In a Purple Zone with Different Local Shades of Blue and Red

A recap of our recent reporting plus additional content.

Oct 20, 2025

While Washoe County remains a swing county in a swing state, it’s very much a bitterly divided battleground as evidenced in local social media comments when we or other media post political content such as photos from the recent #nokings rally in downtown Reno.

Demographically, among younger voters it’s a bit of hipsters and students versus cowboys dynamic, with libertarian type tech bros see sawing in different ideological directions, sometimes depending on the issue.

Among older voters, there are old money versus new money dynamics, old hippies against reactionaries, with a bluer middle class squeezed between redder lower and wealthier classes. There’s also a keeping the growth going against saving the environment and existing neighborhoods debate which sometimes brings some more to the left with some more to the right in coalition against a large group of aggressive pro development centrists who tend to be fairly liberal on social issues.

Geographically it gets very conservative east of Hidden Valley and more liberal closer to university areas.

At the state level, we have a veto happy Republican governor, with a Democratic dominated legislature which was very close in recent cycles but not quite there for a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers.

Within the local Republican camp, you have less seemingly MAGAistic members such as commissioner Clara Andriola, Sparks Mayor Ed Lawson or Reno council member and mayoral candidate Kathleen Taylor.

Within the Democratic camp, you have many further on the left who view direct action as more important than celebratory type carnival protests which are more intermittently attention grabbing than consistently change inducing. The rallies though can sway voter sentiment.

In this light, long shot gubernatorial candidate, current County Commission Chair Alexis Hill, who has so far presented a progressive agenda as a candidate, released a strange cultish video on social media where it was mostly just her smiling and speaking with a halo framing her heroically, making it seem like she was using the protest as a prop for her campaign, without many crowd shots or even shots reacting to her presence and speech. Maybe it’s to spend down some of the $180,000 we’ve calculated sent from her campaign coffers to Changing Dynamics in 2024 as listed on her contribution reports.

Whatever the optics and divisions, the different lanes being occupied, and the many local shades of blue and red, as well as distinct campaign strategies, the packed protests are a prelude to important primaries which will be here soon enough, with a lot on the line locally and nationally, with tension in the air, including in places so evenly divided as our own backyard.