Nevada’s Democratic delegates throw support to Harris

Nevada’s Democratic delegates unanimously supported Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination for president, the state party announced Monday.

All 49 Nevada delegates met and supported the nomination of Harris, who now has enough delegates to be the nominee.

“Vice President Kamala Harris understands Nevada — we were the first battleground state she visited this year — and Nevada Democrats know Vice President Harris has been instrumental to the Biden administration’s historic progress,” said Nevada State Democratic Party Chairwoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno in a statement Monday night.

Following Biden’s announcement that he will no longer seek re-election and supports Harris as his replacement, Democratic delegates have endorsed Harris in an effort to coalesce the party around one candidate and avoid another candidate coming forward that could result in a contested convention, according to UNLV political science professor Dan Lee.

“The quicker that Democrats can coalesce on a candidate, on one person, just the quicker this process can go and the less likelihood that it’s going to just become a jumbled mess that we’ve seen in 2016 and 2020,” Lee said.

Democrats who endorsed Harris included Nevada Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, who added that he was “ridin’ with Biden” but is now “cruisin’ with” the vice president, as well as Nevada delegate Matt Kimball, who told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday that he was “on board” with Harris, noting that she would be the first Asian American to receive the presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party.

“As an Asian American, I think that’s incredible that this country has come very far from where it started,” Kimball said.

The AFL-CIO, which in Nevada represents more than 150,000 union members, announced its endorsement of Harris on Monday.

“From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler in a statement, adding the federation is committed to mobilizing for her to ensure she becomes president.

Harris’ campaign has gained momentum since she expressed her intention to “earn and win” the Democratic nomination. It raised $81 million in its first 24 hours, and Sunday marked the largest day of volunteer recruitment of the campaign.

It recruited over 600 Nevadans to sign up to volunteer, more than three times a normal Sunday, according to the Harris campaign.

“Nevada Democrats never take any vote for granted which is why we invested early in a ground game that will send Kamala Harris to the White House and elect Democrats up and down the ballot,” Monroe-Moreno said. “All roads to the White House lead through Nevada and we have already started the work to elect Vice President Harris this November.”

The Nevada campaign for Harris is continuing its work that it started when it was the Biden-Harris campaign. It has over 80 staff in 13 offices across the state, including in North Las Vegas, east Las Vegas, southwest Las Vegas, Carson City and Minden, according to the campaign.

Kimball, who had supported Biden’s nomination, said that as of Monday morning, he’d only spoken to a couple of fellow delegates, but he imagined that there would be more formal meetings in the near future.

While he doesn’t know how the convention will play out, Kimball said he was positive Harris would prevail.

“I don’t think we’re going to see what happened in Chicago last cycle,” he said about the split and contentious 1968 convention there.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X. Staff writer Ricardo Torres-Cortez contributed to this report.