By admin 
As Nevada jockeys to be the second state in the 2028 Democratic presidential nominating calendar, Gov. Gavin Newsom could face an early test of courting voters in a geographic neighbor. After all, Nevada is full of voters who moved across the Sierras to escape California’s stubbornly high cost of living.
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For Newsom, the state’s early vote offers possibility and peril. Like California, it’s a diverse state that shares many of the same challenges, from affordability to wildfires. But it is also more politically evenly divided, with a libertarian streak that could be at odds with Newsom’s liberal reputation.
The Democratic National Convention will finalize its early voting calendar at its summer meeting this weekend after the Rules and Bylaws Committee chose South Carolina and Nevada to lead the 2028 primaries, followed by New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia.
Newsom, who is believed to be mulling a run for president in 2028, visited the Las Vegas area last month to help the Nevada Democratic Party kick off its canvassing efforts on behalf of U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford and Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is challenging Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. He also flew to Boulder City in March to promote his memoir at the home of Democratic activist Judy Hoskins.
Other prospective 2028 candidates like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Obama White House official Rahm Emanuel, and Arizona U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego have also visited the state in recent months. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will appear Saturday at a Reno-area Democratic fundraiser.
Steve Sisolak, who served as the state’s last Democratic governor from 2019 to 2023, said Newsom was held in “very high regard” among members of his party.
“He’s highly liked and well regarded,” Sisolak said, calling Newsom “very approachable” and “exceptionally helpful” when it came to solving shared issues like wildfires, the shrinking Colorado River, and interstate highway traffic.
Still, Sisolak pointed out that Nevada Democrats tended to downplay their support for Newsom, pointing to a Republican campaign billboard highlighting Newsom’s support of Ford (“Gavin Newsom endorses Aaron Ford”) as a negative. Lombardo also derided Newsom’s “tax-and-spend” agenda in response to a recent Las Vegas Review-Journal op-ed.
“The idea is that Newsom’s support would detract from Aaron Ford,” Sisolak said, as Republicans have hit the California governor for his state’s high housing costs and homelessness crisis.
California has lost 900,000 people since 2015 to other states, including over 300,000 to Nevada since 2018, according to reports from the Public Policy Institute of California and Nevada Real Estate Group. The think tank found that the top reason people cited for moving was high housing costs, followed by jobs and family reasons.
Newsom’s office has pushed back on reports of population loss as a right-wing media narrative, calling it “California Derangement Syndrome.”
A recent Emerson College poll found Newsom led the field of 12 prospective 2028 contenders at 37% support among Nevada Democrats, followed by Buttigieg, 19%; New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 9%; and former Vice President Kamala Harris, 6%.
A source in Newsom’s orbit who declined to be identified to preserve their relationship with the governor also noted the same poll showed Ford and Lombardo in a dead heat ahead of the November general election.
“There’s a reason Aaron Ford was comfortable campaigning with Newsom: he’s popular with Democratic voters in the state,” the Newsom ally said.
Sisolak said Nevada would be an important state for any Democrat to win, citing its high union density, particularly the influential Culinary Workers union, and its diverse populations of Latinos and swiftly growing Asian American and Pacific Islander and Black communities.
“It touches all of the demographics you want to reach,” he said. “You can test your message, see how it resonates, and get off to a good start, then focus (in other states).”
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A strategist close to the Nevada Democratic Party who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media said national candidates need to adopt a “ground game” strategy early as the 2028 primary season starts up.
“We’re not an Iowa or a New Hampshire where you can go in and stand up a team on a Tuesday, and hit voters,” the strategist said. “Elections here are won by a field organizing margin. That means you need to go to a casino, and talk to workers there, or go to a construction site and talk to people there. Having a presence goes a long way here.”
Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders handily won the state in the 2020 Democratic primary, which national media attributed to support from a multiracial coalition of young liberal voters who were drawn to his economic populist message.
The Democratic strategist called Sanders’ victory an “apple-to-oranges” comparison, as Nevada was still an early caucus state then, whereas it will host its first competitive early presidential primary in 2028. Caucus states are when local parties choose their candidates, while in primaries voters elect the candidate of their choosing.
The strategist pointed towards a recent Third Way survey that found most Democratic Nevada primary voters favored candidates who could speak to a broad swath of voters over progressive ideals, which they said reflected the state’s libertarian streak.
“We want to be able to carry our guns, but we also want to be able to access abortion,” they said. “Ultimately, (a candidate’s ability to win) comes down to their ability to talk about how they’re able to stand up for Nevada and issues Nevadans care about, not about working with one party over another. It’s about working across the aisle and finding solutions, not party ideals.”
Erik Jimenez, the chair of the Washoe County Democrats, said affordability was a major concern as high wage-earning Californians have moved east. Lured by remote work and employers like Tesla and Amazon to the Reno area, the transplants contributed to that area’s housing shortage, which is now among the worst in the U.S.
“It’s a tough challenge to solve,” Jimenez said. “We’re super open to ‘how can we continue to grow’ but in northern Nevada, 90% of the land is owned by the federal government. There are limited resources to do new things. We can’t necessarily just build up new housing stock.”
Both he and the Democratic strategist both said Newsom would need to craft an economic message that could resonate with Nevada voters, while downplaying the idea that Republicans’ linking Newsom with California’s ongoing affordability crisis would sink his chances as someone who is frequently viewed as progressive in other parts of the country.
“Nevada Republicans consistently push the concept of ‘don’t California my Nevada,’ this idea that Democrats want these seemingly liberal California policies,” the strategist said. “We’ve seen that fail to resonate or move the needle in elections.”
Jimenez pointed out that northern Nevada still remains a competitive part of the state, and that the Democratic Party there welcomes a wide coalition of leftists to moderates. He said Nevada progressives seemed to be emboldened by recent wins in states like New York and Michigan over moderate incumbents.
“We are seeing the youth of the party going more towards what’s going on in Michigan, and pushing us to be more progressive in our thinking,” he said.
He also anticipated Newsom and other candidates will need to address data centers, which Nevada was an early investor in, and which now have become the target of bipartisan backlash.
“We have acute resource concerns about that, in a way that you won’t see in South Carolina,” Jimenez said.
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