A Battle Born Team Fit for A Battle Born State
By: Ernesto Apreza
Tags: 2020 Presidential Race, Nevada Caucus, Democratic Party, Kamala Harris

In the weeks before Senator Kamala Harris decided to suspend her campaign, there were a handful of press stories that shed disproportional light on our organizational challenges.

During her campaign, I had the privilege of leading the operation in Nevada in partnership with Megan Jones — a phenomenal, longtime operative in the state. While I experienced my share of frustration, I can affirm that no Politico or New York Times report ever told the story of the family and movement we built in Nevada.

Before we close the chapter on the Nevada caucuses in the long road towards the nomination, I want to memorialize the work of a diverse, majority women group of warriors.

“Will we fight or will we retreat? We will fight”

It became clear by the afternoon on Election Day 2016 that things were not going our way. By the early evening, the worst scenarios of what a Trump presidency could mean were running through my mind. And then my heart shattered. I received a text from a young cousin that read ‘are my parents going to be ok?’ His parents are undocumented.

I had no words of comfort. All I could muster up was: ‘this does not mean we stop fighting.’ Up until Election Day, I could zone out Trump’s rhetoric because I was preoccupied doing everything I could to fight against his potential presidency. But those days were over.

In the days that followed election day, there were many fingers pointed, and so many theories about what the results meant. I quickly grew tired of all of the hot takes — they certainly weren’t helping cool down my rage or anxiety. In the midst of all the noise there was a voice I latched on to that posed the question: “Are we going to retreat, or are we going to fight? We must fight.” Something clicked; it was exactly how I felt. If she ever ran for president, I thought to myself, that was my candidate. Those words came from the newly elected junior Senator of California Kamala Harris.

Fast forward to February 2019. By a stroke of luck, I convince Kamala’s senior advisors that I had what it took to lead their team in Nevada. They decided to give me a chance, and the rest was history. I packed up by bags and before I knew it, I was driving back to Las Vegas.

“Megan and Emmy are on your team? You’re definitely going to win.”

Trial by fire is fairly standard on campaigns, and it was certainly true of my first official day on the campaign in early April. Senator Harris was visiting Reno and Carson City (first declared presidential candidate to visit Northern Nevada during the primaries, I might add) and it was my job to staff her. By this time, Kamala Harris was known for making experienced, high ranking government officials trip over their words. So, needless to say, I was nervous. She doesn’t grill her staff in the same way, but she does wants to know every piece of detail. You better know your stuff and it is understandable. As a woman of color in a political world dominated by white men, she wanted to be as prepared as possible. Luckily, I survived my first candidate visit.

During her first visit to Northern Nevada, and second visit to the state as candidate, one thing was very clear: the campaign had brought on board tested advisors who knew full well what it would take to win in Nevada. During her visit she met with almost all of the constitutional officers, leaders in the state legislature, and community leaders. During her visit, I repeatedly heard: ‘Once I heard Kamala had hired Emmy Ruiz and Megan Jones, I knew she was serious.’

Megan Jones got her start in politics as an intern for Senator Harry Reid (where she also met the love of her life and future Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones). She has been involved in every election cycle since then in some way, shape or form, and in the early days of the campaign she was also advising Speaker Jason Frierson in the legislature. How she manages to do it all, and be an amazing mom, no one knows. To say she had institutional knowledge of state policies and politics would be an understatement. Our state team and I were lucky; we had the great benefit of learning from a master. She quickly became the ying to my yang. She was the genius who liked to communicate through stream of consciousness and I was the agenda-oriented operator who was particular, to put it kindly. Both total control freaks.

Emmy Ruiz was the other heavy hitter adviser. Her and I go further back. I first met Emmy as my field director in 2012 for President Obama’s reelection campaign in Nevada. Since then, she has done so much work to make the world a better place, namely to elect more women and people of color across the country. In addition to doing the lord’s work nationwide, she also had two big Nevada wins under her belt: first, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win in the 08’ caucuses, and then Hillary Clinton’s win of ’16. This was the first time I had ever led a statewide operation, so having Emmy as a national adviser gave me a lot of comfort that I would have the support I needed, and I did.

A Battle Born Team Fit for A Battle Born State

“Great, now that you’re on board, please start hiring your team.” It was still three weeks before my first day on the job, but time was of the essence and I had to hire a team quickly.

