Jon Ralston

In a rundown area north of the Las Vegas Strip, Randi Weingarten was exhorting the dozens of workers wearing red shirts assembled before her.

"What you win at the bargaining table, you can lose at the ballot box,” the American Federation of Teachers president said Tuesday morning, paraphrasing the legendary UAW leader Walter Reuther. The 100 or so workers cheered loudly and gave Weingarten standing ovations before and after her short remarks, which mentioned the presidential race but also focused on Nevada’s critical U.S. Senate contest.

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And then they scattered, forming 11 teams of about 10 people each, a battalion ready to continue to knock on thousands of doors, mirroring what one team half its size would be doing in Reno.

If you wanted a glimpse into why the Democrats have such an advantage in Nevada, reflected in early early voting numbers, those workers in that room epitomized the ground game that carried Barack Obama to two wins here, and could propel Hillary Clinton and Catherine Cortez Masto to victories, not to mention state Sen. Ruben Kihuen in a key congressional race.

These were the LOAs of the Culinary Union, the most populous labor organization in the state and one that is emblematic of the diverse population of a state that looks like America. LOA stands for leave of absence, and these dozens of folks — housekeepers and cocktail workers who have benefited from the Cadillac plans their leaders have negotiated, mostly with casinos — have volunteered this cycle to put their jobs on hold to turn out voters for their chosen candidates.

Of Culinary’s 57,000 members, more than 30,000 are Hispanic and nearly 7,000 are African-American. And on the eve of the election, nearly 60 percent – 34,000 – of the union’s members are registered to vote, a record total for Local 226.

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You want more numbers? I have them: With 45 organizers, the team in Reno has knocked on more than 62,000 doors, and in the South, that number is an eye-popping 220,000 doors.

During a year in which nonwhites have never been more motivated to vote, the Culinary Union remains the most effective Democratic turnout machine. We saw it in the primary when the Culinary apparatus embraced Kihuen, who did not have the money of his two opponents but won in a landslide, almost entirely because of the union’s ground game.

Sure, there are other effective players this cycle – Laborers Local 872 in Vegas, For Our Future, Mi Familia Vota. But none can harness the passion of regular working people who understand the Reutherism that Weingarten intoned.

“Sure, they want Hillary to win,” the union’s political director, Yvanna Cancela, told me. “They want Catherine to win. They want Ruben to win. But they also want their union to win.”

This is no fly-by-night operation, either. They may be blue-collar workers, but they have sophisticated charts and algorithms designed to maximize the possibility that the doors they knock on will produce voters for their candidates. The Culinary hall is festooned with color-coded charts and tallies of doors knocked, while down the corridor red pins are stuck in a map to show where they have contacted voters.

They have five zones, many nested in Rep. Cresent Hardy’s district, where the Culinary Union has a score to settle. After helping to elect one of their own, Steven Horsford, in 2012, the union took part in the mass Democratic slumber party of 2014 as the GOP took over the state, including Hardy’s squeaker over Horsford, one of the biggest upsets in state history.

And that’s why D. Taylor, who runs the Culinary’s parent union, UNITE HERE, reminded the workers Tuesday of another narrow loss the Democrats endured four years ago.

“You guys are doing an unbelievable job,” Taylor told them. “We have to have a big lead in early voting. In 2012, (then-Rep.) Shelley Berkley lost (the Senate race) by 12,000 votes.”

That result came as Obama was winning the state by nearly 7 points, which is why so much attention from the Culinary Union and other Democratic groups, including many out of state agents, are focused on defeating Rep. Joe Heck in the Senate race (even as Clinton pulls away in Nevada). All polls show that contest within the margin of error, which is why the party is even more focused than usual on early voting.

So far, so good.

The numbers show that in both urban counties, Democrats are building up the firewall Taylor referred to. And it’s happening in Hardy’s district, too, where early returns in 2014 indicated Horsford could lose, but this cycle show Democrats with a huge turnout advantage.

This is far from over, despite the promising first three days for the Democrats. But the 90,000-voter edge the party amassed over the Republicans, and the GOP’s puny ground game by comparison, gives the Democrats a huge advantage. (The RNC has beefed up the state Republican Party yokels, but it’s not enough.)

Taylor closed with an appropriate allusion, referring to the workers’ brothers and sisters who had struck this summer at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. That property is owned by Carl Icahn, who closed the casino-hotel two weeks ago. But it was opened 26 years ago by Icahn pal Donald Trump, perhaps the single greatest motivating tool Democrats could have asked for to bridge any enthusiasm gap between Obama and Clinton, especially with minorities.

Before they went out to attack the day, the workers stood and showed that what Cancela said was true, that their pride in their union was motivating them, their chanting reverberating through the hall: “226. 226. 226.”

If there is indeed a wave in Nevada this cycle, that swarm of red shirts, North and South, will be a large reason the state goes blue.

Jon Ralston has been covering Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century and also blogs at ralstonreports.com.