HENDERSON, Nevada — Bernie Sanders delivered his final stump speech at Nevada caucuses Friday night, railing against establishment politics and economics under a full moon at an outdoor pavilion overlooking Las Vegas.
“This campaign is gaining momentum because we are listening to the pain of the people,” Sanders declared, adding that a win Saturday would be the “beginning of the political revolution.”
“That’s not just phraseology,” he added. “That’s reality.”
A Sanders win in the Nevada caucuses would poke holes in Hillary Clinton’s firewall of support from non-white voters, and show potential for Sanders as a successful national candidate in the general election.
Campaign Manager Jeff Weaver said that even if the Vermont senator loses Saturday — but puts up a good score on the board — he wins.
“However it turns out, what we’ve shown is that the whole ‘firewall’ theory of the Clintons is just hooey,” he said.
While early polls out of state had Clinton with a large lead, Sanders now appears to be in a dead heat with Clinton, though polling here is limited and caucuses are difficult to gauge.
A CNN/ORC poll released late Wednesday had Clinton ahead of Sanders by a hair, 48 percent to 47 percent.
While the makeup of the more than 2,000 supporters at the Friday rally included the typical Sanderista — white, young and hip — there were hundreds of black and brown faces in the crowd, mostly Latinos and African-Americans, who enthusiastically cheered and clapped when Sanders appealed to them.
Sanders declared he was listening to the “Latino community who are demanding to get out of the shadows and want a path towards citizenship” and to “our African-American brothers and sisters, who are telling us they are tired of a criminal justice system which is broken.”
Without offering details about how he would address immigration and police brutality issues, Sanders veered back into his stump speech. He railed against the cost of a college diploma, and called for a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
When Sanders launched into attacks on Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, a young man yelled “Goldman sucks!”
One fan held a homemade sign reading “I have a yoooge crush on Bernie” while many more held campaign signs saying “Unidos con Bernie.” The United with Bernie campaign has set up a website UnidosConBernie.com, with Sanders literature and videos in Spanish.
While the Vermont senator has been working on drawing Latino voters to his campaign, he hasn’t had time to brush up on his Spanish. Spokesman Michael Briggs said Bernie barely got out a “gracias” in a recent interview with Univision.
‘Biggest challenge is name recognition’
Sanders covered a lot of ground Friday, jetting nearly 800 miles on a charter plane in a frenzied, three-stop trip from the northern tip of the state to the south, landing in Las Vegas in the early evening.
While Sanders greeted frontline workers at Caesar’s Palace and the Bellagio Hotel, musicians amped up the Henderson crowd. The bands included Fantastic Negrito and Cold War Kids, and Gaby Hoffman, a star of the HBO show Girls spoke.
Early Friday, actress Susan Sarandon returned to the trail to stump for Sanders, and storied entertainer Dick Van Dyke spoke on behalf of the senator.
A number of the political speakers at the evening rally were Latino, including Lucy Flores, a rising Democratic star in Nevada now running for Congress. Campaign stalwart Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a Chicago politician who mounted a strong challenge to incumbent Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in April, also spoke.
Garcia said he thinks Latinos are quickly moving to Sanders in Nevada as people find out who he is and what he stands for.
“His biggest challenge has been name recognition,” Garcia said. “But when people hear about him, learn about him, they move toward him.
“We feel very good about the caucuses tomorrow,” he added. “A real hope for the country has been stirred in 2016.”
Sanders netted the endorsement of the Clark County Black Caucus Friday, an influential group representing Nevada’s largest county of 2 million, which includes Las Vegas.
“We know that Sen. Sanders’ plans will address the institutional racism that plagues our nation and leaves millions of young African-Americans jobless, incarcerated, and hopeless,” said Steve Munford, a CCBC board member. “Bernie Sanders has stood with our community since the civil rights movement and continues to stand with us today.”
Sanders repeated a favorite refrain Friday that a few months ago “we were way behind in Iowa, way behind in New Hampshire, way behind in Nevada. Guess what? Things have changed.”
Weaver said the campaign will hold a huge get-out-the-caucus push Saturday morning to get voters to caucus locations by 11 a.m.
The campaign will hold a concert Saturday night in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, as it did for Iowa and New Hampshire. Weaver said the events bring in last-minute support from young people, and it’s a way to reward staffers and volunteers after days of door-knocking and cold calls.
“It builds community, it’s a great way to bring people out,” Weaver said. “And at the end of a hard-fought campaign, it’s also a little bit of a celebration of all the work people have done.”
Weaver then walked over to Senior Strategist Tad Devine and began air-drumming, in tempo with the band onstage.
