LAS VEGAS — As the Democratic presidential candidates plead with Nevadans for their support in 2020, Harry Reid is already looking to 2024.
Mr. Reid, the former Democratic leader in the Senate, said in an interview that he hoped that his home state would move to the very front of the primary calendar in the next election. The decades-long tradition of deferring to Iowa and New Hampshire should be over, Mr. Reid said.
“We’ve done it for years — to have the other 48 states playing second fiddle to two states that aren’t representative of the country,” he said, arguing that it was unfair for those overwhelmingly white states to vote first.
Needless to say, the statement reflects Nevada’s political interests, as well as Mr. Reid’s longstanding ambition to elevate his state in the presidential nominating process. But even as he allowed that he had a certain bias, Mr. Reid insisted it was not merely Silver State pride behind his preference for Nevada going first in 2024.
“Of course I think that, but it’s not just me,” Mr. Reid said, citing what he called a general view that Nevada is “more representative of what’s going on in the country.”
“We have a state that is extremely diverse — about half the state is white, the rest is minorities,” he noted. “We have a state that is environmentally sensitive. It is a state that’s heavily unionized.”
Mr. Reid, 80, is staking his hopes in part on Saturday’s caucuses here, and a number of his current and former advisers have been deeply involved in preparing the state to avoid an Iowa-style meltdown. Nevada has held several days of early voting, with all signs so far pointing to strong turnout.
Should the caucuses go off well this weekend — and thus strengthen Nevada’s claim to a place of privilege in the presidential nominating process — it would represent a personal triumph for Mr. Reid, who set out more than a decade ago to give his state a powerful hand in selecting presidential candidates. A longtime critic of Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Reid engineered an early role for his state starting in the 2008 election cycle and the significance of Nevada has grown on the Democratic side with each successive campaign.
The prospect of Iowa or New Hampshire being displaced in 2024 now appears more plausible than ever, as a result of the fiasco in Iowa this month and Democratic leaders’ growing discomfort with the homogeneous character of those states.
But the stakes are high this weekend for Nevada Democrats, who must pull off a complex caucus process of their own if they are going to have a chance of moving up next time. Officials with the state and national parties have taken additional steps since Iowa to ensure a smooth vote, but anxiety continues to run high among Democratic leaders and the various presidential campaigns.
Mr. Reid expressed confidence that Nevada Democrats were prepared to conduct a far more successful caucus than the one that unfolded in Iowa, and boasted that his state had “the strongest party organization in the country.”
Though he nominally retired from professional politics in 2016, Mr. Reid still looms large as an elder statesman of Nevada politics and remains deeply involved with the party: He said that he was receiving regular updates on preparations from the caucuses and that he had been speaking frequently with Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
But while Mr. Reid praised Mr. Perez as “a very easy man to deal with,” he said he had not recently asked the party chairman for any special assistance in ensuring the success of the vote this weekend.
“I think we’ve got that under control,” Mr. Reid said, adding of Mr. Perez, “We keep him advised as to what’s going on, but I don’t think there’s much they can do to help us, except help us financially.”
Still, Mr. Reid acknowledged that the voter turnout so far had been higher than expected, leading to long lines at some early voting sites. One of Mr. Reid’s sons had waited in line for an hour and a half to vote early this week, he said, with Mr. Reid’s 18-year-old grandson in tow.
“I wish we hadn’t had lines that long, but we really have been stunned by the turnouts we’ve had so far,” Mr. Reid said, adding, “I think that we are having a very good voter experience. The turnout has been something, quite frankly, I didn’t expect.”
More than 70,000 Nevadans voted early in the caucuses, according to the Democratic Party, putting the state on track to easily surpass turnout in the 2016 contests.
Meeting with a reporter on Tuesday, before the most recent debate, Mr. Reid reviewed the Democratic field in broadly positive terms: He said he believed that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was strong in Nevada, though he noted Mr. Sanders had faced “a little trouble” from the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which had “indicated they’re not happy with him.”
(The labor group has strongly criticized Mr. Sanders for his proposal to replace the private health care system with a “Medicare for all” policy, because it would supersede the desirable health insurance plan negotiated by the union. Mr. Sanders has insisted that any health care plan enacted under his watch would improve workers’ benefits.)
Mr. Reid suggested former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been better positioned in the state before his setbacks in Iowa and New Hampshire. But he said he believed that Mr. Biden still had the potential to finish second, and that Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts should not be counted out, either.
He added that he had spoken recently with former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., whom he described as “a very inquisitive man” who had run an impressive campaign. But Mr. Reid remained scrupulously neutral.
When it came to Nevada’s role in choosing presidents, Mr. Reid made no pretense of neutrality. He acknowledged that it still might not be easy to leapfrog Iowa and New Hampshire, but he said he believed Nevada had “a real shot at being first in the nation.”
“I’m convinced that Nevada’s going to move up significantly,” he said.
Mr. Reid said he planned to visit at least one caucus site on Saturday before monitoring the results from home. Throughout the day, Mr. Reid said, he would “let my presence be known.”