In Las Vegas this weekend, in a windowless ballroom deep in the Mandalay Bay casino’s massive convention center, a Somali cab driver took on a billionaire and won.

Despite being entirely new to participating in American politics, Jamal was giving the “realignment speech,” an important role in the Nevada caucus process. His task was to entice unaligned caucusers to join the Bernie Sanders group after their candidates had been declared unviable on the first round of voting. There were about twenty Steyer voters up for grabs, along with five in the Warren group (and zero for Pete Buttigeig). Only Sanders and Biden were viable during the first round.

“Bernie fights for us!” Jamal yelled to a room of casino workers and fellow taxi drivers.

His realignment speech followed one given by Evi Steyer, a young scion of the Steyer family fortune. Steyer, in a bright blue dress and combat boots, addressed the assembled housekeepers, janitors, and taxi drivers on behalf of her billionaire father Tom (“my dad”), praising him for his commitment to unions, his plan to raise the minimum wage to $22 an hour, and his promise to allow some workers to “keep their health care.”

The last point was a dig at Sanders and Medicare for All, both of which had been targets of Vegas’s powerful Culinary Union throughout February. Despite Steyer’s promises, her dad was still not viable after the realignment. Bernie gained even more support after Jamal gave his realignment speech, and he hugged the new workers as they joined their group.

“We’re all working here, and [Bernie] supports all of us,” he said.

Mandalay Bay, a luxury resort owned jointly by Blackstone and MGM Grand, boasts a four-star hotel, an eleven-acre pool, and real estate assets worth over $2 billion. It takes 1,500 workers, including housekeepers, maintenance staff, waitresses, and janitors, to keep it running every day.

On Nevada caucus day, it was host to one of seven caucuses open to workers with Saturday shifts on the Vegas strip, allowing them to participate in the primary without having to take the day off. And while Bernie was projected to win Nevada overall, his victory at Mandalay Bay was far from assured.

Throughout February, the Culinary Union campaigned hard against Sanders and Medicare for All. Instead of endorsing a candidate, the union encouraged their members to support anyone but Sanders. Because of this, he was widely expected to lose at all the Strip caucuses.

But workers in the belly of the beast of wealth and excess voted decisively for the workers’ candidate: Sanders went on to win five out of the seven Strip caucuses, tied at one, and came in second place at another, winning the most delegates on the Strip. Casino and hotel workers who are members of the Culinary Union shocked their union leadership by ignoring the leadership’s fearmongering around Sanders and Medicare for All. And at a similar hotel and casino further down the Strip, the Rio, a dozen taxi drivers came in to caucus together and kept Steyer from viability, all standing with Sanders. Sanders won the Nevada caucus by a landslide.