Trump campaign mum on Nevada voter outreach efforts

With seven months to go until the presidential election, the voter outreach strategies between the Biden-Harris and Trump campaigns in Nevada are looking different.

The Biden campaign has opened multiple campaign offices across the Las Vegas Valley and is holding regular events on a variety of issues, from gun violence with UNLV shooting survivors to Black maternal health with health care workers. High-profile national Democrats have come out to boost the Biden-Harris campaign, and Vice President Kamala Harris has traveled to the Silver State four times since January.

But it is unclear what Donald Trump’s campaign efforts look like in the Silver State at this point in the election cycle. His campaign office listed on Google is closed (it is now occupied by a solar company), and he hasn’t held a public event since his win in the Nevada GOP presidential caucus in February.

Campaign staff said its team is on the ground and working hard in Nevada, but they declined to provide specifics on outreach efforts. They said they did not want to give away the campaign’s strategy to Democrats.

Trump campaign senior adviser and RNC Chief of Staff Chris LaCivita said in a statement that Trump’s operation is fueled by hundreds of thousands of small-dollar donors and has energized supporters, “and without sharing our strategy with Democrats through the media, we have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President Trump to victory” in November.

Prioritizing elsewhere?

The last Republican presidential nominee to win Nevada was George W. Bush in 2004. Since then, Democrats have claimed victory, although sometimes by small margins. In both 2020 and 2016, for instance, Democrats won Nevada by about 2.4 percent.

While Trump has won every Nevada primary he’s competed in, he’s lost the Silver State — whose electorate is made up of an increasing majority of nonpartisan voters — in two general elections. Could it be that winning Nevada isn’t a priority for the former president? Political scientist David Damore thinks there could be more at play.

Nevada is the smallest swing state in terms of electoral college votes, so that could impact which states his campaign chooses to prioritize, Damore said.

Democrats have been able to use the abortion issue to cast Republicans as extremists on social issues who rub moderate voters and moderate Republicans the wrong way, according to Damore, executive director of The Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West.

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