The Nevada caucuses are about to get underway as Republicans were filing into sites in Las Vegas and around the state to make their choice for the party's presidential candidate, expected to overwhelmingly favor former President Donald Trump.
If you are a registered Republican voter in Nevada wanting to participate in today’s caucuses, the state party says the process is simple: Either stop by a caucus site starting at 5 p.m. and stay for the whole meeting until 7:30 p.m., or “cast your secret paper ballot and go.”
One of the reasons the party says it opted to run caucuses, which are operated independently from the oversight of the Nevada Secretary of State and county election officials, instead of participate in Tuesday’s Republican presidential preference primary is for election security. You must bring a valid government-issued identification to participate, they say.
But their version of election security includes counting the paper ballots by hand — with a party-issued observer, according to the state party website. Unlike elections coordinated by the Secretary of State that are secure and conducted electronically, there’s no official clearinghouse for the caucus vote.
And some of the same party officials who are accused of participating in a scheme that would have falsely given the state’s electoral votes to Trump in the 2020 election are part of the planning for the caucuses.
Trump will almost certainly win the Nevada caucuses, because his only competition is a relative unknown, Texas businessman Ryan Binkley. Others, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have dropped out of the race and won’t be on the ballot for the caucuses, the state party indicates on its website. State party officials haven’t returned repeated phone calls to the Sun to detail how the caucuses will run but it’s expected that at each caucus site, a representative from the Trump campaign and a representative from Binkley’s campaign will be allowed to give a short speech in support of their candidate.
Critics say the caucuses were designed to award to Trump the state’s 26 delegates to the Republican National Convention in July, though as it turns out, he didn’t need the help.
In Tuesday’s presidential primary, “none of these candidates” received the most votes in a gesture viewed as a nod to Trump, who was not on the primary ballot because candidates couldn’t participate in both nominating contests, according to state party rules. The party is awarding delegates solely on results of the caucuses.
Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is the only remaining major candidate standing in Trump’s way of securing the nomination for a 2020 rematch against President Joe Biden. Biden took about 90% of the vote statewide Tuesday in the Nevada primary.
And Haley, whose campaign criticized the $55,000 entry fee for the Nevada caucuses and said it was “rigged” for Trump, opted not to campaign here and is focusing her efforts in her home state of South Carolina, where the GOP primary is set for Feb. 24.
Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney told reporters this week the campaign had “not spent a dime nor an ounce of energy on Nevada,” and, clearly, it showed.
Haley fell flat in the Nevada primary Tuesday, receiving 30.5% of the vote, technically finishing second to “none of these candidates” at 63.2% with about 88% of 170,000 votes being reported.
Haley said Wednesday that she had no plans to stop her campaign, which last quarter recorded $17.3 million in campaign contributions.
She posted on X, formerly Twitter, about how “Republicans keep doing the same thing and getting the same result: chaos.”
“A vote for Trump is a vote for more chaos,” she added, echoing a line she routinely delivers at campaign speeches.
Rarely has a none-of-the-above campaign had such muscle behind it.
Formally, the Trump campaign told supporters only to worry about Thursday’s caucus, but many of his allies in state and local GOP committees made it known that Republican voters could still show support for Trump by registering their opposition to Haley and voting “none of these candidates.”
Washoe County GOP Chair Bruce Parks, who pushed the decision to favor caucuses, said in an interview that he told voters who called his office — and Trump supporters — to participate in the primary by voting for “none of these candidates” over Haley.
“They basically told us, ‘They don’t care about us,’ ” Parks said. “By marking ‘none of these candidates,’ we respond in kind — we don’t care about you either.”
And Michael McDonald, the Nevada GOP chairman, added: “At the end of the day, the disrespect that Nikki Haley showed us, she just got reciprocated.”
McDonald and the rest of state party leadership are fiercely loyal to Trump. Additionally, McDonald is one of six so-called “fake electors” indicted by a Nevada grand jury for submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election in the state.
That brings Nevada to today’s caucuses, where voters must have registered by Jan. 8 to be eligible to participate.
While Trump secured a symbolic victory Tuesday, caucus turnout will still be worth monitoring. Turnout from Nevada’s 2016 GOP caucuses, where Trump was a political newcomer, featured a turnout of 74,848, or roughly 17% of the state’s active Republican voters at the time.
This year’s caucuses come just three days before Las Vegas hosts Super Bowl 58, which has brought thousands of visitors to town and can make travel somewhat more complicated for those making their way to their caucus site.
Trump, who will be in Las Vegas today for a watch party at Treasure Island, was in town late last month for a rally encouraging voters to participate in the caucuses and not the primary.
He will almost assuredly take a victory lap tonight. Then, he’ll likely turn his focus to South Carolina, where a win there might force Haley to suspend her campaign.
If candidates can take anything away from Tuesday’s repudiation of Haley, it’s that bypassing a state like Nevada — a crucial swing state — can prove costly, and that no electorate can be taken for granted.
The Trump team certainly knows as much.
“I’m proud to have had the privilege of working with the Nevada GOP to undeniably prove that not only is Nevada Trump Country, but we are the key to the West for victory in 2024,” Kash Patel, a senior adviser to Trump and the former deputy director of national intelligence, said in a statement. “Our grassroots efforts on the ground made history as ‘none of these candidates’ soared past failing candidate Nikki Haley. I look forward to supporting President Donald Trump tomorrow as he is awarded all Nevada delegates in our caucus and coming one step closer to taking back the White House.”
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