ON SATURDAY, a year after Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucuses in the Democratic presidential primary, a slate of progressive candidates swept elections for leadership positions in the Nevada State Democratic Party. Ryan Grim talks to activist Keenan Korth and Judith Whitmer, who was elected state party chair, about how they out-organized establishment Democrats.
https://play.acast.com/s/1d1223a2-9d05-473b-9e79-c2b65b71d676/d690d391-f3b9-408e-b785-ff507976b6a2
NOT LONG AFTER Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.
She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.
On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening.
Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair.
The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.
While Whitmer’s opponents say she was planning to fire them anyway, Whitmer denies that claim. “I’ve been putting in the work,” Whitmer told The Intercept for the latest episode of Deconstructed. “What they just didn’t expect is that we got better and better at organizing and out-organizing them at every turn.”
THE BATTLE BETWEEN the insurgent progressive wing of the party and what’s known in Nevada as the Reid machine — a tightly run operation still guided by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — began five years ago, when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders organized support for his 2016 presidential primary run, while Reid was working behind the scenes to help his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Over the next four years, outside organizations like DSA exploded in size and strength. The Sanders campaign focused on organizing tens of thousands of young Latino voters in the state, with the goal of activating people whom the party hadn’t bothered with before. And it worked: In the 2020 cycle, after investing heavily in Nevada, Sanders won a commanding victory in the Nevada caucuses.
When the Sanders campaign ended, the organizers behind it were ready to take their project to the next level. Progressive groups like the Clark County Left Caucus, of which Whitmer was chair, and local DSA chapters had been organizing for Sanders across Nevada since 2016. They used their momentum, and the state-level delegates they picked up during the caucuses, to continue activating progressive pockets in the state with a focus on local office.
Progressives led by the Left Caucus won a majority on the state Democratic board this summer, a sign that their momentum was growing even without a candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket to get behind.
https://theintercept.com/2021/03/08/nevada-democratic-party-dsa/