Democratic residents in crucial Sun Belt state say rising home costs keeping them from voting Harris: NYT
Some Democratic voters in Nevada recently told The New York Times that rising housing costs will keep them from voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
Times reporter Jennifer Medina interviewed several voters around the Las Vegas area who said they’ve been disillusioned by the Democratic Party because of homes becoming more expensive during the Biden-Harris administration and see no hope of Harris bringing them down if she remains in office.
“They just promise things. But I don’t see nothing coming out for us,” 54-year-old Las Vegas resident Maria Ocampo told the outlet, adding that Biden didn’t ease the prices in Nevada after he was elected.
“When we got the new president, I didn’t hear nothing, I didn’t see any changes.”
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Several Democratic voters in Nevada told The New York Times they’re not voting for Vice President Kamala Harris because they don’t believe she will ease housing costs. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Ocampo told The Times that she’s not planning to vote this election after the past several years of her rent climbing, including a point where “her landlord more than doubled the rent to $2,800 a month,” the outlet reported.
Medina reported that among the dozens of Las Vegas voters she spoke to, “the rising cost of housing was routinely cited as the most persistent financial difficulty weighing on their minds,” especially among Black and Latino blue-collar workers.
This dynamic represents a threat to the Harris campaign in the final weeks of a presidential race that is essentially tied in the swing state. According to FiveThirtyEight’s latest polling averages, Harris leads Trump by 0.3 points in Nevada.
Medina reported that this group of Black and Latino workers “makes up one of the fastest-growing parts of the electorate and is being fiercely fought over by both parties in the final weeks of the campaign.” It also mentioned that only a “few” of them are aware of any of Harris’ economic policy proposals, and of the ones that are, some have viewed them “with scorn.”
Shakriyah Uwoloh, who moved to Nevada to escape rising home costs in California, told The Times that she doesn’t plan on voting this year, even though she voted for former President Barack Obama twice. “It has just skyrocketed,” she said, citing the current housing expenses.
“To be honest, I don’t see too much happening,” she added, suggesting that the problem won’t be solved in the short term.
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26-year-old Armando Garcia, who recently had to take a loan from several family members just to avoid eviction while renting in Las Vegas, said owning a home in the area “just feels unrealistic.”
“It doesn’t feel like I can, like, daydream about it for very long because it just feels like I have realism around me all the time,” he said, telling the reporter that he is unlikely to vote for Harris in November, though he won’t be voting for former President Trump either.
Josefina Hurtado, 47, works two jobs to afford rent on a Las Vegas area home for $2000 a month and making other ends meet. “Nowadays you have to make at least six figures just to live comfortably here, just to buy your food and pay your bills,” she said. “The idea of a middle class seems like a struggle.”
However, the woman supports Harris, stating, “Her mom was a single parent, she knows what a struggle is. She’s seen us. She can be the one to make a difference.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment, but didn’t immediately hear back.
