LAS VEGAS — Joanna Gorman, 72, said she loves President Donald Trump so much she wishes he could run for a third term — but not because of what he’s done to the economy.
“I look at things like Costco grapes, and it’s $9.99 for two pounds,” said Gorman, a retired dietitian and former president of a local women’s GOP chapter. “That’s crazy.”
Gas here costs about 5 dollars a gallon, up nearly 27 percent from a year ago, and the unemployment rate was among the highest for large metro regions in the country during several months last year as visitors to the tourism-dependent city declined. Even for some of the president’s most die-hard supporters in Las Vegas, the financial squeeze has undercut Trump’s efforts to celebrate his “no tax on tip” policy during a roundtable Thursday, in the city where he first unveiled the proposal nearly two years ago.
“Is it delivering what some had hoped? Probably not,” said Greg Ferraro, a longtime Nevada political analyst, of the “no tax on tip” policy. The law, passed by Congress last year, lets some tipped workers deduct up to $25,000 in tips from their taxable income through tax year 2028.
“But it is better than not talking about or recognizing the work that people do and their dependency on tips, that is the deeper and more meaningful discussion,” Ferraro added.
The visit is Trump’s first trip back to the state since he rallied Nevadans days after his inauguration last year, fresh off a historic victory in a state that had not broken for a GOP presidential candidate since 2004.
Nevada’s six electoral votes, its place near the front of the presidential primary calendar and its status as one of the most competitive swing states make it a perennial battleground — one where Republicans tout a registration bump fueled in part by an uptick of conservativesmoving from California, and where Democrats are counting on a large and growing Latino population and powerful unions to claw back ground. In 2024, Trump’s victory was driven in part by shifts right in Clark County, a reliably Democratic area centered around Las Vegas and home to the majority of Nevada’s population.
Trump is poised to highlight the tax policy here as a bright spot in an economy many voters say still feels expensive and unsettled — a disconnect that poses a problem for the president and his party with the midterm elections only seven months away. Democrats are seizing on the opening.
A day before Trump’s visit, members of the Culinary Union, one of the most powerful turnout machines in Democratic politics, focused on affordability as they knocked on doors for a state Senate race in a working-class area of east Las Vegas.
Culinary Union leadership have argued that Trump’s immigration and tariff policies have hamstrung Las Vegas’s economy and highlighted that his “no tax on tips” policy is temporary and with exemptions — such as only applying one tax credit if two tip earners are married.
The majority of people who answered the door Wednesday proactively brought up their anger toward Trump for his aggressive approach to immigration enforcement and how expensive life felt under his leadership.
“For a long time, I had the attitude that it doesn’t matter much who’s in there,” resident Gregory McWilliams, 72, said, of who occupies the White House. “Now we see it’s disastrous.”
McWilliams said he bought a watermelon this week for 11 dollars, 5 dollars more than it used to cost. He said he plans to get involved with Democratic Party politics for the first time in his life.
The broader economic picture has been uneven, with stock market gains but persistently high prices leaving many voters feeling worse off. Trump has argued that Americans are not giving him enough credit for lowering inflation and codifying tax cuts, but that disconnect is showing up in public opinion: The Post’s average of national polls finds that 60 percent of Americans do not approve of the president.
Trump is hoping that last year’s tax and spending-cut bill, which includes the “no tax on tips” provision, will persuade voters here that the White House is working hard to make their lives more affordable. The GOP apparatus — led by the state’s Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is in a competitive race to keep his seat — has argued that sky-high gas prices are due to the state’s reliance on heavily regulated California refineries.
“Nevada loves President Trump,” said Michael McDonald, the longest-serving Nevada Republican Party chairman in history and a powerful ally to Trump, as he arrived to the president’s “no tax on tips” event Thursday. He said he was “feeling good” about Lombardo’s race, which the Democratic Party believes is one of the most competitive in the nation.
California supplies the vast majority of Nevada’s fuel, and the state has long struggled with high gas prices. Gorman agrees that California is partly to blame, but said she knows the price at the pump has increased recently because Trump decided to wage war with Iran.
“I’m not blaming Trump,” she said. “He had to go in there and fight, of course.”
Gorman was not always willing to accept military action. In college, she took buses to Washington to march against the Vietnam War and wore a bracelet engraved with the name of a prisoner of war, refusing to take it off until he came home.
But Gorman has come around. She believes Trump when he says the U.S. must stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon — a trust in her president that she said started when she watched him on “The Apprentice” and deepened as he championed a type of Christian culture she recognized as her own.
“I love his guts,” she said. “He can make a decision and stick by it.”
So she buys the more expensive grapes, and fills her tank with more expensive gas and goes to sleep grateful that Trump is in the White House.
The post In Las Vegas, Trump’s economic pitch set to meet a skeptical audience appeared first on Washington Post.
