By Gabriel Thompson for Capital & Main.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Nevada News Service reporting for the Rural News Network-Public News Service Collaboration

By Gabriel Thompson for Capital & Main.
Broadcast version by Alex Gonzalez for Nevada News Service reporting for the Rural News Network-Public News Service Collaboration

With only two weeks to go until the election, Marisela Olvera paused at a house on the end of a cul-de-sac in Las Vegas. In the two months she had spent canvassing neighborhoods for Kamala Harris, she had seen a lot, but nothing quite like this. In the front yard, near a Trump flag emblazoned with the word FIGHT, an artificial saguaro cactus rose from the cement, transformed to represent Trump as a working-class everyman. A yellow reflective construction shirt was draped over the limbs of the faux cactus arms, a Trump mask resting on top. This was clearly not, in the parlance of canvassers, a persuadable voter. Olvera moved down the street.

The 52-year-old immigrant from Mexico, however, would have had a unique perspective to share. A decade ago, she had improved her life by organizing a union at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, where she was a housekeeper and at times cleaned the penthouse where Trump stayed while in town. But she did it against the fierce resistance of the Trump Organization - which co-owned and managed the hotel - and at the exact moment when Donald Trump was running as the Republican nominee for president and presenting himself as a champion of workers. The union-organizing campaign launched in mid-2015, around the time Trump announced his candidacy for president. The company would go on to spend more than $500,000 on anti-union consultants and face allegations by the National Labor Relations Board of retaliating against union supporters. The company also unsuccessfully challenged the results after workers voted the union in and initially refused to bargain a contract.

"It wasn't easy. There was a lot of fear," recalled Olvera, who spent months alongside her colleagues in marches and protests in support of the union-organizing campaign. Today, she remains an employee at the Trump Hotel and credits the Culinary Workers Union - which has secured higher wages, health insurance and a pension - with transforming her life. She jumped at the chance to take a two-month leave of absence at the hotel to campaign for Kamala Harris, along with hundreds of fellow members of the powerful CWU, also known as UNITE HERE Local 226. (Disclosure: UNITE HERE is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)

Capital & Main reached out to the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

"It's important for a president to be pro-union," said Olvera. "Without a union, a worker invests the majority of their time at work only to find they can't afford health care for their kids. They leave work tired, have to work two jobs and still find that the money isn't enough."

According to Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union, the anti-union campaign at the Trump International Hotel foreshadowed a Trump administration that would prove to be consistently hostile to unions.

"In Las Vegas, the company brought in union busters and consultants to dissuade folks," Pappageorge said, referring to the $560,631 the hotel paid to an anti-union firm. During the course of the campaign, a National Labor Relations Board judge found that Trump management illegally surveilled, interrogated, and threatened pro-union workers, calling one a "traitor" for wearing a union button. And one month before Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination, his company agreed to pay a $11,200 settlement to one worker who was fired and another who was denied a transfer to a full-time job, allegedly due to their union activity.

Trump has aggressively courted union voters, promising to improve their lives. In a recent media stunt, he donned an apron and briefly manned the fry station at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania. During his first campaign, in 2016, he proclaimed, "The unions love me."

But during his administration, the NLRB issued decisions that made it easier for employers to fire or discipline employees, weakened rules to streamline union elections, and made it more difficult to hold corporations accountable for violations committed by subcontractors, as Capital & Main has previously reported. Under Trump, the agency also sought, unsuccessfully, to ban graduate students from organizing, which would have stymied a burgeoning campus labor movement that has added 44,000 student workers to the union ranks since 2022.

Olvera first learned about unions in the California fields. At 14, she moved from Mexico to Salinas, where she harvested lettuce and broccoli alongside her parents and siblings for more than a decade. The shifts were long and the pay meager - just $3.25 an hour when she started - but she joined the United Farm Workers union in an effort that forced growers to provide clean drinking water and accessible bathrooms.

In 2010, she moved to Las Vegas; two years later, she was hired as a housekeeper at the Trump International Hotel. By then, she was a single mother of two teenage boys, and her $13-an-hour wage didn't cover basic expenses. She paid about $200 a month for health care, mostly to cover her kids, who needed proof of insurance to play the school sports they loved. She took a second job cleaning homes and offices. In all, she was putting in 65 hours a week. The schedule hearkened back to her farmworker days, when it wasn't uncommon to work 12-hour shifts. "It wears you down," said Olvera. "You look older than you are. I'd eat my lunch in the car while driving to my second job."

Olvera knew of the Culinary Workers Union, whose members earned higher wages and enjoyed employer-paid health care and a pension. "I asked God to allow the union to come," she said. By 2014, she was no longer asking but demanding, wearing a union button to work and organizing her fellow workers on the swing shift. In December 2015, the workers voted in the union, though Trump and hotel managers, reported the Los Angeles Times, "refused to negotiate, assailing the vote as rigged," a strategy that echoes Trump's claims about the 2020 election.

Every objection the hotel made against the union was either dismissed by the NLRB or withdrawn, and the union finally signed a contract in December 2016. This January, the union inked a new five-year contract with the Trump Hotel, which will see wages rise an average of 32% over the period while maintaining employer-paid health care and pensions for workers.

Olvera isn't one to dwell too much on the past. Though she can still recall the struggle to organize her workplace, her energy is now focused on Harris.

