LAS VEGAS — Days before Democratic Senate hopeful Catherine Cortez Masto appeared at a reception honoring Asian-American labor activists, Donald Trump proposed expanding his controversial immigration ban to natives of the Philippines.

Cortez Masto — running against GOP Rep. Joe Heck in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races, and in a rare state where Asian-American voters could tip the election — pounced.


“Under a Trump presidency, no immigrants from the Philippines would be able to come to the United States,” she told the crowd. “With Donald Trump in power and Congressman Heck enabling him and supporting him, the [Asian-American and Pacific-Islanders] community here in Las Vegas and across the country would suffer.”

Her comments weren't just the standard Democratic strategy to tie GOP opponents to their provocative standard-bearer. Both Cortez Masto and Heck are intensely courting Asian-American voters in the battle to replace Harry Reid in Nevada, and for good reason: Asian-American voters, by some estimates, make up as much as 9 percent of the electorate — far more than in other states with close Senate races this year, like Ohio and New Hampshire.

Aside from their sheer numbers, Asian-Americans have shown they can vote as a powerful bloc. Nearly 80 percent of the Asian-American electorate backed Reid in his 2010 victory over Sharron Angle, when polls right up until Election Day projected that Reid would narrowly lose. Asian-Americans in Nevada tend to favor Democrats, potentially giving Cortez Masto a boost in a neck-and-neck race.

But Heck is by no means ceding the vote. He regularly meets with Asian-owned businesses and appears in local Korean- and Chinese-language publications. The lawmaker, who prevailed three times in a Southern Nevada swing district, has employed Mandarin and Tagalog speakers on his congressional staff.

Cortez Masto is making herself as visible as possible, too. She's hosted two roundtables with Asian-American community leaders this year and launched an “AAPI for Cortez Masto” coalition made up of nearly two dozen Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders that includes newspaper publishers, restaurant owners and local activists.

Cortez Masto also seizes any opportunity to tether Heck to Trump, whose disapproval ratings among Asian-Americans rival his dismal standing with black and Latino voters.

Nationally, three-fifths of Asian-American voters have a negative view of Trump, while just 1 in 5 have a positive impression, according to a May survey from APIAVote, a nonpartisan Asian-American civic engagement group. That’s in contrast to Hillary Clinton’s 62-to-26 favorable vs. unfavorable rating.

Making matters worse, Trump had recently listed the Philippines among nearly a dozen countries that the GOP nominee claimed harbored potential terrorists. Utah attorney general and Trump surrogate Sean Reyes later clarified that Trump was referring only to “terrorist elements” in the Philippines and not the entire population itself.

Already, Cortez Masto starts with some institutional advantages over Heck among Asian-American voters. Key Asian-American leaders here said they see Cortez Masto as the natural heir to Reid — who, in his three decades as Nevada’s senator, built close ties with the state’s Filipino and Chinese populations.

Many of the AAPI officials involved in Cortez Masto’s campaign are longtime Reid supporters, and she’ll also be able to rely on Reid’s powerful political machine to drive out voters on Election Day.

“Now, I think many of us are realizing that not only are they a productive part of our community and they’re engaged and they’re here to stay, but hey, we need to do a better job to open lines of communication,” Cortez Masto said in an interview.

In the state, Asian-Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats than Republican, with 41 percent of AAPI voters in Nevada identifying as Democrats and 26 percent aligning with the GOP, according to the APIAVote survey.

Unlike other Senate battlegrounds this year such as Ohio, New Hampshire and Florida, where the Asian-American population is paltry, the Asian-American electorate in Nevada is estimated at between 7 percent and 9 percent.

In raw numbers, the Asian-American population has boomed dramatically in recent years. From 2000 to 2010, Nevada’s Asian-American population went from about 112,000 to nearly 243,000, according to the U.S. Census. That population is dominated by Filipinos, with more than 100,000 estimated in the state.

“The fact that they tend to be organized and well-informed, I think puts them ahead of the curve,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), a former state party chairman, said of the Asian-American population in Nevada.

Nevada politicians in the past have found creative ways to appeal to Asian-American voters, who've been drawn to Nevada by because of its robust job market in tourism-heavy Las Vegas and the health care sector.

During his 2010 reelection bid against Angle, Reid secured the endorsement of Manny Pacquiao, the famed boxer with a cult status in his native Philippines. Exit polling in the race showed Reid winning Asian-American voters in a landslide; he earned 79 percent of the electorate’s vote, compared with just 19 percent for Angle.

Rep. Joe Heck is making overtures to Nevada's Asian American community in a tight race for a Senate seat against Catherine Cortez Masto. | AP Photo

But unlike the widely derided Angle — who once told a group of Latino high school students that some of them “look a little more Asian” — Heck has demonstrated that he can appeal to a diverse electorate. Heck, 54, represents a district that is 16 percent Asian-American and regularly meets with groups representing the Filipino, Chinese and Vietnamese communities.

“That’s been Joe’s approach, talking and listening, and you get to know people,” said Heck campaign spokesman Brian Baluta. “So when somebody like Catherine Cortez Masto tries to characterize you in a way that’s not true, community members know otherwise.”

Treatment of Filipino veterans is also a major issue in Nevada. Reid included language in the 2009 stimulus measure that provided compensation for Filipino veterans who served in World War II. For years, Reid pushed the Obama administration to enact a program that would allow Filipino-American veterans to quickly bring in relatives from the Philippines, where immigrants can wait more than two decades until visas become available to the United States. That program was enacted in June.

Heck and Cortez Masto have both tried to take up that mantle. Cortez Masto, 52, has hosted a discussion with Filipino veterans during her Senate bid, and Heck has advocated for legislation that would award the Congressional Gold Medal to Filipino veterans from World War II.

The Nevada Senate is proving to be one of the most heated battlegrounds this cycle, with polls showing Cortez Masto and Heck in a tight race that is the Republican Party’s only realistic option to pluck off a Democratic-held Senate seat this November.

The RealClearPolitics' polling average over the past three months gives Heck a minuscule, 0.2 percent advantage. A Suffolk University poll released last week has Cortez Masto and Heck tied at 37 points each.

Local officials say outreach to Asian-American voters can be tough, particularly in Las Vegas, where the 24-7 culture means many people work odd hours. Language barriers are also an issue.

But local activists say the attitude of elected officials toward Asian-Americans is changing as fast as that population.

“In the past we were just, ‘Oh well, if we have time, we’ll make it,’” Rozita Lee, a longtime Asian-American and Pacific Islander activist in Nevada who supports Cortez Masto, said of politicians’ mind-set toward Asian-American voters. “But now, they make a concerted effort to make time, to come to our dinners, come to our events. And that impresses a lot of our people.”