This Latino and Democratic mayor won in a Nevada county dominated by Trump. This is how he did it

By Anita Hassan - NBC News

On a recent Tuesday night, Daniel Corona drove home from City Hall in West Wendover, Nevada, passing a popular neon-lit sign depicting a cowboy and reading Wendover Will (Wendover Will).

The sign, which measures 63 feet (about 19 meters), belonged to a local casino and has been a symbol of this town for 68 years.

It is a glowing beacon, allowing weary travelers to glimpse the city after a long, dark journey through the Great Basin desert.

"He has seen it all. He has been here immovable," Corona points out later.

A week has passed since Election Day and Corona has just been sworn in as Mayor of West Wendover, marking the beginning of his second term.

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His first victory in 2016, obtained by just 100 votes, made him not only the youngest mayor in the state (at 25 years old)

, but also the first Latino and openly gay mayor of Nevada, an unexpected victory in this rural town. Northeast Nevada, located in Elko County and considered one of the most conservative regions in the state.

Daniel Corona, mayor of West Wendover, Nevada, became interested in politics at age 16, when he heard a speech by Barack Obama.Kim Raff / for NBC News

On his trips home, Corona usually slows down to look at the cowboy sign.

Donated to the city in 2004, the sign reminds you of the community's resilience, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, which hit West Wendover hard and forced its five casinos to close temporarily earlier this year.

Corona also sees the poster as a reminder to outsiders in the community, of

, that this town has its own identity.

Elko County, where this location is located, is a predominantly white area where mining remains the main industry.

West Wendover, for its part, is a casino town and more than 60% of its population is Latino.

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This year, while Elko County remained a Republican stronghold, Democratic candidates won West Wendover from the presidential election to the race for a county commissioner, making it the only place in the county to change its Democrats' blue trend.

Although the margin was narrow, residents and city officials believe that the results reflect an increase in the vote of the community's younger Latino residents, whose beliefs lean to the left, similar to what happens in other states in the country. where that demographic led the Democrats to victory.

"West Wendover could be a place of strong conservative groups, but

,

explained Corona, whose family has lived there for four generations.

"It just shows that rural America and rural Nevada are not monolithic."

A 63-foot neon sign at the entrance to West Wendover.Kim Raff / for NBC News

The decision to come forward

Corona was born just a month after West Wendover was recognized as a municipality in 1991. 

At less than 8 square miles (12.8 kilometers), West Wendover sits on the edge of Utah's border, so close that the locality is in the

rather than the Pacific

time zone

, like the rest of Nevada.

Before the pandemic, the dusty desert city received

at its casinos 

, mostly from the Salt Lake City, Utah region. 

West Wendover, a close-knit community where everyone knows each other by a degree or two of separation, is a place where neighbors leave food on the doorstep of families in need without being asked, according to residents.

When Corona told people in high school that he is gay, he was comforted by the acceptance of most of his classmates.

During his 2016 mayoral campaign, he found the same reception.

They had more concerns about his youth or the fact that he still lived with his mother.

“They wanted to know more about how I became a Democrat,”

Corona remembers laughing.

The city voted for Republican presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 and has only recently begun to tilt more toward the Democratic side in local and national elections, as the number of registered voters increased from 661 in 2008 to 1,125 in 2020.

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Residents also say the city's youngest voters -

- have been more active in the electoral process.

Corona became interested in politics at age 16, when he heard a speech by Barack Obama.

After high school, he moved to Salt Lake City and then Las Vegas to go to college, but returned to West Wendover in 2015 to be closer to his family.

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Tired of casino interests swaying the West Wendover local government

(casino managers often won city council seats) and vowing to diversify the city's economy, Corona signed up to run for mayor.

During his 2016 campaign, residents saw him roaming the city for months, knocking on almost every door, learning about what the community wanted.

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"I've never seen or heard of someone actually doing something like this in town before," says Carolyn Santillanez, 51, who grew up in West Wendover.

"I think a lot of people came out to vote for him because he was actually talking to people," he says.

Wendover Boulevard, the city's main thoroughfare.Kim Raff / for NBC News

"They identify with him"

Corona believes he gained the trust of city residents by supporting a 2016 state ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana, promising to bring this product to West Wendover as an asset in a new industry.

While the initiative failed in Elko County, it passed in West Wendover with approximately 56% of the vote.

By December 2019, Corona helped open the county's first marijuana dispensary.

, even after a two-month shutdown from the pandemic, according to city officials.

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The young mayor also made the local government more accessible, posting local news updates on social media, and exposed the community to more liberal views.

In July 2019, Corona invited then-Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro to West Wendover.

