The Washoe County Democratic Party in Northern Nevada is taking over duties coordinating campaigns to push for the election of Democrats statewide in 2022, a responsibility generally led by the state party.
The Washoe County party on Tuesday voted in favor of the change in the latest shakeup between the more progressive state party leadership elected this spring and mainline Democrats.
The move means the Washoe group will lead the effort to elect Democrats up and down the ballot in 2022 midterm elections, which will feature two big-ticket races with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Gov. Steve Sisolak up for reelection.
Both are in favor of the change, Washoe officials said in a news release.
The release announcing the vote had statements of support from some of the most prominent Democrats in the state, also including Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas.
“This election cycle couldn’t be more important for Nevada and for the country,” Sisolak said in the statement. “Winning in 2022 means we are able to build on the incredible progress we’ve made and ensure our state recovers from this pandemic. We will work together with the state party and county parties in every corner of the state to achieve our shared goal of protecting and expanding on our Democratic success.”
Candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America in March won election to all state party leadership positions, including chairwoman Judith Whitmer, who also founded the state party’s Left Caucus.
The win saw a mass exodus of party staffers, and a $450,000 transfer to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee before the current leadership took over. The takeover by DSA-backed candidates was widely seen as a blow to the Democratic establishment — a political machine built by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
When she was elected in March, Whitmer told the Sun, “We have a tendency to divide ourselves, and that’s what I want to get past.”
But that wasn’t the case last month when then-Treasurer Howard Beckerman resigned after Whitmer released a statement critical of Israel’s role in that country’s conflict with Palestinians.
The statement also received criticism from Democratic elected officials like Nevada Rep. Susie Lee, whose district makes up much of Henderson, and Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen.
“In Nevada and in the halls of Congress, support for Israel and its right to defend itself remains a strong bipartisan issue,” Rosen said in a statement in May. “De-escalation is the only way forward to protect innocent civilians on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
In a statement, Whitmer called the shift “ill-advised and undemocratic” but stressed the state party will still work to elect Democrats and “provide thoughtful leadership on progressive issues.”
“The Nevada State Democratic Party was designed to coordinate and win Democratic campaigns and remains the only sanctioned Democratic Party in the state,“ Whitmer said. “It is a profoundly dangerous choice to sidestep the state party structure and its democratically elected leadership in favor of a less-successful county organization in a corner of the state that has not seen the solid-blue shifts that we’ve seen elsewhere.”