Picketing, pigeons, politics: Scenes from the Nevada caucus

Picketing, pigeons, politics: Scenes from the Nevada caucus

SeattlePI.com

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Candidates have hustled past tourists and slot machines to ask housekeepers and cooks for their votes in the back of flashy casinos. They've made their pitches over plates of tamales, tacos and soul food. They've walked a picket line in the street with union workers. And then, with unsurprising showmanship, there was that flock of pigeons with tiny MAGA hats.

If Nevada has one job in the Democratic primary, it's to offer something different. And in many ways it has delivered. As the presidential race turned to the state this week, gone was the earnestness of Iowa and tradition of New Hampshire and in its place was racial diversity, a new unpredictability and the muscle of urban, union politics.

“Nevada is truly a state that represents the rest of the country,” former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, famous for his Nevada cheerleading and early primary state trash talk. “It's not like Iowa where you have no diversity ... New Hampshire is a state that has no diversity.”

It's far from clear that Nevada's more representative population — it is 29% Latino, 10% black, 9% Asian American and Pacific Islander and 49% white — will result in a dramatic scramble of the pecking order set by Iowa and New Hampshire. In the past, Nevada Democrats have twice been a tiebreaker in two-person contests. In this crowded field of candidates, the state's input isn't expected to reorder the race.

Still, the Silver State campaign has delivered on some of its promises to change it up on the campaign trail, offering up scenes that are hard to imagine happening elsewhere.

There was Elizabeth Warren ordering a boba tea at a cafe in Las Vegas' Chinatown. Tom Steyer hosting a Black History Month concert with former members of R&B groups En Vogue and Boyz to Men. Bernie Sanders' face plastered on a mobile...

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