Then, on Tuesday, late deciders swung the race. Though numbers didn’t match the turnout rates of 2018, the work of progressive activist groups, labor unions like the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, and Democratic canvassers succeeded in getting enough working-class, Latino, and undecided voters to the polls in the state’s largest counties.
The groups, part of the vaunted turnout operation welded together by the late Sen. Harry Reid, had bet that increased voter contact, door-to-door outreach, and a message focused on affordability and defense of individual rights would be the key to “stem this tide of history of the ruling party in power losing in the midterm,” the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union, Ted Pappageorge, told me in October.
The Culinary Union continues to be instrumental in padding Cortez Masto’s win. Its canvassers, along with volunteers with the state’s Democratic political operation, have been spread out across Clark County since Election Day to contact voters whose ballots had to be “cured,” or corrected for errors. Voters have until Monday to fix those ballots.