Who's behind the Nevada Forum? Nonpartisan group hopes to bring GOP, Dems together

As candidates scrap it out during an election year, it’s rare to see bipartisan efforts.

But The Nevada Forum, a new civic infrastructure nonprofit officially launching Thursday, aims to break through the polarization. The group seeks to find solutions to systemic problems supported by people across all political affiliations, starting with the question: “If Nevada’s state leaders and residents could solve one problem, what should it be?”

Nevada is one of three states, alongside South Carolina and New Hampshire, to participate in the new experiment launched by American actor and entrepreneur Andrew Shue, who also co-founded and served on the board of directors of the nonprofit DoSomething.

Shue told The Nevada Independent the initiative is designed to help Nevadans communicate across political divides and generate bipartisan legislation lawmakers can implement during the 2027 legislative session.

“There’s just a real desire to start getting stuff done,” Shue said Friday. “In building the civic infrastructure, in marketing it, in meeting with people from grassroots to grass tops, we have not had one meeting in the three states that we’ve been working in where someone has said, ‘This is not worth your time’ … they’ve all said, ‘We have to try this.’”

The idea for the project began, Shue recalled, about 10 years ago, with the feeling that the country was no longer able to tackle big problems from bipartisan perspectives. In the intervening years, he said he traveled to 10 states with nationally recognized GOP pollster Frank Luntz, hosting focus groups to gauge whether people were willing to engage with opposing perspectives to find solutions.

Shue said the three-hour sessions would begin with participants “screaming,” “pointing the finger” and “talking over each other,” but they typically ended in a “quite hopeful” place. It led to multiple years of testing and the development of a four-phase timeline that will play out over the next year or so in Nevada.

The overarching goal of the statewide effort is to identify a “pragmatic” agenda and eventually propose legislation supported by more than 70 percent of Nevadans. The phases of the project include launching the initiative, gathering ideas from residents by populating them on an online platform and working with residents, lawmakers and experts on solutions. The final piece will be to convene a politically and demographically representative group of 50-100 Nevadans to propose legislation that could be implemented during the 2027 legislative session, all while working alongside state lawmakers.

Initial funding for the enterprise, Shue said, came from people in his social and entrepreneurial circle who wanted to address the growing political divides and use seed capital to show what is possible. Meta’s advertising records show the organization has already spent more than $8,000 on targeted social media ads.

“Our goal is to have this not be a one-and-done,” Shue said. “This should be, like I said, annualized civic infrastructure, but it needs to be funded by people there on the ground in Nevada. And we believe that will happen.”

All three of the states selected for the forum are early primary states, and those establishing the project said they hope others will see its effects and take up the call.

Former Clark County Democratic Party chair Chris Miller and prominent state Republican Greg Bailor are co-chairs of the effort in Nevada. Bailor served as the Nevada state director for the Republican National Committee and executive director of the Nevada Republican Party.

“The country has no shortage of problems to solve, and I think this is such a unique opportunity for a large number of Nevadans from all over the state to have a new way to have their voice heard,” Bailor said.

As the former executive director of the Senate Republican Caucus, Bailor noted it can be challenging for people to travel to Carson City to advocate for their needs. The forum, he pointed out, could help address that problem.

Already, Miller and Bailor have counted more than 400 policy ideas that have been submitted to the Nevada Forum, and that’s before the project has officially launched. They added that they’re not asking people to take off their partisan hats, but rather bring their perspectives to a new type of problem-solving venture.

Miller, who moved from California to Nevada in 2005, said the forum offers an opportunity for the 75 percent of state residents who were not born here and typically live in more urban regions to develop a better understanding of the state’s rural regions.

Already, he said, the project has connected him with people outside of his party and allowed him to develop meaningful relationships.

“The exciting part for me is to look at the different ways people look at things, and how to address and get to the end point,” Miller said. “One of the benefits of this as well is to learn that the other side of the aisle is not the enemy.”

Though technically citizens can propose changes to the law through their legislator or a ballot measure, doing so is difficult, and many are not aware of how the political process works, Miller and Bailor said. Ballot initiatives are typically expensive and driven by a particular party or cause seeking to advance an agenda.

“Even in those signature-gathering kind of campaigns, that’s all very political, that’s all very deliberative for a specific policy,” Bailor said. “We want to hear from Nevadans. We want their ideas to come forward.”

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The Nevada Independent is a 501(c)3 nonprofit news organization. We are committed to transparency and disclose all our donors. The following people or entities mentioned in this article are financial supporters of our work:

1. Greg Bailor - $1,488

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This story was originally published by The Nevada Independent and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.