LAS VEGAS — Over two decades, Maria Magaña has toiled long hours making beds, cleaning rooms, and mopping casino floors on the glitzy Las Vegas Strip. But her work hasn’t stopped there.
As a member of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, she has sat in bargaining sessions that have run up to 30 hours, and has even gone on strike. Magaña, 44, has done all of that for better health care benefits, which also cover her 12-year-old autistic son, Ramses.
"Our health care is something we don’t want any of the candidates to touch or change,” she said. That is why she opposes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and his presidential campaign pledge to replace private health insurance with Medicare for all.
Not far from the union’s main hall in South Las Vegas, a long line of people waited at a Mexican grocery store one day this week to cast early ballots ahead of the state’s Saturday caucuses. A group of young Latinas said they all were ecstatic about supporting one particular candidate: Sanders.
I like how he wants to take down pharmaceutical monopoly companies,” Jazmin Stephens, 18, said of the self-avowed democratic socialist, as they munched on tostadas and pizza. “He wants to have health care for everyone, no matter your age, or income, or anything like that.”
Democrats wondering how presidential candidates might do on Super Tuesday as they court Latino voters across the Southwest need look no further than to Latinas like Magaña and Stephens in Nevada.
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