Weekend in Nevada: Moments that mattered in campaign tours by Clinton, Sanders

By Megan Messerly

Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016 | 2 a.m.

The clock is ticking down until Nevada Democrats gather at churches, schools and Strip hotels to select their nominee for president.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, voters will assemble at caucus sites to cluster in corners of the room for their chosen candidate as supporters of each campaign make last-minute appeals, hoping to sway undecided voters.

This past weekend, both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders were in Nevada hoping to lock in supporters ahead of caucus day. They attended church together, met with community members and held rallies. Clinton continued to campaign in the state on Monday, holding events in Elko and Reno, while Sanders traveled to Michigan for rallies there.

Both candidates now have left the state: Sanders will appear at rallies today in Georgia and South Carolina, while Clinton is scheduled to hold rallies and fundraisers in New York, Virginia and Chicago today and Wednesday. They will both return to Nevada in advance of a Thursday town hall sponsored by the state Democratic party.

Until then, here are five brief takeaways from the candidates’ time in the state over the last few days.

Sympathy from Sanders on solar

The day after state regulators denied a request that would have shielded thousands of the state’s existing solar customers from increased bills for 20 years, Sanders met with a group of solar activists in Reno.

Sanders told the activists that he opposed raising costs for solar customers and urged them to start a petition to get Warren Buffett — whose company Berkshire Hathaway owns NV Energy — to support their cause. (NV Energy sought increased bills for future solar customers, but supported grandfathering in some existing ones.)

"Warren Buffett is somebody who might be interested in hearing from constituents in Nevada. This is a terrible, terrible decision. The ruling went exactly the wrong way," Sanders said. "So you might want to be thinking about writing a letter with a few hundred thousand signatures on it saying, 'You know what? What you're doing here in Nevada is exactly wrong.'"

It wasn’t the first time Sanders tackled the solar issue in Nevada. In December, right after the state Public Utilities Commission increased bills for solar customers, Sanders criticized the move as “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” at a rally in North Las Vegas.

Clinton has repeatedly advocated for renewable energy in her speeches and continued to do so at rallies this weekend, suggesting the sector as an area for job creation in the country.

Last week, she announced her support for an amendment introduced into the U.S. Senate that would regulate rate changes for utility customers who get credits for generating excess electricity, though it’s unclear if that amendment would impact Nevada. Clinton also said utilities should not be able to retroactively change rules on customers.

Clinton takes her campaign straight to Strip workers

With the Culinary Union sitting the caucuses out, Clinton went directly to many of the union’s members on Saturday and Sunday, meeting with Strip workers in employee dining rooms at Harrah’s Las Vegas and Caesars Palace.

Clinton appealed to workers to get out and caucus for her on Saturday, taking hundreds of selfies with them. Strip employees working Saturday shifts will have a chance to caucus at one of six at-large precincts on the resort corridor, including at Harrah’s and Caesars.

The Sanders campaign got in trouble with the Culinary Union in late January after staffers posing as members of the union gained access to the same type of employee-only areas at multiple Strip hotels, though the campaign and union quickly resolved the issue.

Both candidates have met with the Culinary Union — the state’s largest union representing 57,000 workers — on previous campaign stops in Nevada. They also each sent surrogates for meetings with the union, with Clinton's campaign represented by Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez on Monday and Sanders’ camp represented by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva on Saturday.

“The fact that the Culinary Union is neutral to me said a lot. It said that their membership is carefully studying who they’re going to vote for,” Grijalva said in an interview. “The fact that they’re neutral is an opportunity for people to listen.”

The Sanders campaign said Monday that there were no plans for Sanders to meet with Culinary workers, though that didn’t mean there wouldn't be in the next few days.

The Culinary Union has invited both candidates to a rally at Sunrise Hospital. The hospital is bargaining with a health service coalition, which includes the union’s health fund.

Spotlight on Nevada’s diverse communities

In the wake of New Hampshire last week, Clinton’s campaign seemed to many to be trying to downplay the diversity of Nevada voters.

“There’s an important Hispanic element to the Democratic caucus in Nevada,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd. “But it’s still a state that is 80 percent white voters. You have a caucus-style format, and he’ll have the momentum coming out of New Hampshire, presumably, so there’s a lot of reasons he should do well.”

Clinton has been long projected to be strong in Nevada and South Carolina, owing to their more diverse populations compared to those in other early-voting states, Iowa and New Hampshire. Nevada’s population is 52 percent white, 28 percent Hispanic, 9 percent black and 8 percent Asian-American. (In counting white voters, the Census Bureau includes Hispanic and Latino residents among them, which brings the total white voting population to 76.2 percent — roughly equivalent to the 80 percent mentioned by Fallon.)

In line with that, Clinton’s weekend schedule was packed with meet-and-greets with Nevadans hailing from a wide variety of communities: Clinton met with a young African-American businesswoman, played soccer at an indoor sports facility where many Latino families had gathered and stopped by Lee’s Sandwiches in Chinatown, famous for its banh mi.

Both Sanders and Clinton also attended the same service at one of the valley’s largest black churches, where Clinton praised President Barack Obama’s accomplishments and Sanders decried the mass incarceration of black men.

Clinton, Sanders focus on DREAMers

Both Clinton and representatives from Sanders campaign targeted outreach to Nevada DREAMers this weekend.

Clinton met with a group of DREAMers, including local activist Astrid Silva, on Sunday at the campaign’s east Las Vegas offices, the same place where that group endorsed her a week and a half before. At the meeting, Clinton discussed the president’s executive actions on immigration and what could happen in the wake of the recent passing of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“Let me thank you all for being here with me — it means a great deal to me personally,” Clinton told the group. “I’m proud of the DREAMers.”

The DREAMers’ endorsement of Clinton drew criticism from some in the Sanders campaign, with some well-known immigration activists dismissing the endorsement as a “press hit” and saying Silva “put politics over people.”

Over the weekend, prominent DREAMer Cesar Vargas — New York’s first undocumented immigrant to become a lawyer and a Sanders campaign staffer — was in town to help put on a town hall on immigration, featuring Grijalva.

New poll numbers seem to suggest close race

A poll paid for by the conservative news outlet Washington Free Beacon shows a tie between Clinton and Sanders in Nevada, according to data released Friday.

It is the only poll in Nevada in a month and a half, making it difficult to tell how reliable its results are. The poll also asked a number of leading questions about Clinton, including whether respondents are concerned about a possible FBI indictment over her handling of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

Still, the numbers show that 45 percent of voters each support Clinton and Sanders, with 9 percent of voters undecided. The poll, conducted by TargetPoint, sampled 1,236 potential Democratic caucus goers with a margin of error of 2.9 percent. It was conducted over a three-day period between Feb. 8 and 10.

The last poll in January from Gravis Marketing showed Clinton with a 23 point lead over Sanders.