LAS VEGAS — Less than a week before the Nevada caucuses, Hillary Clinton’s political nightmare came to the Origin India restaurant near the Las Vegas Strip.
More than 100 activists packed between a buffet and a sign for Bernie Sanders. They talked. They made caucus commitments. They cheered as a ‘‘multiethnic coalition’’ of speakers asked them to dump the long-time Democratic presidential front-runner.
‘‘She had the same information as Bernie, and she voted for the war in Iraq,’’ said Vicenta Montoya, an immigration attorney. ‘‘She supported a wall along the border. And while she was secretary of state, she did absolutely nothing to alleviate the hardship of people separated from their families.’’
‘‘The white Americans have already shown the momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire,’’ said Zaffar Iqbal, a doctor and member of Muslims for Bernie. ‘‘Now is the turn for Nevada to stand up.’’
Until quite recently, Clinton’s campaign saw Nevada as a chance for a face-saving victory after an anticipated defeat in New Hampshire. But that defeat turned into a trouncing. Now, the Sanders campaign is trying to prove that she can be beaten anywhere.
In Nevada, which will hold its Democratic caucuses on Saturday, the campaign is heavily influenced by organized labor leaders and a large Latino electorate. But Sanders’ supporters believe young Latinos, many of them immigrants, will flock to his side.
Clinton’s hopes rested on her overwhelming advantage among voters of color — part of a ‘‘firewall’’ her aides have claimed in many states that follow overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire on the electoral calendar.
But Sanders is betting that his appeal among young and working-class voters, revealed so dramatically in New Hampshire, is now strong enough to transcend race.
Nevada is a chance to disprove ‘‘this firewall fantasy that the Clinton campaign has put out there,’’ said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager. ‘‘If we do well, it destroys that myth.’’
Sanders’ aides say there is strong evidence in their internal polling that both young and working-class Latinos are coming his way. Even the Clinton campaign is now downplaying expectations.
In the wake of the New Hampshire defeat, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon pointedly called Nevada ‘‘a state that is 80 percent white voters,’’ universally seen as a way to undercut the story that Sanders is making gains outside of progressive white voters. (In 2008, fewer than 70 percent of caucusgoers were white.)
And both campaigns competed intensely in the state over the weekend, with more appearances to come before the caucuses in five days.
On Saturday, with canvassing underway, the Sanders campaign asked in an e-mail for ‘‘volunteers across the country to help us call Spanish-speaking voters in Nevada and find out who is for Bernie and who is still undecided.’’ Clinton’s campaign deployed squads of Spanish-speaking union members.
Twelve Sanders campaign offices have sprouted up across the state. He is outspending Clinton in TV ads by roughly two to one, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Those ads, which began in November, now feature the Latina politician Lucy Flores explaining why only Sanders can fix the country.
More than a hundred paid staffers have hit the ground, aided by Latino pro-Sanders groups from as far away as Los Angeles. On Sunday, Sanders even wound up in the same black Las Vegas church as Clinton, sitting at the opposite end of the first pew.
‘‘The people of Nevada were some of the hardest hit by the Wall Street meltdown,’’ Weaver said. ‘‘People lost their homes, they lost their jobs.’’
Clinton’s performance in Nevada’s 2008 caucuses taught her campaign two crucial lessons heading into this year’s race.
Her win of the popular vote revealed an advantage against Barack Obama among Latinos and Las Vegas union workers — an advantage that they anticipated would grow even stronger against Sanders. And her loss of the delegate count, despite the popular win, revealed an organizational weakness and strategic shortcoming that her aides vowed to correct this time around.
Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, had run that 2008 Nevada campaign. In a January conference call with reporters, the campaign claimed a 25-point lead in the state. The culinary workers, an important constituency, were on the fence and not working on the other side.