The 2020 census numbers are in-- now comes the tough part.

Lawmakers will have to use that information to redraw voting districts around the state impacting federal, state and local elections for the next 10 years.

"Your Las Vegas Raiders!"

Five years ago, few professional sports teams called Las Vegas home, and no major league teams were here.

Now the NFL, NHL and WNBA are in Southern Nevada, and the "Sports City" label is having an impact on tourism.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

(Kipp Ortenburger) Welcome to Nevada Week.

This week we examine the legacy of hip-hop pioneer Tupac Shakur and look at how professional sports have transformed our city.

But we start with the census, the snapshot of America with far-reaching consequences.

Every 10 years we get counted.

The Census Bureau sets out to see how many people live in the United States, and in the process it also gathers information about age, race, gender, income and a myriad of other details.

Nevada gained 404,000 residents in the past 10 years and now tops 3.1 million.

The 18 and older population grew by more than 18%.

The 18 and under population grew by 4%.

The population has become even more diverse.

The state is now the third-most ethnically diverse in the country, bested only by Hawaii and California.

In fact, one of the big takeaways from the census is the growing number of people who identified themselves as white and another race; overall there was a 316% jump in that number in Nevada.

The number of people identifying as multiracial jumped by 244%.

People who say they are two or more races is 14% of the state's population now, compared with 4.7% a decade ago.

Initial census tallies revealed two stark population realities in Nevada: We're growing fast, but maybe not as fast as 10 years ago, yet we're diversifying at a much greater rate.

The result is Nevada is now home to one of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the U.S.

Joining us to talk about the census numbers and what it means for redistricting is Dan Lee, assistant professor of political science at UNLV and April Corbin Girnus, a reporter for the Nevada Current.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

We really appreciate it.

April is joining us again.

We've talked about the census in other ways before, but let's talk about the results here.

You've been covering this as the results have kind of been coming out, and of course this was a much later process than we all would have hoped or thought it was.

What are your some of your biggest takeaways of the numbers themselves?

(April Corbin Girnus) Well Nevada, as anybody who lives here knows, has been growing really fast.

Our overall state population grew by 15%, which is a pretty large number and one of the fastest in the country.

But it's not the fastest, which we've been in the past, and it has slowed over the last two census.

So the 2010 census and the 2000 census we were faster than that, and we gained Congressional seats at that point.

We aren't getting any this year, but it's still remarkable growth and something worth noting.

And then on the state level if you look at that data, all of that growth is concentrated in Clark County, Nye County and Washoe County.

And then several of the rural districts, about half of them actually lost population or stayed pretty flat.

So that polarization of our population is also really important and something worth noting.

-An article you wrote, the headline was "Communities of Color are the New Nevada," let's talk about the diversity that has come more so to the state than 10 years ago.

-Yes.

So mirroring the national trend is there's been a decline in the number of people who identify as white alone, meaning just white and not another racial or ethnic group.

Nationally, I think it was around an 8% drop, but here in Nevada it was an 11% drop.

So now 51% of the state identifies as white alone so it's still a majority, but it's really close to not being it and a significant shift from 66%, which was what it was in 2010.

And for me, I think one of the most remarkable and biggest stories is the number of people who identify as two or more races, so multiracial, skyrocketed by 244% so it's up to-- I think it was in the single digits in 2010 but now it's up to 14%, so it's 14% of our population that identifies as white and Hispanic or white and Black or white and Asian.

So that has some pretty significant, you know, changes that could mean for that.

-Significant, and very surprising to see that big of a jump.

Do we know the reasons why?

I guess we have to be reminded that we self-report for the census too.

-Yes.

It's self-reporting, so I think there are a lot of people who maybe are white and Black say, but they're really light-skinned and they're really white passing, so they haven't been comfortable maybe identifying as multiracial before, or there's a lot of people who are Asian and white who maybe are mistaken for being just white and maybe they've been uncomfortable with that.

But as our national conversation has evolved on race, as we've started to look at more nuance in all of these things as it's been embraced more, I think people are identifying different.

So it's not that every baby now is multiracial, but people are just identifying differently than they used to, which I think is great for America personally.

-Dan, so much political implication in a census in general.

I want to start with maybe the political strategists that are out there for our state; maybe let's start with the GOP.

What is discouraging maybe, what is encouraging about some of these census numbers here?

(Dan Lee) Right.

So I think just statewide, these trends that we're seeing from the census kind of verify just what we've been seeing over the past 10 years, that we've been talking about how, you know, Nevada is a swing state, was a swing state, but it's been trending blue, right, and then these census numbers are kind of just reinforcing that.

So that's bad for the GOP.

But on the other hand, again looking statewide, they've actually performed-- like Clinton and Biden performed less well versus Obama, right?

So yes we're more consistently going blue, but it's not by a large margin; in fact, the margin has been shrinking.

