With only two weeks to go until the election, Marisela Olvera paused at a house on the end of a cul-de-sac in Las Vegas. In the two months she had spent canvassing neighborhoods for Kamala Harris, she had seen a lot, but nothing quite like this. In the front yard, near a Trump flag emblazoned with the word FIGHT, an artificial saguaro cactus rose from the cement, transformed to represent Trump as a working-class everyman. A yellow reflective construction shirt was draped over the limbs of the faux cactus arms, a Trump mask resting on top. This was clearly not, in the parlance of canvassers, a persuadable voter. Olvera moved down the street.
The 52-year-old immigrant from Mexico, however, would have had a unique perspective to share. A decade ago, she had improved her life by organizing a union at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, where she was a housekeeper and at times cleaned the penthouse where Trump stayed while in town. But she did it against the fierce resistance of the Trump Organization — which co-owned and managed the hotel — and at the exact moment when Donald Trump was running as the Republican nominee for president and presenting himself as a champion of workers. The union-organizing campaign launched in mid-2015, around the time Trump announced his candidacy for president. The company would go on to spend more than $500,000 on anti-union consultants and face allegations by the National Labor Relations Board of retaliating against union supporters. The company also unsuccessfully challenged the results after workers voted the union in and initially refused to bargain a contract.
