LAS VEGAS -- The marijuana is legal and the birth control will be free of co-pays as of Jan. 1. The population is about half minority, and businesses and unions are both helping immigrants become citizens. It's getting an NFL team and an interstate highway connecting Las Vegas to Phoenix. And while much of the nation is embroiled in bitterly partisan politics, the Republican governor and the Democratic legislature are getting along pretty well as they manage a fast-growing and increasingly diverse electorate.

This is the new Nevada, a largely desert state that is becoming an oasis for progressives and immigrants even as it retains a fierce independent streak prized by conservatives. Growing speedily and changing by the month, Nevada's populace is the future face of America. And as the population is making Nevada an increasingly blue and ethnically pluralistic state, the power centers in the public and private sectors are responding in kind, particularly when it comes to matters of diversity. Instead of thwarting the migration and immigration that are transforming the state, lawmakers, business owners and union leaders are embracing it.

"Nevada has it right. We do have it right," says William McCurdy, who, as chairman of the state Democratic Party and a member of the new majority in the Assembly, is reaping the political rewards of Nevada's changing demographics. "We are the future of the nation in 20, 40, 50 years," adds the 28-year-old chairman, the first African-American to hold the job in Nevada.

The state is still recovering from a particularly brutal treatment by the Great Recession, when the housing market crash made the state the hardest hit with foreclosures. Unemployment reached 13.7 percent in September 2010. Foreclosures around Las Vegas are still higher than in most U.S. cities, although the rate has dropped dramatically from last year. Unemployment was 4.8 percent in July, higher than the 4.3 percent national rate, but a marked improvement from seven years ago. And locals complain that schools are well underfunded . But despite its growing pains, Nevada is emerging as the future state of America.

Driven largely by growth in Las Vegas and its home of Clark County, which represents nearly three-fourths of the state population , Nevada indeed is a leader in American demographic trends. Not quite half of the state is white (without also identifying as Latino), and 29 percent are Hispanic. African-Americans are 10 percent, and Asian-Americans – who are the fastest-growing population in Nevada – comprise 9 percent of the people.

The state last year elected the U.S. Senate's first Latina, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. One of the state's congressmen, Ruben J. Kihuen, was born in Mexico, came to the States at age 8 as an undocumented immigrant , and became a citizen before becoming the first Hispanic Nevada has sent to Congress. The state's legislature is one of the most diverse in the nation, and is second only to Vermont in female representation .

Credit Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County for the literal and figurative changes in the face of the state, says Robert E. Lang, executive director of Brookings Mountain West and a leading expert on urban growth. The county leads the nation in the percentage of the population that was born outside the county. And it's not just foreign-born residents or East Coasters on a 21st century homesteading mission: Many come from California, bringing a Golden State mentality and politics to the once-conservative Silver State, he says.

Clark County, Lang says, "is more California than Nevada," with 30 percent of the 2016 electorate coming from the western neighbors, and just 10 percent born in Clark County. "Clark County today is probably where the country is in 2060," Lang says. And the politics and policies in the state increasingly reflect it, providing a window to what political parties and governors of other states will face in future decades.

"It's definitely moving toward the Western block [of liberal coastal states] as it gets bigger and more diverse, says UNLV political scientist David Damore.

Nevada in 2016 held onto a competitive Senate seat, picked up two U.S. House seats, and flipped both chambers of the state legislature to Democratic control, in large part because of changing demographics that has made Nevada what Lang calls "the new blue wall."

And state policies are reflecting both the progressive surge and the increasing minority population. Nevada ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in March. Last year, it passed groundbreaking rules allowing transgender people born in Nevada to change their designated sex on their birth certificates , and this year, Nevada banned so-called " conversion therapy " meant to "turn" gay people straight. A law that takes effect next year will require health plans to cover mammograms and contraception with no co-pays.

The state's Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, expanded Medicaid, a rebuke to the national GOP effort to limit the reach of the Affordable Care Act but essential, advocates say, to making sure Nevada's residents have health care coverage. (Sandoval did veto a Democratic legislature-backed effort to expand Medicaid for all, calling it "a novel idea" but one that would add too much uncertainty to insurance markets. Sandoval also signed the biggest tax increase in the state's history, funding an education reform plan. His education package not only includes tax credits for business contributing to a scholarship program for private schools, but pays for English as a Second Language (ESL) studies.

And while McCurdy would like to extend Democratic control to the governor's office as well, he describes Sandoval as "a true statesman. He definitely puts Nevada above politics." Sandoval has vetoed some of the Democrats more progressive offerings (such as Medicaid for all), but has also signed hundreds of Democratic measures, McCurdy says.

Teachers can get certified to instruct students even if they are not citizens. High school diplomas now carry a special seal for bilingual graduates. Non-citizens can get a " driver authorization card " to operate motor vehicles legally (but without other benefits of a regular driver's license) .

And the attention to Nevada's changing population extends to the private sector as well. While in other regions, immigrant advocates complain that businesses are exploiting undocumented or legal-but-new arrivals to the country, Nevada's gaming industry and the union that staffs it take the opposite approach.

The Culinary Workers Union provides free classes to members applying for U.S. citizenship, with its Citizenship Project helping 16,000 Nevadans become citizens for free since 2001, says union spokeswoman Bethany Khan. In 2016, the union helped 2,500 people become citizens in time to vote, she says. The union itself is 56 percent Latino and 55 percent female; many of its members work as housekeepers, casino workers or bartenders on the Last Vegas Strip – which itself is near Chinatown Plaza, which features the city's largest concentration of Asian businesses.

Union membership also provides unique benefits to provide upward movement for its mainly minority workers, Khan says, with a pension, free health care, access to a fund providing $25,000 in down payment assistance for housing, and free training for any other job represented by the union – meaning a housekeeper can become a sommelier.

And hotel and casino management are stepping in, as well. Caesars Entertainment, for example, offers employees reimbursement for the application and preparation costs for naturalization (not all Strip workers are members of the union and so not all can get the full-freight assistance the Culinary Workers provide, Khan says). Station Casinos offers assistance as well. And MGM Resorts International, the largest casino operator on the Las Vegas Strip, announced after the Charlottesville neo-Nazi march and deadly clash with counter-demonstrators that it would match all employee donations to civil rights groups including the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League, Human Rights Campaign, Council on American-Islamic Relations, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, League of United Latin American Citizens and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"There's just a real corporate mindset to value their employees. Many of them are immigrant families that make their beds and do their lawns," says Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani. "When Culinary would bring up the citizenship programs, they embraced it. They want to make sure they are not splitting families up."

Khan describes the union-management relationship as "like a marriage. You argue about things, but you understand you have shared interests and goals."

Lang points to Nevada as an inspirational or cautionary tale for politicians elsewhere in the nation who will be dealing with increasingly diverse electorates. Latinos, Asians and African-Americans tend to vote Democratic, boding well for the party. But Sandoval's success and popularity (he's the eighth-most popular governor in the country, despite being a GOP governor in a blue state, according to Morning Consult rankings ) shows that Republicans can make it work as well, says GOP consultant Greg Ferraro.