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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGOP faces growing demographic nightmare in West
NORTH LAS VEGAS When the Mirage Hotel and Casino opened in 1989, it kicked off one of the most significant construction booms in recent history.
Four new mega-casinos opened in quick succession on the Las Vegas Strip, bringing in tens of thousands of new residents to work as card dealers, cocktail servers, security guards and maids.
Among the new arrivals was a family of undocumented Mexican immigrants who found a house in the impoverished bedroom community of North Las Vegas, where their son found a local team to play soccer with.
After winning citizenship, that son became the first formerly undocumented immigrant to claim a seat in Nevadas state legislature.
Today, Rep. Ruben Kihuens (D-Nev.) family still lives in North Las Vegas, and his mother still cleans hotel rooms.
My storys a very common story, Kihuen said at a cafe recently, just a block from the field on which his soccer team played.
Its a deeply personal tale that points to a growing problem for Republicans: Demographic change is slowly, but inevitably, moving Western states to the left.
The political power of Las Vegas is a hint of the GOPs worst-case scenario: A mega-metropolitan area so dominant, and so Democratic, that it swamps the Republican advantage in increasingly conservative rural areas.
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/342427-republicans-face-growing-demographic-shift-in-west?rnd=1500330574
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,737 posts)uponit7771
(90,367 posts)... ALWAYS
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Tucson has always been a Democratic area, Phoenix and Flagstaff are becoming bluer and bluer. Those places are where the most people live. Western Arizona has been blue for a while because it is heavily Hispanic.
LonePirate
(13,431 posts)Of course, many parts of the state may also become inhospitable for parts of the year by then.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)at 58% Hispanic and African American. As one demographer said last week. This is what American Cities will look like in the near future. And if you want the old North Las Vegas,well,just go to Tremonton Utah and you will see what Las Vegas looked like in 1970.