When the state’s politically powerful Culinary Union tried to unseat a sitting legislator, it was a declaration of the labor organization’s frustration with some of its closest allies.
The union targeted Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D-Las Vegas) by putting up nurse Geoconda Hughes (the daughter of former Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline) to run against her in the Senate District 3 Democratic primary because Nguyen helped present a bill in the 2023 legislative session that unwound pandemic-era hotel cleaning requirements.
Nearly half a million dollars was spent on ads in the contest, most of it in support of Nguyen, in the most public split yet between legislative Democrats and the union.
