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Your intrepid blogger is a bona-fide battle born Nevada Native. I hail from Reno, Nevada – and when I moved back to Reno in 2020, I was warned by a long time political friend that Nevada Politics is a “Closed Shop”. The meaning was an analogy to a union that controls a business, the hiring and the contracting. Based on my experience in two full Nevada elections cycles, that was sage advice.

Nevada’s political dynamics reminded me a lot of the 1970’s and 1980’s in many ways. Nevada is also famous for being an early primary state and a “caucus state”. While a caucus looks good on paper, a caucus is an insider good-ol-boyz game that is easily manuipluated and controlled. The County Parties are elected by the same Caucus system, sometimes yielding County Parties consisting of hundreds of members. Worse, the deliberate neglect of the system by the elected Republicans in Nevada office has allowed a generation of alex-jones-everything-is-a-hoax type fringe wackjobs that would be shunned by any organized group to have influcne and significance because they are the ones that show up to caucus.

While County parties are dotted with good people and some of Nevada’s County Parties are healthy and functional, one needs to look no further than Washoe to see the destructive potential of the system and how bad people can leverage it. Having been on the Washoe County Republican Party for a short time, I saw first hand the wild eyed rage in some of the rank and file members of that body towards anyone that does not lay awake at night fantasizing about election fraud. There is one dude with some money in the bank that talks about God being good to him with a cigarette in one hand, and a crated dog in another throwing tons of money at terrible fringe candiadates that lose. The lack of leadership has serious consequences, and based in what I have seen the dude with the smoke and the dog runs the show there in Washoe’s GOP. (infighting and all)

In 2024, when I was working in the field, the reputation of the Washoe GOP was an issue. They have become so toxic that I have canvassers report back from the front door that Republican voters told them they were not voting Republican because of disgust with the Washoe GOP. This was the first time in my 25+ years in politics I had ever seen anything like this.

Clark’s GOP Committee could also be the subject of a psychological manual. We will be writing about it in the future. Suffice to say, for most of the last decade it has been semi-effective at best, but mostly a fractured disaster and the closed shop / party leadership seem to want to keep it that way.

In Presidential Politics, the Caucus system is rarely beaten by an insurgent candidate. When the party bosses, most of whom have been entrenched in their positions for 10+ years decide who they want to win, that is generally the end of things. In the 2024 Presidential Election, while working for the Ron DeSantis superpac, I had a front row seat to watch it in action. One example I can remember from the 2024 rules of the Caucus, was even had DeSantis won some delegates in the tightly controlled (some say rigged) process, the party bosses would have still picked DeSantis’ delegates to the RNC convention.. meaning DeSantis would have gotten the vote on the first ballot and then the delegates would have been released on the second to vote for whomever else. This was one of the main reasons why some of the leading Presidential candidates did not pay the $50,000 fee charged for the privelege of participating in the caucus.

I believe what I saw firsthand explains why Presidential Campaigns talk about the “First in the West” primary, but do little more than token efforts in Nevada. Some campaigns may attempt efforts and then abandon them. The Caucus system and the closed shop. Both need to end. While all campaigns have to run a general election effort because of the demographics of the state (swing state) but the lost opportunity in the primary is palpable.

Nevada is a small state, so there are few players on the professional side as well. This makes maintaining the closed shop pretty simple in the consultant world. In 2024, the GOP only managed a net gain of one seat in the Nevada legislature despite serious attempts to convert 8 of them. The consultant whose candidate won is not regarded as a favored closed shop vendor.

The Nevada Media is similarly small. There are a handful of good Reporters dotted amongst the publications, but the Reno G-J and the LV R-J are leftist rags. There are two leading Right-Leaning (internet only) publications – both get assailed for having personal agendas and then there is John Deuce Ralston that everyone disdains. His Nevada Independent is no more independent than the Chinese Embassy and reads like it has been written in a blackout. Nevada needs something new because what is there is not enough. (A Deuce is a police term for a DUI, and Ralston, who apparently still drinks, has one verified conviction and is alleged to have other expunged arrests for DUI)

Tying everything together – when the Democrats dumped late millions in to Nevada in 2024 because it occurred to them that the state that was Blue for 20 years was going to turn over – the Washoe GOP were out circling McCarran Ave with Trump Flags on their cars while the democrats were feverishly dragging people to the polls. Imagine the spectacle of the followers of the God squad with a smoke in one hand and a crated dog in the other hand squad out showing the world their insanity on behalf of Donald J Trump just days before the election! It worked too, Washoe stayed blue by 1%, the anamoly in the state as Republican numbers surged in Clark County, and appeared stronger in the other 15 outlying counties. The Washoe GOP Cent Com’s insane stupidity should be a warning and a call to action – but is being largely ignored by the closed shop. Central Committees are indeed rarely if ever a positive, but they can frequently be a negative. Left alone, they can be lethally destructive.

This “closed shop” mentality needs to stop. The people in power need to engage and restore adult leadership. The party bosses need to return to being party bosses, not picking winners and imposing their personal opinions on the landscape, the Nevada political landscape needs new talent to “open the shop”. If none of this happens, Trump’s 2024 win will be an anonmaly. If you look beneath the Trump surface in Nevada in 2024 and you will see that the dems held their own otherwise.

Republicans are gaining in voter registrations to record levels in Nevada and these “closed shop” people point to that as cover. The registration surge is most likely because the democrats are that bad and given what I have seen on the ground in Nevada and I can all but guarantee that surge will be short lived unless things change.

While your intrepid blogger has decided to take the hawiian shirts off and retire from the field in Nevada, It is time for the Nevada political scene to meet the guy California Republicans have known for nearly 30 years. Consider yourselves warned because this shop isn’t closed and its’ party time.

P.S. You got information you want me to have? renonative@rightondailynevada.com is your tip line, you can remain off the record. Let’s talk, people need to know what’s really going on without the usual filters and roadblocks.