Varlin Higbee traveled more than two hours from his Lincoln County, Nevada, home to see Donald Trump in person last month, but when he arrived at the former president’s Las Vegas rally, he was stopped at the door.
Despite carrying a VIP invite from the Trump campaign, Higbee, the chair of his county commission, was barred from entrance by state party members for previously supporting one of the former president’s Republican primary rivals.
“They said, ‘Did you endorse (Florida Gov. Ron) DeSantis?’” Higbee told CNN. “And I said, ‘I sure did because of this sh*t right now.’”
To some longtime Nevada Republicans who witnessed Higbee get turned away or caught wind of it, the episode was illustrative of a state party that has crossed many lines in its allegiance to the former president. They warn it could alienate the kind of voters they’ll need to win this crucial general election battleground.
Trump narrowly lost Nevada in 2016 and 2020 by nearly identical narrow margins – about 2.5 percentage points. Going into the fall, it’s expected to be hotly contested once again in what is likely to be a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.
“It’s become more about personalities than it has about winning,” said TK Crabb, the former political director of the Clark County Republican Party and a strategist for candidates. Crabb, a critic of the state party’s current leadership, was also initially barred from the Vegas rally but was eventually allowed in with the help of a friend.
“These people don’t understand the strategy of how to win in a general,” she said, adding that she doesn’t intend to vote for Trump.
Trump’s supremacy over the Nevada Republican Party was on full display this week. Trump won the state’s…
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