Democrats push positive message as election year nears

The Democratic National Committee rolled into Las Vegas Tuesday morning on a nationwide bus tour to push a positive message for the party.

Gov. Steve Sisolak and Las Vegas Councilwoman Olivia Diaz were among those who stood at a microphone in Eastside Cutters barber shop near Eastern Avenue and Bonanza Road to tout Democratic policy wins.

The tour comes at the beginning of an election cycle that will shine the national spotlight on Nevada. Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s re-election race could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate, and Sisolak is running for a second and final term.

“We’re dealing with a once-in-a-generation pandemic, as you’re well aware of,” Sisolak said Tuesday. “We need to take this opportunity to invest in our communities in our state to make it better.”

Sisolak said almost 10,000 grants have been awarded through the state’s Pandemic Emergency Technical Support (PETS) Grant program. The money has helped businesses stay open, pay their rent and pay their employees, Sisolak said.

The grant program is funded by federal relief dollars.

Erica Mosca, founder and executive director of Leaders in Training, said the grant helped ensure students on the east side of Las Vegas have access to technology.

Diaz, whose ward includes east Las Vegas, said expanded child tax credits have been monumental for working- and middle-class families. She also said he hopes to see new tax breaks to give people additional relief.

“All of this will help us make sure that we’re building back not just better, but stronger, because we are Nevada strong, and we need to make sure that we’re offering this not just in the moment, or for our working folks now, but for our kids and into the future,” she said.

In a statement, Republican National Committee spokesman Keith Schipper criticized the tour stop as an effort to distract from the fallout of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“The DNC’s ‘Build Back Better’ bus tour through Nevada is a slap in the face to the Americans still stuck in Afghanistan and to our Afghan allies who were abandoned,” he said. “It is obvious that the Democrats are attempting to shift focus away from the crisis at hand, but Nevadans will not forget the humanitarian disaster caused by Joe Biden’s failed leadership.”

Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter.