LAS VEGAS — Tucked behind a luxury mall on the Vegas Strip, Carlos Galiote plugged his electric Ford Mustang into a rapid charger and explained why surging gas prices still sting.
He’s barely taken out the family’s gas-powered Volkswagen in a month. He already works two jobs to support five kids, driving for Uber during the day and waiting tables at night. And he expects Nevada’s $5-a-gallon to get costlier, part of broader inflation that leaves people “scared right now and desperate for a solution to all this.”
Democrats view swing voters like Galiote, 39, as a key source of their political momentum in the midterms, hoping to harness the economic trouble under President Donald Trump and win power with a promise to make it better. But Galiote illustrates the challenge in that strategy: many voters don’t trust politicians.
“Anyone can perform a beautiful speech nowadays. All you need is ChatGPT,” he said. “How can you trust someone when each time, most people, they fail?”
In Nevada, with its high concentration of diverse working-class voters, Democrats see the battleground state as a testing ground for their party’s central case in the midterms and beyond: Republicans broke their promise to tame prices but Democrats can do it. Nevada’s swing voters have often punished the party in power during economic uncertainty, ousting Gov. Steve Sisolak in 2022 — the only incumbent Democratic governor to lose that year — and flipping the state red for Trump in the 2024 presidential race after backing Biden four years earlier.
The spiking gas prices magnify the financial strain in Nevada, where the tourism-dependent economy can be an early indicator of downturn. Democrats see a fertile environment for their economic populist pitch to throw out the incumbents. But in interviews with more than a dozen voters across the Las Vegas region, nearly all were disillusioned, distrustful that a politician from either party would repair the damage.
That cynicism has potential to harm both parties at the ballot box. Republicans could see their disillusioned supporters stay home, and Democrats could fail to persuade some frustrated voters to back them in the future.
“Could we win … seats on simply throw-the-bums-out? Maybe. But it has to be more than that,” Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said.
“We need to show the receipts of what [Trump’s] done to the cost of living and offer a plan to reverse it.”
Aaron Ford, Nevada’s attorney general and leading Democratic candidate for governor, built his campaign around producing those receipts.
He’s using the same argument Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) deployed four years ago: the incumbent governor is aligned with a president making life less affordable.
“The failing Lombardo-Trump economy just isn’t cutting it,” Ford said in a recent Instagram reel where he drove to a Las Vegas gas station advertising regular for $5.19 a gallon.
“Nevada needs [a] governor who knows what it’s like to feel your heart sink as a number on the meter soars,” Ford said. “I remember that feeling all too well, and I’m running for governor to lead our state out of this mess.”
Galiote shrugged after a reporter showed him Ford’s video. He said he doubted that a single person could make a difference.
“He could just be taking advantage of the situation, because he’s talking to people that are probably hurting right now. And yeah, why wouldn’t you listen to someone that is talking your language right now?,” Galiote said. “Maybe this guy is right. But perhaps he’s just another person that wants to reach power.”
Lombardo, who declined an interview request, has been blaming gas prices on energy policy in California, the heavily Democratic state that provides most of Nevada’s fuel.
In an interview, Ford said he understands why so many voters are disillusioned. He said they should trust him to deliver because he’s lived their challenges, including as a kid growing up poor and as a single dad relying on the social safety net.
“My earliest memories as a child are eating stale candy bars for dinner that my father found next to the dumpster behind the grocery store he worked at,” he said. “I didn’t know what the word affordability meant back then, but I knew my parents couldn’t afford food.”
‘Politicians aren’t looking out for us’
It’s not clear how much voters are willing to listen, even as the Democrats rack up early midterm wins.
Researchers see voter disaffection at near-records among people in both parties: just 17 percent of Americans trust the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time in the most recent Pew Research Center survey, which has been asking that question since 1958.
“When you think about something like gas prices, you are seeing greater distrust of political parties, full stop,” said Scott Warren, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who researches trust in democracy.
“This goes to a sense of ‘we fundamentally feel that politicians aren’t looking out for us,’” Warren said.
At a gas station near the Strip, Isaiah Hull, 34, put $80 of gas into his taxi and said politicians could lower prices if they wanted. But in general, he doesn’t see a lot of politicians who seem competent.
“Just like how it jumped overnight, it can go back down overnight,” said Hull, who described himself as an independent swing voter. “That’s their main job: the government is to take care of the people, and they don’t do that.”
A few blocks down Paradise Road, Judith Haselton parked at a pump advertising a “grim” $4.91 per gallon but decided it was too much to fill up. She’s cut back on driving by being pickier about the inventory she’ll pick up for her online secondhand shop, but she’s not particularly interested in what Democrats say to her about gas prices.
“I don’t follow politics too much,” Haselton said. “I should, I know I should.”
When it comes time to vote, Haselton plans to vote for whomever feels like the lesser of two evils — usually a Democrat.
Democratic leaders point to high turnout and wins in key midterm election victories so far — including a marquee victory in a Florida House district representing Trump’s Mar-a-Largo home — as evidence that their message is resonating beyond anti-incumbent sentiment.
“For the last 15 months, from the very beginning of the Trump presidency, Democrats have been winning every single competitive election across the country. These are facts,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said when asked how Democrats can break through disaffection.
He summed the party’s pitch this way: “Life has not gotten better for everyday Americans.”
Pet sitter Heather Dunn sighed deeply when she pulled up to a Terrible’s convenience store in suburban Las Vegas and saw gas at $5.19 a gallon. She said she’s willing to give Democrats the benefit of the doubt on their gas prices pitch.
“Because we’ve seen things skyrocket this last administration, I’m inclined to believe them, even though I wasn’t happy with Biden last time,” she said. She thought Biden hid a cognitive decline, and she voted for Trump in 2024 because she thought he’d be more competent at running the country than Kamala Harris. “I don’t feel like that now. I’m not happy with how he’s doing.”
Dunn said she rarely drives outside a 10-mile radius of her home, but she stops for gas every time her tank is half full because she fears prices will just go up if she waits. She’s already stopped going to the movies and restaurants to save money.
“I’m barely getting by, really scraping by,” she said.
Carolyn Check, 76, decided buying gas wasn’t “worth it,” when she pulled up to the Terrible’s store to buy sparkling water. The self-described swing voter who supported Trump thinks Democrats are full of it when they blame gas prices on Republicans and the strikes on Iran.
She said Democrats who passed California’s tax and environmental policies are to blame, the same case Lombardo makes.
“They’ve got the movie stars who can afford this, and actors who can afford that, and I don’t care about that,” said Check, a retired telephone company technician from Chicago. “I don’t care what they can afford. That’s not what I can afford.”
She thinks politicians from both parties prioritize fighting each other over the people they represent.
“It used to be ‘the people’ were important. Now ‘the people’ is a second thought,” Check said.
The post Democrats say GOP broke promise on prices, but swing voters lost faith in change appeared first on Washington Post.