"I want to be a small part of history in getting the first woman elected," she said, walking to the next house on her canvassing route. She is excited by Harris' policies, like the $25,000 down payment for first-time homebuyers. The Culinary Workers Union, in fact, has a nearly identical housing assistance program for members, which Olvera used to buy her first home. She also agrees with Harris on protecting reproductive rights and, of course, her support of policies like the PRO Act that would make it easier for workers to form unions by, among other steps, prohibiting captive audience meetings and citing employers who violate labor laws with civil penalties.

But what really motivates her, she said, is the example that Harris, whose parents were immigrants, provides for people like Olvera's two sons, now in their 30s. "She worked at a McDonald's, and look how far she's gone," she said. "I come from a culture that believes work makes you strong. I believe that with work, no matter how humble, you should be able to move forward."


This story was originally produced by Gabriel Thompson of Capital & Main as part of the Rural News Network, an initiative of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), supporting more than 475 independent, nonprofit news organizations.

This story was originally produced by Gabriel Thompson of Capital & Main as part of the Rural News Network, an initiative of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), supporting more than 475 independent, nonprofit news organizations.


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North Carolina lacks laws mandating time off for employees to vote, making it hard for workers who juggle demanding schedules and civic responsibilities but some businesses are filling the gap to ensure their teams can participate in the election without losing pay.

Jennifer Curtis, co-founder and CEO of Firsthand Foods, is one of them. She shared her company's commitment to paid voting leave is not just practical, it is part of fostering a workplace that values civic engagement.

"Our employees greatly value flexibility and so we have a very generous flex time policy for them to work whatever their needs are around what works with the job," Curtis explained. "For voting, we explicitly give them paid time off to go vote."

Only 28 states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring employers to give employees time off to vote.

Seth Gross, owner of Bull City Burger and Brewery in Durham, also encourages his employees to vote. Gross believes ensuring every employee has the opportunity to vote supports a healthier democracy and encourages a sense of empowerment among his team.

In the hospitality industry, where many employees work nontraditional hours and may feel disconnected from the political process, Gross sees voting as a crucial way for workers to have a voice.

"We have a lot of folks who maybe feel marginalized or when you're working for tips, it's not exactly the kind of job where people think the highest regards of all the time and these folks may feel like, you know, what I have to say doesn't matter and that's simply not true," Gross asserted. "I want all of our employees to go out and vote. I want the entire hospitality industry to go out and vote."

For Gross, the hospitality industry's role in supporting local communities through everything from disaster response to organizing support for those in need only reinforces the importance of engaged, community-focused leadership. He believes voting can help shape it.


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Early voter turnout in Wyoming has been high leading up to Election Day, and a survey shows most think local vote counting will be reliable.

However, many feel differently about vote counting nationally.

A new election year survey from the University of Wyoming shows that nearly 90% of people in Wyoming think the vote counting process is very or somewhat reliable in their county, and data is similar at the state level.

But confidence drops with country-wide vote counting, which just under 60% of those surveyed think is reliable.

Libby Skarin, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, said that hasn't stopped Wyomingites from participating.

"Overall what we've seen from the majority of people is that people are feeling good about the election," said Skarin. "They know that our elections are safe and secure, and we've seen a lot of folks already turning out to vote early."

According to Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, absentee turnout by mail and in person hit over 100,000 by midday Friday, November 1. That's more than 30% of registered voters in the state.

Wyoming voter information is available at letsvotewyo.org.

Polls are open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Anyone in line to vote at the evening cutoff has the right to remain in line and cast a ballot after that time.

Skarin said voters shouldn't expect any hiccups on Election Day. But if issues come up or a voter has questions, a national election protection hotline is available.

"That hotline is for use for anyone who might be experiencing issues or having questions at the polls," said Skarin. "It will connect you with people, live, who can help walk you through your rights and answer questions for you."

To reach the hotline, voters can dial 866-OUR-VOTE.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.




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Researchers at the University of Washington are watching closely as rumors and false claims swirl ahead of Election Day.

The University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public has been following and analyzing misleading rumors popping up online.

Many false claims about election interference have focused on Pennsylvania, the largest swing state in the 2024 presidential race.

Kate Starbird - professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering, who co-founded the Center - said many rumors start with a kernel of truth, such as an isolated case where a voting machine didn't record a vote correctly.

"When people are saying machines aren't working, this is true," said Starbird. "It starts as a rumor but eventually becomes just fact. But it gets twisted into the this narrative that it's an intentional effort to disenfranchise certain voters, and that's false. So we can see that sort of intentionality is one place it gets twisted."

Starbird said when incidents become misleading rumors, they can obscure the remedies.

She also noted that isolated events are sometimes extrapolated to make it seem as if they're widespread when that's not the case.

She said the twisting of evidence is part of an attempt to undermine the results of the election.

Last week, fires were set at ballot drop boxes in Vancouver and Portland.

Stephen Prochaska, a graduate research assistant at the Center for an Informed Public, said people on the right and left already had a frame in place for interpreting events like these that involve blaming the other side.

"Oftentimes, they're improvising based off of these events that no one really knows to predict," said Prochaska. "Like, we don't know that that's going to happen. But they have these frames set and are able to cue audiences on how to interpret that. And this is bipartisan."

Starbird said a diverse group of actors, including influencers on social media, content creators and organizations, are loosely collaborating to define what the narrative of the 2024 election will be.

"We don't know what it is," said Starbird. "We'll have to wait for the election results, but the improvisation has been going on all along and they're certainly very active right now and they've got a very participatory audience."

Support for this reporting was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.




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