Nevada's struggling economy could be a key to 2024

Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country, gasoline and grocery prices remain among the highest in the country, and the cost of housing here has skyrocketed. Republicans argue that President Biden's policies are to blame, and former President Donald J. Trump will fix this if voters send him back to the White House.

Nevada's unemployment rate has been cut in half since Biden took office, gas prices have fallen nearly $2 per gallon since mid-2022 and more than 200,000 jobs have already been created as the state receives $3.3 billion in infrastructure investments. Democrats here say the economy is finally on the rise after Trump and the coronavirus pandemic drove it into the ground, and that Biden's reelection is crucial to keeping it that way.

Whichever of these divergent economic images resonates most strongly with voters could make a difference in the critical battleground state this November. Even though this week's presidential primary election in Nevada is largely anticlimactic — 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 have recently all cast their votes. stops in Las Vegas and sets the stakes for the likely election battle.

The escalating messaging war reflects a larger political battle playing out nationwide over which perceptions of the economy — the optimistic one described by Democrats or the bleak one described by Republicans — are affecting voters. According to a New York Times analysis, traditional numbers indicate that the economy is indeed strong and Americans are spending as they are now, but consumer confidence remains low.

Republicans believe they can make an especially strong economic argument in Nevada, which relies heavily on tourism and hospitality and was hit harder than most of the country during the pandemic and has recovered more slowly.

“Certainly, Republicans will be worrying about that: the cost of living, groceries, some of those issues,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Democrats, he said, could argue they are improving the local economy through job growth and climate investments. But that argument is “a little more abstract than going to the grocery store and seeing your prices,” he added, so Democrats will most likely also try to focus voters on other issues, such as abortion rights and drug prices. recipe.

Republicans have not won Nevada in the presidential election since 2004. The state's Democrats are known for being well prepared, combining the political operation of former Senator Harry Reid with the organizational strength of the Culinary Workers Union in particular, to become Democratic voters and independents. trustworthy. Still, recent statewide elections were won by razor-thin margins, and Republicans flipped the governor's mansion in 2022. Last fall, a poll by The New York Times and Siena College showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by 10 percentage points in his time. Nevada.

In the Las Vegas metro area, where population estimates show the population has grown by more than 300,000 in the past decade, home prices have risen 6 percent over the past decade. just this past yearpeople feel particularly under pressure.

“What made Vegas attractive to working-class people was that you could come here, work construction, work on the Strip, earn white-collar wages doing blue-collar work. And that's because the cost of living here was much cheaper than, say, Southern California,” Mr. Damore said. “Well, that evaporated.”

Republican groups here are hammering Mr. Biden. They claim his signature pieces of legislation, including the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package and the $740 billion Clean Energy, Taxes and Healthcare Act, are responsible for the higher prices — something experts 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 as part of a national campaign called “Washington's real costs”, aimed at highlighting inflation and rising costs. The group has collaborated with gas stations in Nevada to offer drivers gas for just over $2 a gallon — the price when Mr. Biden took office — to drive home how much more expensive things are now. (Americans for Prosperity will pay the difference.)

It has held similar events in supermarkets, offering gift vouchers to make up the difference in food prices.

“The issues that real Nevadans care about economically are not being addressed, and I think this has led to a lack of enthusiasm to vote or believe that Joe Biden can get us out of this economic crisis,” said Ronnie Najarro, state director of Nevada for Americans for Prosperity. .

How voters perceive life in Nevada may ultimately lie somewhere between the images of the opposing political parties. The state's governor, Joe Lombardo, a Republican who has supported Mr. Trump, tried to thread the needle by suggesting he was responsible for the state's positive numbers while blaming Mr. Biden for the bad .

“Governor Lombardo's policies have positioned Nevada to lead the nation 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 economic investment in the private sector and creating thousands of new jobs, Nevadans continue to suffer from high gas, grocery and energy prices as a result of 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 past four years of destructive policies that have brought nothing but pain and misery,” he said in a statement.

Democrats, meanwhile, have emphasized signs of improvement. Nationally, inflation continued to slow late last year, as did price increases attenuate in Nevada, and the state leads the nation in job growth. Apartment rental prices in Las Vegas have fell after a decade of increases. Mr Biden's campaign has argued that the president inherited a struggling Covid-era economy from Mr Trump and slowly turned it around. The campaign says local jobs created by infrastructure and green energy projects, and the 7,000 Nevadans who have had their student loans forgiven, are proof that Mr. Biden is tangibly helping the state.

The president's campaign also noted that a majority of voters in the state agree with Mr. Biden's priorities on abortion. The issue of access to abortion could be on the ballot in Nevada alongside Mr Biden in November.

Shelby Wiltz, the president's campaign manager in Nevada, said in a statement that Mr. Trump “left the heart of our economy shaken by skyrocketing unemployment,” while Mr. Biden “immediately set to work creating tens of thousands of high-paying Nevadans.” jobs” and lowered prescription drug prices.

“We are happy to be able to compare these records on any day of the week,” she added.

Compared to what it was during the pandemic, “the economy is back now, and it is back in a big way,” said Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the state Culinary Workers Union, who met with Mr. Biden. The union represents 60,000 casino and food service workers and is part of the AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Mr. Biden.

Mr. Pappageorge acknowledged that high prices continued to bother residents, especially in Las Vegas. But he said voters should place the blame on corporate entities such as oil companies and Wall Street landowners, not the president.

“It's all 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 pointed downward, would not push voters away from the Democratic Party because Democrats have “produced” for working-class and union voters.

Still, many voters who went to the polls in Tuesday's primary said the state's economy is worrying. Fred Parvin, a 73-year-old Democrat, voted for Biden in the primaries but said he was struggling to pay his higher energy bills and has started growing vegetables in his garden to save on groceries.

“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 energy bills. He added that he had seen more people who appeared to be living on the streets – which ties in with an apparent increase in the annual number of homeless people.

Mr. Trump, he said, “could potentially turn it around.”