Unions plan massive Nev. election campaign
By Ben Botkin Las Vegas Review-Journal
Labor-backed groups are putting their organizing muscle and manpower into the 2016 campaign season in Nevada, an effort that will deploy thousands of canvassers and result in hundreds of thousands of voter contacts.
It’s a massive undertaking that labor leaders hope will tip the scales in Nevada, a swing state in the presidential election and ground zero for a hotly contested U.S. Senate race for the open seat of outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Republican Congressman Joe Heck and Democratic candidate Catherine Cortez Masto, a former Nevada attorney general, are facing off for that seat.
The AFL-CIO’s 2016 effort is its largest compared with efforts during prior elections, the organization says. Nevada is one of six battleground states that the powerful AFL-CIO, which backs Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, has made a priority. The other five are Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.