Gabe Uy was my first hire. At the time, he was completing an assignment abroad with the U.S Army Reserve. He is through and through a public servant, and I was thrilled he was going to join the team as our Nevada political director. Two queer people of color at the helm of the state organization in the early days — this fact wasn’t lost on me. Gabe was a rare native-Nevadan with roots in political activism going back to his Mom who was an SEIU member — she soon became our campaign mom. Much to our dismay, Gabe was called back to duty in early November. The team was devastated. No one else on the team could make us laugh or make light of any situation quite like Gabe. Apart from his energy, he and our deputy political director (later political director) Lauren Brooks, secured the second most endorsements (47), by the end of November. This was second only to former Vice President Joe Biden according to the Nevada Independent — a noteworthy accomplishment given the discrepancy in name ID.

This accomplishment wouldn’t have been possible without Lauren Brooks. Lauren was another early hire. In the handful of cycles I’ve been a part of, I have never seen a local leader have so much love and admiration from their community nor have I seen someone have so much dedication for their community. It’s why it’s not surprising that so many leaders seeking public office in the state go to Lauren for insights and connections into Nevada’s vibrant African American community. For her, this campaign couldn’t have been more personal. She was a longtime fan of Kamala Harris, and a fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha Soror. In addition to securing endorsements, I know we wouldn’t have built such a strong relationship with Nevada’s African American community without her.

One of the things I loved most about our team was how many women were in leadership. Just like our candidate, our field director, charged with leading the largest team in the state campaign, was a phenomenal woman of color. Christiana Ho was working for the DNC when she was hired. A field director has to be able to do two things well (among many others): manage the personalities of a team that is under constant physical and emotional pressure and manage a program that holds people accountable to high goals. Few people are able to do that job, and fewer could do it as well as Christiana. There was no one on our team more invested in the personal and professional development of others than her. It was evident in the 2 a.m. emails I would get from her on things her team needed, and in the daily conversations we would have about navigating tough situations. I was able to retain my sanity, in part, because I had Christiana as a sounding board. At 100 days out of the Nevada Caucuses, we were the fourth or fifth largest campaign team in the state, yet had made more than a million voter contacts. A campaign whose candidate rhymes with Larry Landers gloated about a similar figure on the same day but they had a substantially larger staff, some of whom, we heard, were strictly paid canvassers. Most importantly, by the time we took a break for Thanksgiving, we had more than 240 volunteer leaders across the state ready to lead in the final months.

Eventually Christiana received some much-needed support when Olivia Stitillis was promoted to Deputy Field Director. Olivia was a former educator, and there’s no doubt that if the world had more folks with her work ethic dedicated to making the world a better place, we would have a completely different country. Among many programs, Olivia built and implemented our paid fellows program. Because of her work, more than a dozen young leaders, majority native-Nevadans and majority-female, learned organizing skills and helped build our movement. All while getting paid $15 an hour. Through the program, we added to the strong bench of prospective leaders in the state.

No effective campaign can operate without the data to help us make strategic decisions about our limited resources. Natalie Tham joined our team in June. In so many ways she was not your typical data director — she had social skill for starters, and she was ultimately driven at a personal level to empower a new electorate to participate in the caucuses. She did just that. In mid-October, the Nevada State Democratic Party released early vote sites. Natalie quickly sprung into action and put together reports that helped us identify geographic gaps. The gaps were in communities with a high concentration of voters of color. Megan and I took the information to the party and presented a case for why we needed more sites in certain parts of the state. I thought there was no way the party would make any adjustments — to their credit, they had undergone an extensive process to accept feedback and requests for sites. A few weeks later, we received a call from the party; they were going to add an additional location on Craig Road in North Las Vegas. Because of Natalie’s quick work, hundreds of voters, very likely black voters and other voters of color, had a closer location to home to cast their preferences.

Women getting shit done — if you weren’t already catching on, it was a theme. And it was certainly was true of our communications director Helen Kalla.

In a short time, Helen had made a name for herself in Nevada politics. She got her start as communications director for the Nevada State Democratic Party during a cycle in which the state elected its second female Senator to the US Senate and first Democratic governor in 20 years. She then went on to serve as the Governor’s communication director. We’d hit the jackpot — there was no other communications director for a presidential campaign who had the pre-existing relationships with Nevada reporters that Helen had. This proved to be incredibly helpful, especially when outlets sought commentary on the landscape and primary process. Helen’s knowledge of the state helped us garner coverage when it was often nearly impossible to break through — from calling out hate speech on UNR’s campus to standing in solidarity with local advocates on ending the 287(g) agreement. By the time the campaign was suspended, we had completed more than 15 candidate interviews, and garnered more than 115 proactively pitched or placed stories. These accomplishments wouldn’t have been possible without our press secretary.

Helen couldn’t join the campaign until after the legislative session was over in June. We needed communications help sooner, and we got it. Renzo Olivari agreed to join the team in May. He too got his start in the 2018 cycle in Nevada, helping the Jacky Rosen campaign with outreach to constituency media. If I told you he was only 23, you wouldn’t believe me, for the most part. Renzo demonstrated the value of having unjaded, non-cynical voices in the room. No one pitched more ideas, as crazy as some may have been, than Renzo and it was always energizing to have his input. He quickly became the team’s little brother, but his smarts easily made him the oldest in the room — not to mention loafers were his ammo.

