tamed the frontier, raised up the mighty Hoover Dam, transformed a sprawling desert into a shining oasis, and inspired the world with the bright lights of the Vegas strip. Our American ancestors made this into the greatest nation ever to exist on the face of the earth, and we are going to make it greater than ever before.”
At the beginning of this year, the statewide unemployment rate was at 3.6 percent, its lowest level since record-keeping began in 1976. Wages were rising steadily, working families were enjoying hefty tax reductions, and broad-based prosperity everywhere else in the country was ensuring a steady stream of customers for our many tourism-based industries.
When the novel coronavirus made it here from China, the ensuing lockdowns hit Nevada’s economy right where it hurts. Restaurants, theaters, and casinos were forced to close — not that they would have had many customers anyway, since air travel came close to a complete stop — providing an eerie reminder of how heavily cities like Reno and Las Vegas depend on in-person entertainment for their economic survival. During the darkest days of the crisis, Nevada’s unemployment rate briefly eclipsed 30 percent.
Fortunately, the much-anticipated “V-shaped” recovery quickly took hold, and in just three months we’ve regained more than a quarter-million jobs, reducing the unemployment rate to less than half its pandemic-era peak.
We can expect the recovery to continue at a rapid pace for the foreseeable future. Just as the important role of tourism in Nevada’s economy made us particularly susceptible to the artificial downturn caused by state and local lockdown orders, the same factor puts us in an excellent position to take advantage of the rest of the country’s recovery. In fact, we could easily see an unprecedented boost as a result of pent-up demand from Americans desperate to take vacations and blow off some steam after spending months cooped up in their homes.
“Under my leadership, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world. And now we’re doing it again,” Trump told the audience in Minden, Nevada on Saturday night.
The President has the right message, and the well-oiled GOP ground game has what it takes to help him deliver that message to voters in every corner of the state. While the Democrats have been avoiding in-person campaigning like the plague and neglecting their get-out-the-vote operations, Republicans have been recruiting an army of enthusiastic volunteers to spread the America First message of safety, prosperity, and patriotism.
It’s no wonder the Democrat-controlled state legislature passed last-minute changes to the voting process designed to boost their odds in November, forcing the Trump Campaign to file a lawsuit to preserve the integrity of this election.
Anyone who considers Nevada a “blue state” in 2020 obviously learned nothing from the collapse of the so-called “Blue Wall” in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016.
Elisa Slider is a Latinos for Trump Advisory Board Member.
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