LAS VEGAS— Aaron Mahan is a lifelong Republican who voted twice for Donald Trump.
He had high hopes of placing a businessman in the White House and, although he found the president’s monster ego irritating, Mahan voted for re-election. Above all, he says, out of loyalty to the party.
But by 2024, he had had enough.
“I just saw more bad qualities, more ego,” said Mahan, who worked for decades as a restaurant server on and off the Las Vegas Strip. “And I felt like he was at least partially running to avoid prison.”
Mahan couldn’t bring himself to support Kamala Harris. He has never supported a Democrat for president. So when illness overtook him on election day, it was a good excuse to stay in bed and not vote.
He doesn’t hate Trump, Mahan said. “I don’t think he’s bad.” Rather, the 52-year-old calls himself a “Trump realist,” seeing the good and the bad.
Here’s Mahan’s reality: a big pay cut. Exhaustion of emergency savings. Stress every time he goes to a gas station or the supermarket.
Mahan had a habit of gleefully throwing things into his grocery cart. “Now,” he said, “you have to look at the prices, because everything is more expensive. »
In short, he is experiencing the worst combination of inflation and economic malaise he has experienced since he started waiting tables after finishing high school.
Views of the 47th President, Inside and Out
Las Vegas lives on tourism, an industry irrigated by rivers of disposable income. The decline of both has led to a painful downturn that hurts even more after the pent-up demand and years of momentum that followed the crippling COVID-19 shutdown.
Over the past 12 months, visitor numbers have declined significantly and those who come to Las Vegas are spending less. Passenger arrivals at Harry Reid International Airport, a short walk from the Strip, have declined and overnight stays, a measure of hotel occupancy, have also declined.
Mahan, who works at the Virgin Resort casino just off the Strip, attributes the slowdown largely to Trump’s inability to control inflation, his tariffs and his pugnacious foreign and immigration policies that have irked people — and potential visitors — around the world.
“His general attitude is, ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do and you’re going to love it or leave it.’ And they leave him,” Mahan said. “Canadians don’t come. Mexicans don’t come. Europeans don’t come like they used to. But people from Southern California also don’t come like they used to.”
Mahan has a way of describing the blow to the Las Vegas economy. He calls it “the Trump crisis.”
::
Mahan was an Air Force brat who lived all over the United States and, for a time, England before his father retired from the military and began looking for a place to settle down.
Mahan’s mother grew up in Sacramento and loved the mountains surrounding Las Vegas. They reminded him of the Sierra Nevada. Mahan’s father had worked intermittently as a bartender. It was a skill of great utility in Nevada’s growing hospitality industry.
It was therefore the metropolis of the desert.
Mahan was 15 when his family arrived. After high school, he attended college for a while and began working in the cafe at the Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino. He then moved on to the high-end gourmet room. The money was good; Mahan had found his career.
From there, he moved to Circus Circus and then, in 2005, to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, where he has resided ever since. (In 2018, Virgin Hotels purchased the Hard Rock.)
Mahan, single and without children, has learned to deal with the vicissitudes of the hotel sector. “As a restaurant server, there are always going to be slowdowns and takeoffs,” he said over lunch at a dim sum restaurant in a Las Vegas strip mall.
Mahan saved money during the summer months and hunkered down during the slow times, before things started to improve around the New Year. He weathered the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, when Nevada led the nation in foreclosures, bankruptcies and turmoil in Las Vegas’ many overbuilt and financially underwater developments.
This economy feels worse.
Over the past 12 months, Las Vegas has attracted fewer visitors and those who have come are spending less.
(David Becker / For Time)
With the end of tourism, the hotel where Mahan works went from a full-service cafe to a buffet with limited hours. He is therefore no longer a waiter. Instead, he runs a takeout window, making drinks and handing out food to guests, earning him far fewer tips. He estimates his income has dropped by $2,000 a month.
But it’s not just that his salaries have become considerably meager. They don’t go that far.
Essence. Eggs. Meat. “Everything,” Mahan said, “costs more.”
Admittedly addicted to soda, he had the habit of gulping down Dr Pepper. “You would get three bottles for four dollars,” Mahan said. “Now they’re $3 each.”
As a result, it is reduced.
Worse yet, his air conditioner broke last month, and the $14,000 Mahan spent to replace it — along with an expensive filter he needs for his allergies — nearly wiped out his emergency fund.
It feels like Mahan is barely getting by and he’s not at all optimistic that things will improve any time soon.
“I look forward,” he said, to the day Trump leaves office.
::
Mahan considers himself rather apolitical. He prefers to hit a tennis ball rather than debate the latest events in Washington.
He likes some of the things Trump has accomplished, like securing the border with Mexico — although Mahan isn’t a fan of zealous immigration raids that round up landscapers and tamale sellers.
However, he welcomes the provision banning tax on tips in the massive legislative package passed last spring: “I am still taxed at the same rate and there is no additional money coming in at the moment. » He’s waiting to see what happens when he files his tax return next year.
He doesn’t count on much. “I’m never convinced of anything,” Mahan said. “Until I saw him.”
Something else comes to mind.
Mahan is a shop steward at the Culinary Union, the most powerful labor organization that has helped make Las Vegas one of the few places in the country where a waiter, like Mahan, can earn enough to buy a house in an upscale suburb like nearby Henderson. (He points out that he made the purchase in 2012 and probably couldn’t afford it in today’s economy.)
Mahan fears that once Trump finishes targeting immigrants, federal workers and Democratic-run cities, he will go after unions, undermining one of the foundational elements that helped him gain access to the middle class.
“He’s a businessman and most businessmen don’t like dealing with unions,” Mahan said.
There are some bright spots in Las Vegas’ economic situation. Reservations for conferences are up slightly this year and appear to be strengthening. Gaming revenues have increased year over year. The numbers continue to grow.
“The streets of this community are not littered with people who have been laid off,” said Jeremy Aguero, senior analyst at Applied Analysis, a firm that provides economic and tax policy advice in Las Vegas.
“The trends in layoffs and unemployment insurance have increased slightly,” Agüero said. “But they are certainly not extremely high compared to other periods of instability.”
It does, however, offer some small comfort to Mahan as he prepares drinks, hands out takeout, and watches his wallet carefully.
If he knew then what he knows now, what would the Aaron of 2016 – the one so hopeful for a Trump presidency – say to the Aaron of today?
Mahan paused, his chopsticks hovering over a ball of custard.
“Prepare yourself,” he said, “for a bumpy ride.”
