How Hillary Clinton's Campaign Is Making Its Play for Native American Support

National Journal:SCHURZ, Nev.—The three organizers from the Clinton campaign had traveled all the way to this small town nestled between jagged mountains and broad plains in ultra-rural Mineral County, more than 350 miles from Las Vegas and 100 miles from Reno, to meet with five people on a Native American reservation.

With a small circle of folding chairs in the Walker River Paiute Reservation's Agai-Dicutta ("Trout Eaters" in the Paiute language) Community Center, the room was set up like any other organizing meeting: Handwritten posters hung on the wall, waiting to be filled in, featured prompts like "I support Hillary because…" and "These are the issues that are important to me.…" But there were two others that don't often appear in campaign organizing materials: "I know for a fact that the Indian vote can sway a statewide election." And: "I caucus/I vote because I know the power of the native vote."

There's little payoff for the Clinton campaign to spend its time in such a far-flung part of the state. From a dollar-per-caucus-goer perspective, the campaign could score a broader audience in Nevada's urban centers. But meetings like these are part of the hyper-granular organizing strategy helmed by Clinton's national campaign manager, Robby Mook, and a real-life manifestation of the campaign's unrelenting motto of 2016: flood the early states with field organizers in order to leave no stone unturned and no potential Democratic voter untouched.

The visit to Schurz was the campaign's eighth Native American outreach event of the summer in Nevada—which is also the state where Mook got his start, directing Clinton's 2008 operation here. Some of the meetings have been with tribal leaders, like a presentation to the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada or one to the Nevada Tribal Youth in early August. And when the Nevada team launched its "Every Nevadan" statewide rural tour in July, the itinerary included stops here in Schurz and also one with the Te-Moak Tribe in Elko.