Obama’s Las Vegas trip helps Reid, too

After President Barack Obama finished speaking Friday at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid chatted with a gaggle of reporters about the president’s executive order providing nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants protection from deportation, mostly family members who have been living in America for at least five years.

Obama — and Reid — had finally delivered on a promise to the Latino community to do something to fix a broken immigration system. Although the two leaders failed to persuade House Republicans to pass a bill like the Senate did to reform immigration laws, they found a way to bring working-class immigrants who came here illegally out of the shadows.

Asked by one reporter whether the action on immigration might help him win re-election in 2016, Reid shrugged.

“We’ll see,” said Reid, D-Nev., who lost his Democratic majority in the Senate to Republicans in the Nov. 4 election and is looking for a political comeback. The Obama event served as a soft launch of the 74-year-old’s re-election campaign.

Shoring up Reid’s support among Latino voters, who helped him win a tough re-election to a fourth Senate term in 2010, is just one benefit of Obama traveling to Nevada to make his case for why he took executive action on immigration despite Republican protests that he was overreaching his legal authority.

Obama said he also wanted to return to Del Sol High where he first announced in January 2013 that he would pursue comprehensive immigration reform — something he had been promising since he first ran for president in 2008.

“Las Vegas, I have come back to Del Sol to tell you I’m not giving up,” Obama said Friday, the day after he unveiled his immigration plans in a nationally televised address. “I will never give up. I will never give up. I will not give up.”

Obama said he would still lobby Congress to pass permanent immigration reform since his orders are temporary.

Reid was in the audience as was Dolores Huerta, the 84-year-old co-founder of the United Farmworkers Union.

“When Obama made his first immigration announcement it was in Nevada,” Huerta recalled. “Many of us in this room were here and I think that’s why (he chose Nevada), to show he’s keeping a promise.”

“There’s another reason,” she added, “a man who has stood by the immigrant community all this time, and that’s Harry Reid.”

THE HISPANIC FACTOR

In 2010, Reid won an overwhelming 90 percent of the Hispanic vote in Nevada, helping him beat Republican Sharron Angle, a Tea Party contender. Obama, too, counted on the Latino vote to win Nevada, earning 71 percent in 2008 and 80 percent in 2012, according to Latino Decisions, which tracks Hispanic voters.

At the same time, the Latino share of the Nevada electorate has increased with every recent election, hitting 17 percent or 18 percent in 2012.

The exception might be the Nov. 4 election when overall turnout was low, including among Democratic-leaning Hispanics, according to unofficial tallies. As a result, Republicans in Nevada swept all the top six constitutional offices, from governor to controller,and took over majority control of both the state Senate and Assembly.

One GOP operative who tracked voter turnout for Hispanic surnames during the two-week early voting period in Nevada said the Latino turnout was about 13 percent, or about half of that of non-Hispanics.

“Perhaps no Democrat though owes his political survival to the Latino community more than Harry Reid,” said David Damore, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor who works with Latino Decisions.

Ahead of Obama’s visit to Las Vegas last week, Damore wrote a paper titled, “The reason why Obama is giving a major immigration speech in Nevada.” Reid, he said, was one reason, but there were several others.

“The symmetry in selecting Del Sol High School as the backdrop for President Obama’s continued push for immigration reform is no accident,” Damore wrote. “The school serves a majority Latino student body and many of these students come from families who would likely benefit from the president’s executive action.”

Indeed, about 63 percent of the Del Sol student body is Hispanic in a state where the population is about 27 percent Latino and growing.

About 13 percent of Del Sol students are English language learners, as well.

In Nevada, more than 10 percent of the workforce is made up of undocumented immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center. About 18 percent of Nevada schoolchildren have at least one parent who is undocumented, Pew found.

About 210,000 undocumented immigrants live in Nevada now, according to Pew.

Immigration was the top issue for Nevada Hispanics polled before the Nov. 4 election, or 48 percent of those asked.

“For many Nevada Latino immigration is a personal issue,” Damore wrote. “Specifically, in the 2014 Election Eve poll, 64 percent of Latino voters reported knowing a friend, family member, or co-worker who is an undocumented immigrant.”

Nevada also is a battleground state, which has picked the president in all but one election during the past century. It’s an early caucus state as well, voting after the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, making it important for presidential candidates competing in the first-in-the-West contest.

The Silver State also is an example of the changing U.S. demographics as the Hispanic population explodes; Nevada has the fifth largest percentage of Hispanics in the nation, according to Pew.

“Nevada is a case study in how the country’s changing political demography is reshaping the geography of partisan composition and is a state that is central to President Obama’s political legacy,” Damore wrote.

GOP SEEKING LATINO SUPPORT TOO

Republicans in Nevada are battling to win more Latino support since their future political hopes rest on Hispanics, too, including GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval, the state’s first Hispanic governor.

In 2010, Sandoval won only 15 percent of the Latino vote, although he beat Democrat Rory Reid, the senator’s son.

In 2014, Sandoval scooped up 47 percent of the Hispanic vote, but against a little known Democratic opponent, Bob Goodman, who manged to win 52 percent of Latinos. Sandoval won re-election with 70 percent of the overall vote.

Robert Uithoven, a GOP operative who advised Republican Adam Laxalt’s winning 2014 attorney general campaign, said he sees three reasons why Obama came to Nevada to tout immigration fixes.

First, he won Nevada twice, so he’s coming to a “critical, early caucus” state where he’s more popular than in others.

Second, Nevada is turning the corner on the recession with unemployment down around 7.1 percent, jobs growing by some 100,000 in the past few years and with new industries popping up, including the manufacture of electric batteries and cars with a newly signed $5 billion deal with Tesla. With job and economic growth comes population growth with Hispanics and other minorities outpacing whites.

“And three, Senator Harry Reid,” Uithoven said. “Senator Reid has been one of President Obama’s most loyal and staunchest supporters in Congress — for better or worse. It also nicely kicks off Senator Reid’s re-election on an issue that will remain front and center throughout Obama’s waning days in office and beyond.”

Uithoven said Republicans have to appeal more to the expanding Hispanic demographic and “develop a cohesive, positive, hopeful and optimistic policy on immigration” or face political harm.

“I respect that different states consist of voters who have varying viewpoints on this issue, but immigration reform is a national issue requiring a national response,” Uithoven said.

The Democratic Party, he added, long ago captured the African-American vote “and has maintained political ownership of them not just for years or decades, but for generations.” He said the GOP shouldn’t let the same thing happen with Hispanics.

“If we continue to lose Hispanic voters, a much more rapidly growing segment of our electorate, we will struggle to earn them back, too,” he said. “This is exactly what the Democrats want — political ownership of another segment of the electorate. Republicans cannot afford such a loss for years, decades and generations ahead. It’s simple math.”

Review-Journal writer James DeHaven contributed to this report. Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Find her on Twitter: @lmyerslvrj.