LAS VEGAS — Last December, a series of presidential hopefuls began courting Yvanna Cancela.
At 31, the former political director of the state's legendarily powerful culinary workers' union and campaign operative for then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is Nevada's first Latina state senator.
Ultimately, it was former Vice President Joe Biden who won the sweepstakes: When he called shortly before announcing his candidacy in April to talk about the state's politics, Cancela cut him off and offered her endorsement, citing his "leadership" qualities as the determinative factor.
Any campaign would kill to have her making its case in this city's union halls and community centers because her endorsement comes with much more on-the-ground political know-how and muscle than most, and, as a young woman of color who has fought for workers and gone to war with drug companies, she's both a practitioner of the David-vs.-Goliath populism that ignites the party's base and an embodiment of sought-after demographics.
"Nevada is the early state that most reflects what what the rest of the country really looks like," Cancela said in an interview at a hipster coffee shop just outside her district Friday — the day before she was scheduled to campaign with Biden here.
Specifically, it's the first state on the primary calendar with a mix of white, black and Hispanic voters, and it figures to have even more importance than usual as both a potential bellwether and influencer in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
For the first time, Latino elected officials and voters — here, and in other key primary states — are getting a real full-court press from Democratic contenders during the early stages of the primary process. The reason for the shift is simple: this time around, they could play a much more prominent role in picking the nominee.
Depending on how the race unfolds, Latinos might even end up being the key to the contest.
That's a function mostly of heavily Hispanic states, including California and Texas, moving up on the primary calendar at the same time that the chances for a protracted, delegate-by-delegate fight among several candidates appear to be more likely than ever. The possibility of African American voters splitting among several candidates for the first time in several presidential primary cycles also raises the stakes for candidates in trying to get an edge with Latino voters.
"What's exciting is that by March 17 of next year, 70 percent of all eligible Latinos will have been able to cast a vote," said Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino. "That's unprecedented."
But for the campaigns, that also presents a tremendous logistical challenge — and one that may be prohibitively expensive for all but the best-funded among them. That helps explain why they have been eager to reach out to potential organizers and surrogates early on and to use national platforms as much as possible to communicate with Latino audiences.
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Candidates who want to win simply can't afford to wait to build a following among Latino voters.
Together, California and Texas, where Hispanics account for nearly 40 percent of the overall population, account for more than 15 percent of the elected delegates to next summer's Democratic convention. Both states wrap up voting next year on March 3 — Super Tuesday — which is the same day that several southern states with heavily African American Democratic electorates and a smattering of other states vote.
To win any delegates in those states, a candidate has to win either 15 percent statewide or at least 15 percent at the district level. In California, there are 53 congressional districts that award delegates, and in Texas there are 31 state Senate districts that do so.
In California, the Hispanic population ranges between 370,000 and 650,000 in 15 of the 53 districts — meaning it accounts for 50 percent or more of the total population in those districts — and there is no district in the state in which it is less than 10 percent of the population. Likewise, in Texas, all of the state Senate districts are at least 10 percent Hispanic, and several are majority-Hispanic.
A Quinnipiac poll released this week showed Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., leading the field in her home state with 23 percent, Biden at 21 percent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont at 18 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at 16 percent, and no other candidate with more than 3 percent statewide.
Warren has been in touch with the leadership of Latino advocacy organizations since long before she launched her campaign, according to sources who spoke to NBC News, and Biden's outreach has included a fully bilingual website, bilingual advertising and the first candidate meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
