Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

THE GOVERNOR’S RACE:

Clinton campaign schooled, inspired Rory Reid

Rory Reid

las vegas sun file

County Commission Chairman Rory Reid chaired Hillary Clinton’s successful run in Nevada’s 2008 Democratic presidential caucus.

Harry Reid

Harry Reid

This is the first in an occasional series of stories examining the 2010 governor’s race.

Last year, with Nevada’s first early presidential caucus fast approaching, the Nevada State Education Association dropped a bomb.

The union filed a lawsuit to shut down nine at-large caucus sites designed for Las Vegas Strip shift workers. Although officials claimed fairness issues, the move was widely seen as a last-minute play by the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton to blunt the effect of the Culinary Union, which had endorsed her primary rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

It had Rory Reid’s fingerprints all over it.

And it telegraphs how Reid might conduct his campaign for governor: Do what it takes, show no mercy.

In a flash, gone was the perception of Reid as the cautious Clark County commissioner with the dry wit. By taking on the state’s largest and most politically active union, he had shown himself to be a shrewd strategist, skilled enough to play in the cutthroat world of presidential politics.

It was the culmination of a year at the helm of Clinton’s successful Nevada campaign, an experience Reid equated to “going to the Super Bowl.” Now, as Reid prepares his campaign for governor, longtime friends, advisers and Clinton aides say the caucus helped set the stage.

He’ll need the political skills he honed to counter significant weaknesses. Handicapped by a low-key public persona, Reid will face a potential backlash against Democrats in the midterm elections and will share the ticket with an unpopular U.S. senator seeking reelection — his father, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

On its face, taking the Clinton campaign chairmanship allowed Reid to distinguish himself from his father, who had pledged neutrality in the state’s caucus.

“It would have been easier for me if he kept his powder dry,” Sen. Reid said at the time.

Rory Reid would go on to surprise Clinton’s staff with the amount of energy he poured into a traditionally symbolic role.

“A lot of the time, all a person will bring is his prestige,” said Robby Mook, the campaign’s state director. “But he was really hands-on. His care and concern translated into action.”

As Reid himself put it, “I have one gear. When I commit to something, I’m all in.”

From the start, Reid served as political strategist of the campaign and policy adviser to the candidate, walking Clinton through a cornucopia of Nevada issues, especially Yucca Mountain. Staffers said Clinton saw him as indispensable. He spoke with the candidate or former President Bill Clinton regularly.

“She came to regard him as a strategic partner,” Mook said. “She wanted him there. We wanted him there. He was a pillar of the campaign.”

Equally important, staff members say, was Reid’s role as recruiter. He worked his Rolodex and political connections to help the campaign build a seemingly endless list of “leadership councils,” creating the perception that Clinton had won over the state’s political establishment. He carried that energy into helping recruit thousands of precinct captains, calling them personally to maintain their support throughout the yearlong effort.

Alisa Nave, the campaign’s political director, recalled sitting with Reid at campaign headquarters for more than 20 hours as he called hundreds of volunteers. When Clinton lost the first contest of the primary season, the Iowa caucus, Reid redoubled his efforts, manning the phone banks again to boost their spirits.

When it was all over, each of the campaign’s roughly 2,000 precinct captains received a certificate of appreciation — signed by Reid.

“He was willing to do anything to make that caucus successful,” Nave said.

The organizing work promises to pay dividends in 2010. The experience seems to have nudged him toward higher office — and equipped him with a dress rehearsal of how to conduct a statewide campaign.

“I saw people become converted to the belief that the political process can lead to positive change in a world that’s often cynical,” Reid said. “It was exciting to see that on a firsthand basis at the neighborhood level.”

Nearly a year into the campaign, Reid said he was shocked by the volunteers’ continued commitment. He arrived at a precinct captain meeting at William E. Orr Middle School on a Saturday in December only to find no parking spots. “I thought maybe we had made a mistake and scheduled the same time as a PTA meeting,” he said.

The commitment seemed to have a profound effect on the sheepish Reid. Not known for being much of an orator, he fired up 600 precinct captains that morning. “I want you to feel the urgency of what’s going on here,” he told them, closing with a variation of a “Field of Dreams” cliche: “If you do it, she will win.”

A month later, the teachers union and a group of party activists filed a lawsuit seeking to eliminate at-large caucus sites on the Strip. They argued that the sites, intended to allow Culinary members to caucus, were disproportionately weighted compared with neighborhood polling places, violating the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The suit smacked of politics, coming on the day Obama visited Las Vegas to accept the Culinary endorsement and months after the Democratic National Committee approved the caucus plan.

The casino workers union called on Nevada’s elected leaders and the presidential campaigns to denounce the lawsuit. Reid and Clinton declined. In fact, Clinton herself had criticized the caucus process after losing Iowa, saying many people who had to work at the time were disenfranchised.

In an interview last week, Reid disavowed any connection to the lawsuit. “We were observers,” he said. “The lawsuit was in the hands of a judge and we said we would accept the result.”

He allowed: “I’m not going to suggest there weren’t political implications.”

Reid, however, had ties to the suit, which was ultimately thrown out. His longtime political consultant, Dan Hart, enlisted the teachers union in the legal action. Hart, who also represents the Nevada State Education Association, declined to discuss last week who brought the suit to his attention but maintained it raised important issues of fairness. Also, high-ranking teachers union officials, including Deputy Executive Director Debbie Cahill, were prominent Clinton supporters.

Turns out, the lawsuit was wholly unnecessary. Clinton won a convincing popular-vote victory in Nevada, taking a majority of the at-large caucus sites.

Reid had helped the campaign devise a strategy to woo Culinary members at their homes early on. By the time of the union’s late endorsement of Obama, Clinton had won members’ hearts and minds. Still, the lawsuit spurned union leaders that Reid will now be turning to for support in his own campaign.

Nearly two years later, their anger remains palpable, the cost of hardball politics.

“I learned a lot about how the process should work, about how you convert ideas into action,” Reid said last week. “The activism confirmed my belief that politics matters.”

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