Antonio Munoz remembers admiring Ronald Reagan as a child, in a Las Vegas very different than it is today.
“When I was born here it was very small,” Munoz said. “The communities were kind of segregated. You had your Hispanics on one side of town, your African Americans another side of town. Then you had the strip and downtown, which was very small resorts, small hotels. But now we have mega resorts.”
Something else has changed. Hispanics were just 7% of Nevada’s population when Reagan was elected but are 30% now.
“It’s amazing the political power that Hispanics are creating here in the state of Nevada,” Munoz said during a break at his Vegas restaurant, 911 Taco Bar.
It is a political power with the potential to remake the 2024 electoral map. Nevada has backed the Democrat for president in four consecutive elections – but only by 2 points in 2020. There is evidence of modest GOP inroads with Hispanic voters in both 2020 and 2022 election data, and it is not hard to find signs of an opening for further Republican gains in 2024.
CNN traveled to Nevada – a key battleground next year – as part of our project tracking the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of voters.
Munoz is an independent who says his presidential voting record is about evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with a third-party vote in 2016. He declined to answer when asked about his 2020 vote.
“Why? Because the nature, the nature of society right now,” he said. “We’re a small business and they will attack you. They will attack you just because you support a certain candidate and it’s sad.”
His two adult sons are split, one for President Joe Biden and one for former President Donald Trump, who’s the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024. Munoz says he is truly undecided, though he takes sharp issue with Trump’s tone about Mexicans and immigrants.
“It hurts, it hurts,” Munoz said. “You know, sometimes we speak out of turn, maybe he does it more than others.”
