These folks always talk politics at Thanksgiving

Mo Shatara, Nevada organizing director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, remembers his first and only Christmas well.

It came in 2015, while on the campaign trail in Iowa. His regional manager invited her staff to her apartment, where he tasted a full Christmas experience: A family dinner, a secret-Santa gift exchange, sugar cookie decoration and a screening of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

Shatara’s family is Muslim and does not celebrate Christmas. His manager, realizing the Orlando, Florida, native was not prepared for an Iowa winter, got him thermal socks and underwear. The manager’s boyfriend got him a remote-controlled car.

“I spent the rest of the cycle driving that car around the office and using it to keep spirits up,” Shatara said. “It was a really good first Christmas to have at the age of 23.”

A trying time

For the hundreds of campaign workers making the pre-caucus push in Nevada, the holidays can be a trying time. There is a lot of work to be done. Some campaigns are in an intense growth period, while others are struggling to hang on.

But it is also a time in which relative strangers from different corners of the country — people who might have never met otherwise — turn a shared belief in a candidate into personal bonds that often survive well past Election Day.

Justin Coskey, a Seattle native and Henderson field organizer for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, led several dozen of his Southern Nevada colleagues in a “Bernie” chant before they dug into three tables of Thanksgiving food. It was the Friday before Thanksgiving, but Sanders’ unionized staff have the holiday off, and many are planning to return home.

He called his fellow campaign workers “his family” and stressed the importance of gathering with them before heading to Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving with some of his biological family.

The Sanders camp’s party, held at its east Las Vegas office, featured traditional Thanksgiving fare, as well as pupusas and other Latin American dishes that the staff said celebrate the campaign’s diversity. Holiday decorations were intertwined with Sanders posters, instructions for those calling voters and mission statements filled out by campaign volunteers.

Staffers celebrate together

This type of holiday camaraderie can often extend past what appear to those on the outside as election battle lines. Multiple staffers from different Democratic campaigns told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that large gatherings with their local counterparts are common. Some campaigns even stage friendly competitions, such as decorating contests.

Paul Selberg, Buttigieg’s Nevada state director, said elected officials have even offered to host him for the holidays should a trip back home to Iowa not prove feasible during the busy campaign season.

Maria Paglieri followed New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker into the race and now organizes for his campaign in Las Vegas. She is going home to the Garden State for Thanksgiving, but not before putting together a “Friendsgiving” for Booker staff and volunteers.

The holidays also provide an opportunity for campaign staff and supporters to give back to their host community through volunteer work, Paglieri said. Booker’s office is organizing a holiday food drive.

“I’ll be visiting my friends and family back home (for the holidays), but we really have created a second family here on the campaign that’s — with our staff, with our volunteers — which has been absolutely amazing,” she said.

Welcome to Nevada

Democrats aren’t the only ones working away from home this holiday season.

Nearly all of those working in Nevada on the campaign to re-elect President Donald Trump are locals, but state spokesman Keith Schipper will be heading back to Phoenix for the holidays to celebrate with his family. He first moved to Nevada in 2017 to work on the campaign to re-elect Sen. Dean Heller before moving to the state Republican party.

Schipper said he’s been blessed to work a relatively short drive away from his family, but his Nevadan colleagues have also made him feel welcome in his new home.

“Nevadans are some of the most hospitable human beings I have ever met,” Schipper said. “Throughout the holiday season, we’re going to be… celebrating in our own way, and you don’t really feel like you’re away from family during the season.”

Schipper has spent the last 10 years working on campaigns across the country. He remembers most holiday seasons as periods of recharge after a culminating November general election.

But the 2020 election cycle began far earlier than previous contests and carries a significant weight. With nearly a dozen Democratic hopefuls likely to pepper Nevada with rallies, advertisements and staff members, Schipper expects to be very busy “sharing President Trump’s accomplishments compared to what (Democrats) are offering.”

Recharging during holidays

Jenni Mallek regularly shares what one of Trump’s chief political rivals is offering through her work as Nevada special projects and trips director for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.

She will return home to Chicago for the holidays. Mallek said seeing her family, and particularly playing with her young niece and nephew, will serve to remind her why she works so hard.

“Working towards their future — making sure that it’s one that I would want to be in and that they would want to be in — everything I’m doing now is really for them, so I’m excited to see them for the holidays” she said.

Mallek worked in Wisconsin during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. During that time, she realized the deep familial bonds that form as part of the campaign lifestyle.

“You dropped everything and moved for this candidate,” she said. “You can’t help but get close and relate very quickly to these folks.”

Mallek said those same ties have formed in Biden’s Nevada offices, which will host a few holiday gatherings as people shuffle between home and work.

“I like the little family we’ve created here,” she said. “Either all from Nevada or all from somewhere else. It’s nice to come together and talk about our families and not have to be focused on work.”

Contact Rory Appleton at rappleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0276. Follow @RoryDoesPhonics on Twitter.