It was

.

In 2017, Corona spearheaded and passed a city resolution to support the DACA program, after outgoing President Donald Trump tried to end it.

“It meant a lot to me that Mayor Corona and the city showed their support,” says Alan Rojas, 25, a DACA recipient.

Rojas was born in Mexico but has lived in West Wendover since she was one year old.

"I still could not vote this year, but I made sure to tell everyone I knew here that they should," he noted.

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Kathy Durham, an elected 2018 West Wendover city councilor, believes the young mayor inspired greater civic engagement, especially among younger Latino voters. 

"They identify with him and see that he can make changes,"

said Durham, who teaches American history, government and television journalism at the local high school.

Jorge Aguirre, 20, adds that recent changes in the city, from the dispensary to the promise of a dog park, excited him to vote this year.

He organized a rally for the Black Lives Matter movement in June with three friends, the first in the city that residents remember.

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"We really wanted to make our own community aware of what was happening in the rest of the country, even if they felt it was not affecting them," Aguirre explains.

Councilmember Kathy Durham is also a teacher at West Wendover High School.Kim Raff / for NBC News

The challenge of the pandemic

Any other obligation or promise from Corona seems simpler to carry out compared to managing West Wendover amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 75% of the city's residents are casino employees, and when Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak ordered the shutdown in March, most were fired or suspended.

That affected Corona, who at the time worked as a poker room manager, since

.

He lost his job, like hundreds of his constituents.

For months, he waited for his unemployment insurance to arrive and had to make decisions about which bills to pay, while helping other residents to go through the same thing.

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The politician visited the local food bank, which had gone from serving 20 families a week to 300, to make sure it had enough supplies for the community, while collecting food for himself.

"It was a really humbling experience and in the end I feel like it brought me closer to the community, because we all knew we were going through the same thing," she recalled.

The city's casinos reopened this summer.

Most of the residents complied with their mayor's daily reminders on social media to put on the mask and maintain social distance.

Some West Wendover residents said that when they traveled to other parts of Elko County to buy food or work, they found that people weren't taking the same steps.

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Last week, top state health officials criticized the county for not having clear messages on safety precautions in the face of the pandemic, noting that cases in the county had increased fivefold compared to the previous month.

But Elko County commissioners continue to reject sanitary restrictions taken at the state level.

After

, Commissioner Jon Karr noted in an email that he and the other commissioners were working with the state to come up with a more "reasonable" plan. .

The county's director of human resources, Amanda Osborne, told The Associated Press that in Elko County, “the local political leadership is very divided.” “It is very difficult to establish a strategy for it to be carried out,” he said.

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Since March, the virus has infected more than 300 West Wendover residents, claiming the lives of four.

"Because we are so small, everyone who passes away is a face, not just a number, and that has probably been one of the hardest parts of all this," laments Corona. 

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The choice of voters

As Election Day approached, Corona felt nervous.

He knew that the results would largely depend on how residents believed he had managed the health and economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

Corona ended up beating his opponent, Mike Katsonis, by a margin of 387 votes, more than triple his margin in 2016.

Katsonis, a 69-year-old Republican, said he ran so that Corona would not be left unopposed.

He knew the chance of winning would be remote because the young Democrat is popular and the city seemed to be leaning blue.

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"In fact, even after his victory was certified, I told him that otherwise he would have required a recount," said Katsonis, a retired pharmacist.

The results showed that the city still has a strong red contingent: Joe Biden beat Trump in West Wendover, but only by 10 votes, far less than Corona's lead.

Kris Andersen, 55, has been in town for 29. He likes Corona and appreciates his efforts to diversify the local economy, but did not vote for him.

"I think it is very, very liberal and I am much more conservative," says Andersen, a substitute teacher.

He wants to make sure Tory voters continue to be heard in West Wendover.

"I think he's a good guy, but I don't think we have the same political ideas," he adds.

The Mayor, Daniel Corona, in front of City Hall.Kim Raff / for NBC News

As he drove home after taking office as mayor earlier this month, with the neon lights of the casinos in his rearview mirror, the re-elected mayor was concerned about the record spike in coronavirus cases in Nevada and the possibility of another closure.

He's not sure that the city's casinos can survive this eventuality.

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But the mandate he received from voters throughout the election encouraged him: He received 620 votes, while Biden got 427 and Trump 417 in West Wendover.

"That means a lot of people who voted for Trump did, too, which is strange because I consider myself the opposite of him

," Corona said.

"But it also shows me that there are many people who understand that I am not just a mayor of a group or party, but that I work for everyone who lives here," he added.