Nevada on my mind

Having spent two months in 2018 working to ensure that Nevada elected a Democratic US Senator and Democratic governor, I find myself tracking political doings in the Silver State.

This is facilitated by Nevada's having a courageous, thoughtful state nonprofit news site, The Nevada Independent. It's founder, Jon Ralston, is considered the go-to authority on state political machinations. The Independent posts a site that other journalistic outfits would be smart to emulate, the "Sisolak Promise Tracker" -- Steve Sisolak was that gubernatorial candidate whose name so many campaign visitors struggled to pronounce in 2018. Here's how they describe it:

Steve Sisolak made a lot of promises on the campaign trail and after taking office as governor. Below, The Nevada Independent tracked the progress and outcomes of Sisolak’s biggest pledges and promises after the 2019 Legislature. We have decided that the fairest way to track promises is to label the ones that have been completed as such and the ones that have not yet been addressed as such. We will continue to monitor progress on promises throughout Sisolak's four years in office. We will not label any of the promises as failures until the end of the governor's tenure if they still have not been addressed.

So what has Sisolak accomplished so far? With Democratic majorties in the legislature, a lot:

• invested in mental health services;

• helped lower drug prices by increasing state bargaining for Medicaid rates;

• increased selected Medicaid reimbursement rates to doctors to encourage them to remain in Nevada;

• established a Patient Protection Commission one of whose charges is avert surprise emergency room billing;

• created a Maternal Mortality Review Program to figure out why too many women die in childbirth;

• and joined other states' briefs against the Texas/Trump Justice Department attempt to bring down Obamacare through an ongoing lawsuit.

And that's just in the (very politically salient) area of health care. ...

Nevada will be the fourth state to express its preferences in the Democratic presidential sweepstakes -- after Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, but before the biggies like Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia, and California on March 3. It will be the first primary state which has a large Latinx population. Yet Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight reports it's not getting much attention from the squabbling crowd. Marianne Williamson has been there more than any of the others.

... most Democrats are spending barely any time there. In the period we looked at, from the 2018 midterms to the end of July 2019, six candidates didn’t visit Nevada at all after declaring their candidacy. And all but one have spent less than 5 percent of their campaign days there.

Hmmm -- you might think they'd show more interest. Though it is probably true the state is now purple-ish trending toward blue, it's been a recent battleground.

It's a very urban place. If what you know of Nevada has been driving across it on Interstate 80 you might think its an empty desert. However, almost all Nevadans live in either the Las Vegas area or around Reno/Sparks.

It's also a place with an authentically capable labor movement -- that is, something of a politically engaged working class.

These are Democratic strengths not well represented in the earlier primary states. Shouldn't some of these candidates be working them? If there's anything we know about 2020, it's that Democrats cannot be complacent!