Former Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), who retired from his position in Congress in 2017, is still weilding power in his home state of Nevada, and is reportedly on a mission to stop the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) dead in its tracks on Saturday.
Reid has, officially, chosen not to endorse a candidate in the Nevada Caucuses, set to take place on February 22nd, but the powerful Democratic leader is behind efforts to handicap the Vermont socialist, using his ties to the Nevada Culinary Union and his pull with Nevada’s Democratic leadership.
Sanders’ supporters have come out in force against the Culinary Union which, last week, declined to endorse Sanders and put out a flier to its membership lambasting the Senator’s “Medicare for All” plan, warning union members that it could undercut their union-won benefits, including their private health insurance plan. The Culinary Union is no slouch in Nevada politics: its 60,000 members — mostly line cooks, food runners, servers, and dishwashers working in the casino industry — ” is renowned for its ability to organize its 60,000 members as a potent force — and to sway elections,” according to Eater Magazine.
Politico reported last week that Nevada’s Culinary Union came to its decision not to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate “after multiple conversations with the Nevada Democratic Party’s political godfather, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.”
“Reid has warm feelings for both Biden and Warren, whose standing took a big hit after she underperformed in New Hampshire, the state that borders her home of Massachusetts,” the outlet noted.
Reid is frustrated, Bloomberg News adds, at Democratic presidential candidates who aren’t doing a better job of speaking out against Sanders, telling reporters that he believes more moderate contenders should be more vocal.
“If you don’t like what Bernie’s doing,” Reid told a Bloomberg reporter, “speak up.”
“If Bernie is the one that comes out ahead, we’ll just have to see what happens,” he added. “But if people don’t like what he does, they’re going to have to start saying they don’t like it rather than pat him on the back.”
He added, last weekend, that he has a candidate in mind to head the field: “People should not be counting Joe Biden out of the race yet.”
Reid’s animus likely comes for years spent keeping Bernie Sanders out of the way of more electable candidates, including former president Barack Obama, who reportedly tasked Reid with talking Sanders out of challenging Obama in the 2012 Democratic presidential primary.
“Sanders privately discussed a potential primary challenge to Obama with several people, including Patrick Leahy, his fellow Vermont senator. Leahy, alarmed, warned Jim Messina, Obama’s presidential reelection-campaign manager,” the Atlantic reported Wednesday.
Messina was so alarmed he contacted Harry Reid directly and begged him to get involved.
“Messina called Reid, then the Senate majority leader, who had built a strong relationship with Sanders but was also fiercely defensive of Obama,” the outlet added. “What could you be thinking? Reid asked Sanders, according to multiple people who remember the conversations. You need to stop.”
Sanders did — for a time. He held off on presenting a progressive primary challenge to a Democratic presidential candidate until 2016, when he tried to derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambition. But in 2016, Reid again rode to the rescue, according to Nevada political commentator Jon Ralston, writing in USA Today, mobilizing Nevada Democrats — and the Nevada Culinary Union — to the polls to vote for Clinton, effectively stopping Sanders, who had won the popular vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire by then, from posing a real challenge to the former Secretary of State.
Ahead of the 2016 Nevada caucuses, “Reid made a phone call, first reported by The New York Times’ Amy Chozick, to D. Taylor, the head of the parent of the Culinary Workers Union local in Las Vegas,” Ralston reported at the time. The Union hadn’t been taking the caucuses seriously and few of its members planned to vote. After Reid’s call, though, the union found at least 100 organizers to facilitate turnout at six caucus locations on the Las Vegas strip.
Reid then placed calls to casino owners, asking them to give Culinary Union members paid time off to attend the caucuses. “No one said no to Prince Harry,” Ralston wrote.
“[T]t paid off…On Saturday, Clinton won all six casino sites. And instead of an aggregate 100 or so employees, hundreds of workers showed up to caucus, thanks to Reid to Taylor to organizers. But those culinary workers at the Strip sites were not the only ones who caucused — some of those who were not working went to their home sites. And Reid also encouraged leaders of other unions, I’m told, to rally their members to juice Clark County for Clinton,” he added.
Clinton won Clark County by 10 points, propelling her to an easy victory.
This is likely Harry Reid’s last election — the former senator is in poor health — but he remains Nevada’s kingmaker.