With the Kamala Harris “vibe shift,” American voters gained not only a new name on the ballot, but also fresh meme fodder and language to discuss the 2024 presidential election. When an unprecedented global event occurred, the chronically online — including me, admittedly — were no longer (thank God) tweeting, “Now that was not on my bingo card,” but rather, “This is the craziest season of reality TV ever.” It’s an astute linguistic move. A dive into past seasons reveals that, narratively, our country’s and state’s political histories have always been more Andy Cohen than Aaron Sorkin.
If you don’t have time for a binge, here are some highlights to catch you up to the current season.
NOT SHOWING UP to film a Real Housewives reunion episode always results in firing. Nevada herself pulled a no-show when, in 1864, the state’s proposed constitution was lost en route to D.C., and President Lincoln refused to grant Nevada statehood sans constitution. The solution: Nevada sent its constitution via telegraph, with the added bonus that it’d get there faster than snail mail, thereby helping to secure the votes for Lincoln’s re-election in the eleventh hour. The Morse coded message took seven hours to initially transcribe, and, at 16,543 words, it broke the record for longest telegram ever transmitted — longer, in fact, than a Tom Sandoval Notes App apology.
TWICE, WE'VE SEEN Nevada politicians outwit or outplay, but not outlast their opponents. A widespread rumor was that Key Pittman, a five-term Nevada senator, died before his 1940 election for a sixth term. According to legend, party bosses were keeping his body on ice at Tonopah’s Mizpah Hotel to delay the announcement of the incumbent’s death until after Election Day. In reality, Pittman won reelection on November 5, then died shortly after, on November 10, of a heart attack. We’d see a variation of this storyline repeated in a later season, when businessman and brothel owner Dennis Hof won his 2018 election for Nevada Assembly two months after dying on the night of his 72nd birthday party, an event attended by the likes of Ron Jeremy and Joe Arpaio. Ultimately, the tribe spoke, electing a corpse over the Democrat (though county officials did pick a local utility company manager, Gregory Hafen, to take the seat).
MEDICAL EVACUATIONS are tried-and-true tropes of reality TV, that moment the fourth wall breaks and an almost-always British doctor rushes to the aid of a player in peril. Though not as dramatic as an airlift, Las Vegas was where President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID and, as a result, made his final public appearance as the Democratic presidential nominee (not counting his deplaning in Delaware). After a morning of campaigning capped with lunch at Lindo Michoacan, Biden’s camp announced he had contracted the virus. He then boarded Air Force One and spent much of the next several days cameras down.
See the rest of this season’s drama at knpr.org/politics