During the presidential race, the conflict between the Sanders element and the Reid machine had been kept below a boil partly as a result of the personal relationships at play. Sanders’s 2020 brain trust was significantly made up of former aides to Reid who remain on good terms with the former majority leader, including campaign manager Faiz Shakir; deputy Ari Rabin-Havt, who has since returned to Sanders’s Senate office; and national policy director Josh Orton. But when the Sanders campaign ended, the establishment was ready to maneuver against them. The Left Caucus and DSA organizers ran a slate of candidates for state party leadership under the name “The NV Dems Progressive Slate.” All but one candidate on the slate was a dues-paying member of a local DSA chapter. The Democratic Party ran candidates on a slate titled “The Progressive Unity Slate,” playing on a theme they’d been pushing the entire cycle: The groups angling for change from the left were trying to divide the party, they said, while they were trying to save it.