![]() They accused her of having poor relationships with elected officials, of being a poor fundraiser, of failing to build the grassroots organizing infrastructure she promised, and of antagonizing leaders in the party. Whitmer’s critics - including those in the progressive wing - counter that any failures were largely hers. Records were missing and money had been transferred out.” “When we got the keys, there was a lot of reorganization that had to be done. “The previous administration pretty much burnt the house down,” said Whitmer. Officials insisted it was necessary because Whitmer lacked experience in winning battleground elections. Once Whitmer took her post, the Reid machine circumvented the state party and set up a coordinated campaign out of a local party in the state’s second-biggest county. Shortly before it was sealed, party staff in an apparent act of protest moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from their own coffers to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and later quit their positions. The state party didn’t take Whitmer’s victory lightly. “If we could have gotten our voter registration or get-out-the-vote efforts sooner, he could have won.” Steve Sisolak “lost by a very small minority,” said Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, a Sanders-supporting Democrat. At the time, Whitmer promised to make the state party “accountable to the people,” revamp its get-out-the-vote efforts, and leverage the national party to make Nevada the first-in-the-nation primary.įormer Nevada Gov. Sanders was part of the effort, sending texts from his political committee to encourage people to run for party posts and later fundraised for the state party. In an interview, Whitmer expressed surprise over Sanders’ disappointment, pointing to a meeting she had earlier this year with him: “I think he would have said to me, ‘Hey Judith, I’m disappointed in what you’re doing’ if that was actually a true statement.”īut even for the most optimistic-minded liberal in the state, the state of disarray among the progressive movement in Nevada represents a shocking turnaround from 2021.īack then, former Sanders aides, members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and other progressives united to elect Whitmer after working on Sanders’ win in the Nevada presidential caucus a year earlier. “Look, there’s a lot of well-meaning activists involved there, but they don’t understand the ins and outs of how you build modern campaigns.” “There just has been a complete lack of competence or ability to accomplish anything significant,” said Peter Koltak, a Democratic strategist and former Nevada senior adviser for Sanders’ 2020 campaign, of the current state party leadership. There is even talk that it might simply be a waste of time for the progressives to win control of a state party’s machinery. And it has set off larger debates about what, exactly, the progressive movement should be doing during the twilight of the senator’s career. The situation has left the Sanders coalition in Nevada fragmented right at the onset of the critical 2024 election. It was a big opportunity for Bernie-aligned folks in the state to prove some of the folks in the establishment wrong. “A lot of us feel sad about what could have been. “The senator is pretty disappointed in Judith’s chairmanship, specifically around her failure to build a strong grassroots movement in the state,” said a person familiar with Sanders’ thinking. And even key figures in Bernie world - including Sanders himself - say they are unhappy and embittered by what’s transpired. Judith Whitmer, the insurgent party chair who wrested control of the party from mainstream Democrats, is facing a challenge in her reelection campaign next month amid doubts from her own former supporters and accusations that she abandoned her progressive principles.
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