Nevada has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, gas and food prices remain among the highest in the country, and housing costs here have skyrocketed. Republicans argue that President Biden's policies are clearly to blame and that former President Donald J. Trump will fix the problem if voters return him to the White House.
Nevada's unemployment rate has halved since Mr. Biden took office, gasoline prices have fallen nearly $2 a gallon since mid-2022 and more than 200,000 jobs have already been created as the state raises $3.3 billion receives infrastructure investments. Democrats here say the economy is finally on the rise after Mr. Trump and the coronavirus pandemic sent it into the ground, and that Mr. Biden's reelection is crucial to keeping it that way.
Which of these different economic images resonates most with voters could make a difference in November in the critical crisis situation. Although the presidential nominating contests in Nevada are largely disappointing this week – in part because Mr. Trump and his remaining Republican primary rival, Nikki Haley, are on separate ballots – Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Mr. Trump all have recent votes voted stops in Las Vegas, setting the stakes for the likely general election duel.
The intensifying messaging war reflects a larger political dispute playing out across the country over which perception of the economy — the optimistic one from Democrats or the gloomy one from Republicans — resonates with voters. According to a New York Times analysis, traditional metrics suggest that the economy is indeed strong and Americans are continuing to spend, but consumer confidence remains low.
Republicans believe they can make a particularly strong economic argument in Nevada, which relies heavily on tourism and hospitality, was hit harder during the pandemic than most of the country and has been slower to recover.
“Certainly Republicans will care about this: cost of living, food, some of these issues,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Democrats, he said, could argue that they would improve the local economy through job growth and climate investments. But that argument is “a little more abstract than going to the supermarket and looking at prices,” he added, so Democrats will most likely also try to focus voters on other issues like abortion rights and prescription drug prices.
Republicans have not won Nevada in a presidential election since 2004. The state's Democrats are notoriously well-prepared, with former Sen. Harry Reid's political action working with the organizational strength of the Culinary Workers Union in particular to produce Democratic voters and reliable independents. Still, recent statewide elections were won by razor-thin margins, and Republicans flipped the governor's mansion in 2022. Last fall, a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by 10 percentage points in Nevada.
People are feeling particularly pressured in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, where the population is estimated to have grown by more than 300,000 residents in the last decade and real estate prices rose 6 percent in the last year alone.
“What made Vegas attractive to the working class was that you could come here, work in construction, work on the Strip and earn a white-collar salary doing blue-collar jobs. And that’s because the cost of living here was much lower than, say, Southern California,” Mr. Damore said. “Well, that evaporated.”
Republican groups are rooting for Mr. Biden here. They argue that his major legislation, including the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package and the $740 billion Clean Energy, Taxes and Health Care Act, are responsible for the higher prices – something experts believe say that it is part of the picture but not the whole story. (As president, Mr. Trump signed a $900 billion Covid relief bill.)
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group whose super PAC supports Ms. Haley, has held a series of events in the state to raise awareness of inflation and rising costs as part of a national campaign called “The True Cost of Washington.” The group has teamed up with gas stations in Nevada to offer drivers gas for just over $2 a gallon – the price when Mr. Biden took office – to highlight how much more expensive things are now. (Americans for Prosperity will cover the difference.)
It has held similar events at grocery stores, offering gift cards to make up the difference in grocery prices.
“The issues that are important to Nevadans economically are not being addressed, and I think that has led to a lack of enthusiasm for the election or that Joe Biden can get us out of this economic crisis,” Ronnie said Najarro, director of Americans for Prosperity in the US state of Nevada.
How voters perceive life in Nevada could ultimately lie somewhere between the images of opposing political parties. The state's governor, Joe Lombardo, a Republican who has supported Mr. Trump, tried to take control of the matter by suggesting that he was responsible for the state's positive numbers while blaming Mr. Biden for the bad ones made.
“Governor Lombardo’s policies have positioned Nevada to lead the country in annual job growth and new economic development,” Elizabeth Ray, a spokeswoman for Mr. Lombardo, said in a statement. “Despite generating $5 billion in new private sector economic investment and creating thousands of new jobs, Nevadans are still suffering from high gas, food and energy prices due to Joe Biden’s failed national policies.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said Democrats' economic arguments amounted to “gaslighting.”
“Americans are tired of the destructive policies of the last four years that have brought nothing but pain and misery,” he said in a statement.
Democrats, meanwhile, highlighted signs of improvement. Nationally, inflation continued to slow late last year, price increases have subsided in Nevada and the state leads the nation in job growth. Apartment rental prices in Las Vegas have fallen after a decade of increases. Mr Biden's campaign argued that Mr Trump's president inherited a struggling Covid-era economy and slowly but surely turned it around. The campaign says local jobs created by infrastructure and green energy projects and the 7,000 Nevadans who had their student debt forgiven are evidence that Mr. Biden is helping the state in tangible ways.
The president's campaign also noted that a majority of the state's voters agreed with Mr. Biden's priorities on abortion. The issue of abortion access could be on the Nevada ballot in November along with Mr. Biden.
Shelby Wiltz, the president's campaign manager in Nevada, said in a statement that Mr. Trump “has rocked the heart of our economy with sky-high unemployment,” while Mr. Biden “got to work immediately, creating tens of thousands of good-paying Nevadans.” “Jobs created” and prescription drug prices reduced.
“We’re excited to face these records any day of the week,” she added.
Compared to the pandemic, “the economy is back now, and back in a big way,” said Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the state’s Culinary Workers Union, who met with Mr. Biden on Monday. The union represents 60,000 casino and restaurant workers and is part of the AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Mr. Biden.
Mr. Pappageorge acknowledged that high prices continue to weigh on residents, particularly in Las Vegas. But he said voters should blame companies like oil companies and Wall Street landlords, not the president.
“It's about price gouging and taking advantage of these huge companies,” he said.
Mr. Pappageorge and other state Democrats argued that economic indicators, even if they were pointing downward, would not turn voters away from the Democratic Party because Democrats had “manufactured” for working-class and union voters.
Still, many voters who went to the polls in Tuesday's primary election said the state's economy was a concern. Fred Parvin, a 73-year-old Democrat, voted for Mr. Biden in the primary but said he was struggling to pay his higher electricity bills and had started growing vegetables in his garden to save on food.
“I don’t have a lot of money for retirement,” Mr. Parvin said.
Frank Li, a 65-year-old Trump supporter, said he also faced rising electricity bills. He added that he had seen more people who appeared to be living on the streets – consistent with an apparent increase in the annual homeless population.
Mr. Trump, he said, “could potentially turn the tide.”
Comments are closed.