The Heart of Our Campaign

It is cliché to say, but true nonetheless: our organizers, regional organizing directors, volunteers, and endorsers were our beating heart and almost always our guiding light in tough times.

The field organizers in most campaigns are always a random assortment of human experiences and backgrounds motivated by deep personal reasons, and this cycle was no different. We had our organizing queens of east Las Vegas Gissell Vasquez and Leslie Aguilar. They launched ‘Mujeres Para Kamala’ in a small panadería with a group of powerhouse Latinas. For Gissell, this fight was, in part, motivated by a loved one who had been deported. It was only fitting that our east Las Vegas team would be led by Jose Monsivais. When Jose joined our team, he had just left the victorious campaign to elect Olivia Diaz to the Las Vegas City Council — the first Latina to sit on the council. When you meet Jose, you quickly learn there is no limit to his passion for organizing Latinos. As someone who had organized in East Las Vegas for President Obama, I was in awe of how deep is relationships in the community were.

In the southern rural towns, we had organizing pro Maxwell Martin. There’s often an assumption made that rural communities are a lost cause for finding support, yet so often rural communities are intent on proving that assumption wrong. If a community is paired with the right organizer, there is no telling what they’ll accomplish — Maxwell was that organizer. His team of volunteers in Pahrump, among other places, were some of the most active and committed. They were willing to make the over one-hour drive to Las Vegas just to cheer on Kamala and our team.

To the north, based in Reno, we had a small but mighty team. Annie Wensley and her black chihuahua Sam were always the highlight of any statewide training. Annie exemplified strength that is missed at first glance. It takes a self-motivated person to be an organizer in what often feels like island, and she rocked it.

Not as far north, in North Las Vegas, we had a great team too. Among them was Esther Badiata. An important note is that organizing in North and East Las Vegas is different than everywhere else in Nevada. Where in Henderson you can rely on volunteers to get to and from events on their own, in North and East Las Vegas, organizers often provide rides to volunteers in addition to all of the other work that goes into organizing. Despite thes challenges, Esthers’ hard work was always evident.

Giselle, Leslie, Maxwell, Annie, and Esther are only a handful of the amazing organizers and fellows who were on the frontlines every day. To lead them, we had a core group of regional organizers directors. In addition to Jose, we had Maddie, Darrin, and Nikki. Darrin Owens was a always a light. He led our team in North Las Vegas. We had weekly All Staff calls on Fridays and we always left a few minutes to celebrate one another at the end. Darrin always had something to celebrate, and I eventually started to look forward to his Friday sermons (he’s an ordained youth pastor too, so it checks out). I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Darrin is also a social media brand specialist — you’ll have to ask him about that. In the western part of the city, we had Nikki Otake who you could always rely on to deliver results, and Maddie Summers who worked hard and was promoted to regional organizing director.

Then there are our endorsers who so often propped us up. State Senator Pat Spearman, Former Clark County Democratic Chair Chris Miller, Former NV Rural Nevada Dems Chair Carissa Snedeker, and former Henderson city councilwoman Geri Schroder were early endorsers and everything you could ever want an endorser to be — someone who walks the walk. We also had Nevada legends like Rose McKinney James and Helen Foley in our corner, who always helped us remember the bigger picture.

‘Keep Fighting’

When news of the campaign’s suspension came, we were told the Senator would be making her way to all of the early states to personally thank everyone for their work. It was as you’d expect. Tears, both sad and happy, and lots of laughter.

First, she met with staff. She shared what had led to her decision, told us to celebrate what we had accomplished, and reminded us why we joined this movement in the first place. Her ask? To keep fighting.

We then went around the room and everyone from organizers to leadership shared their stories — what motivated them, the crazy things that happened (like Madeline Shiley getting bit by a dog while canvassing), ect. As we went around, we were reminded of how special this group was — Annie Wensely shared that because of her disability she often felt like added weight to any team she was a part of, but that our team was different and felt supported.

After the Senator spoke, I took the opportunity to share most of what I’ve shared here. My intent was for her to be proud of the movement she inspired, and for those who did the work to be proud of their accomplishments too.

Every member of the Nevada team for Kamala Harris has so much to be proud of. Regardless of whether our candidate is listed for preference on Nevada Caucus Day, we shaped the primary in ways that lasted well beyond the day our campaign ended.

The family we built isn’t going anywhere, and the fight for justice continues. We were a battle born team fit for a battle born state.