Casino union, moguls wage election fight in Nevada
Casino workers take on their owners in a crucial sideshow to the presidential election
When Karl Marx predicted class struggle between capital and labour, he probably did not envisage Cheryl Lawrence, a casino pastry chef and single mother, cruising into battle down a Las Vegas freeway reciting a quote from the Disney film Finding Nemo: "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming."
Nor, it is fair to assume, did Marx envisage a group of casino-owning billionaires using their clout to flood the airwaves with political advertisements to try to tilt an election their way.
Yet in Nevada, capital and labour are locked in a test of strength which could help determine the US presidential election. On one side, the Culinary Workers Union (CWU), representing Lawrence and 55,000 other casino cooks, bell hops and chambermaids, is investing its power in a get-out-the-vote drive for President Barack Obama. On the other, the gaming moguls Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn and Donald Trump, with a combined worth of more than US$25 billion (HK$194 billion), are investing in Mitt Romney.
At stake are the state's six electoral college votes, a small but potentially decisive prize in a tight presidential race. Opinion polls suggest a near tie in Nevada - Obama with 47 per cent, Romney with 46 per cent - meaning just a few votes could determine the November 6 election.
Obama needs to shake out of a political funk and block resurgent Romney when they meet in their second debate tomorrow morning Hong Kong time.
There is nothing new in unions backing a Democrat and big business backing a Republican, but the 2010 Supreme Court ruling allowing super PACs - privately run political action committees bankrolled by hundreds of millions of dollars - has pitted Nevada's casino owners and their workers in an unprecedented duel. Both sides cast the election in existential, even apocalyptic terms. "This is not just about us," Geoconda Arguello Kline, the CWU's president, told red- T-shirted, cheering canvassers. "It's about protecting the workers of this country. Romney wants to completely destroy unions."
The moguls, for their part, warn of socialist plague. In a television interview last week, Wynn accused Obama of waging class warfare and wreaking economic destruction.