Elizabeth Warren holds presidential campaign rally in Reno

RENO — For Democrats to win in 2020, they’ll need a stronger message than “Not Trump,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said at a campaign rally in Northern Nevada on Saturday.

“It’s all on the line as we head into 2020. If our message is ‘Not Trump,’ it’s not gonna work. Our job is to talk about our vision of what we can do,” said Warren, considered by most to be one of the front-runners in the crowded field of Democrats vying to take on President Donald Trump next year.

Warren said her vision includes “big, systemic changes,” including curbing corruption in Washington, instituting a tax on the wealthiest Americans, and campaign and election reforms aimed at cutting the influence of special interest groups.

“When you see a government that works great for those with money and power, works great for those who can hire lobbyists and lawyers, when you see that, and it’s not working for anyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple,” Warren told the crowd of approximately 500 people who showed up to Wooster High School in Reno hear her roughly hour-long speech that included a question-and-answer session with the crowd

“A government that works for great for the rich and the powerful, that is at the core of every problem we’ve got,” she added.

Warren’s visit to Reno marks the second time she has stumped in the Silver State in 2019 after she held a February campaign rally in Las Vegas. Nevada has been a hot travel spot for Democratic presidential hopefuls trying to make their mark on the early caucus state.

In Warren’s speech Saturday, she highlighted her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, a sweeping ethics reform bill that would institute lifetime lobbying bans on presidents, members of Congress and federal judges, and require candidates running for president to make their tax returns public — something that Warren has hammered Trump for not doing, dating back to the 2016 campaigns.

She also talked about her proposed wealth tax on the richest 0.01 percent of Americans, which would require the 75,000 wealthiest families to pay an annual 2 percent tax on their assets in excess of $50 million. She said the country could use that tax revenue to pay for universal child care and prekindergarten, invest in housing to lower rent and mortgage payments, reduce student loan debt and more.

When you make the billionaires pay a fair share, we have enough money to invest in a future for the rest of America,” Warren said.

On election reforms, she called for a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote of all Americans, a repeal of all voter suppression laws in the country and the overturning of Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that has led to drastic increases in the outside spending during political campaigns.

“We’ve got to build the momentum now so that we are prepared come January 2021 to make real changes in this country so that we never elect a man like Donald Trump again,” Warren said.

After Warren’s speech, the Republican National Committee released a statement attacking her policy proposals.

“Whether it’s advocating for higher taxes, government-run health care, the costly Green New Deal or falsifying her heritage, it’s clear Elizabeth Warren is focused more on appeasing her party and her own political ambitions than helping hard-working families across Nevada,” RNC spokeswoman Christiana Purves said in the statement.

Contact Captial Bureau Chief Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-3820. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.