In Campaign 2024: Nevada's state Republican Party is holding an autonomous caucus independent of Nevada's state sanctioned early primary.
Vote Nevada Executive Director spoke to us aboutÂ
"We're technically number two with New Hampshire and we thought everything was going to be fine, and then the Nevada State Republican Party said no we don't want to do the presidential preference primary. We want to do a caucus. And they got told no, the law is you have to do a presidential preference primary, and they said ok that's fine, but we're going to do a caucus as well and do it two days later. So instead of February 6th on the day everybody votes, it's going to be February 8th," said Vote Nevada Executive Director and Professor of History at College of Southern Nevada Dr. Sondra Cosgrove.
Up to the last election in 2022, both establishment parties ran their own caucuses. However, the 2021 Nevada Legislature decided to shift the process to a standard statewide presidential preference primary because too many voters were getting shut out of the one-day caucus simply because not everyone could attend.
The Nevada Republican Party is holding a caucus anyway, and they say the results will override the the state primary.
"If you're a republican candidate and you participate in the primary we will not allow you to participate in the caucus, and the caucus is what we have decided that we're going to use to allocated delegates. And, so they're trying to pressure candidates to not participate in the primary. Not to put their name in, and instead just do the party caucus two days later.">
The Nevada Republican Party is charging candidates $55-thousand dollars to participate in the caucus.
Cosgrove tells us the statewide primary is estimated to cost Nevada taxpayers up to $5 million.
We will be reaching out to the parties and county registrars in the coming days.