And part of this is the population is growing, you know, especially racial minorities, but it's also we have a very young population.

So when you add young voters, racial minorities, especially Latino voters, less likely to turn out and vote, that's where although there is this Democratic advantage, it's not a given, you know, that Democrats are taking over Nevada statewide.

-It's not a given, and you've already referenced our most recent Presidential elections.

A lot of people, as evidenced by those elections, say we are a third-party state, there is a third party here, we do have a lot of independent or nonpartisan voters.

Looking at the census data, is there any indication that third party is going to diminish at all, or do we think it's still going to be strong here in the state?

-I would say a lot of people, especially that identify as independent or non-affiliated, are closet partisans.

So this is something that political science research looks at, that a lot of people that maybe even identify with a third party, on election day they're going to choose to vote for the lesser of two evils, right, especially given how polarized the major parties are.

You can think about the costs of wasting your vote, the cost of oops, accidently contributing to Biden winning, you know, by not voting for Trump, by voting for a third party candidate, right?

So that cost is higher in a more polarized era, so I think there's still going to be this continued trend actually going towards the major parties even though people don't necessarily identify with the major parties.

That's just kind of a general trend in Nevada but also nationwide.

-Yes.

We're already talking about elections.

April, let's talk more specifically about the census, and of course when we talk about the census, sometimes it's synonymous with redistricting at our state level and at our municipal levels of course, and then that is of course synonymous then with elections here.

What is the purpose of redistricting?

Why do we do it every 10 years?

-So the idea is that every-- let's talk about the Congressional districts, right, we have four of them.

In a perfect world, all four Congressional districts should have the same amount of people in them so every elected official is representing the same amount of people.

Obviously, as the population changes and growth happens in different areas, that shifts.

So every 10 years, we have to sort of reset it and redraw the lines so we can get back to that ideal population.

So right now based off the census data, if you look at our Congressional districts, one of our Congressional districts has 80,000 more people than the rest of them; that's Susie Lee's district down south that has, you know, rapid growth down there.

So in the process of redistricting, we have to take those voters and move them somewhere else so all of them are sort of even, and that obviously, if you're looking at it from a political consultant standpoint, has a lot of-- there's a lot of things you can do to sort of benefit your party if you happen to be during that process, which is why it's a highly political process.

But from the sort of theoretical baseline, it's about having equal representation.

-You're talking about-- you're talking about Congressional districts here, but who's making the decisions, is this our state legislatures making this?

-Yes, we have the state legislature.

So obviously because the process was supposed to happen at the very beginning of this year so it would have fell during the regular session of the legislature, because the census was delayed last year because of COVID and they shut down, all of those deadlines got pushed back across the nation.

So now our state legislature will likely have to call a special session.

They haven't announced when it's going to happen.

They previously said it should happen before the end of this calendar year; we know it needs to happen before candidate filing deadlines which for judicial races it's in January, and for non-judicial it's in March.

So it'll be probably done before the end of the year, but we don't have the exact details on when our state legislators will do it.

But at the municipal level, those processes are already starting.

-And important to remember, this is not just the state level.

There are municipal redistricting as well, and are those connected at all to the state or are they completely separate per their elections that they're having?

-They are separate.

For the most part, a lot of them use the same guidelines.

There are some general redistricting guidelines that everybody follows that you sort of legally follow but the legislature doesn't have to sign off on the local things.

It's up to that jurisdiction so it'll be up to the county, the cities and the school boards and at even smaller level.

-And you posted a great article on Nevada Current just this morning, day of recording, about municipal redistricting and the dates and the timelines for that.

Dan, let's talk a little bit about two things.

Legislative-dominant decision-making and that we are going to have a special session, and that this is such a tricky process to redistrict.

Do you see legislative dominance in decision-making and the fact that we are going to have a special session helping the process or potentially hindering our process for redistricting at the state level?

-So I think we want to think about the implications of who gets to redistrict, right?

Is it the state legislatures or some states use like bipartisan or nonpartisan commissions.

And we also can't forget that Sisolak, the governor, also has a say in this redistricting.

So this was an issue back in 2010 after that census where Democrats controlled the state legislature, but there was a Republican governor.

So that kind of threw a wrench and we had to go through the courts to get the districts we're using today.

So I think it's going to be easier, you know, looking at this year because Democrats have unified control over government, right?

So they're going to be able to-- the state legislature, the Democrats are going to be able to propose their plan, Sisolak as governor is going to sign it into law, right, because again this is passed just like a state law.

It goes through committee, it goes to the floor of the house, the assembly and the senate, and it goes to the governor for signature.

So in terms of the special session, this should go smoothly because of the unified control that Democrats have currently for the Nevada government.

-I want to come to April and ask about this too.

Unified control does sound like it should be a much more smoother process.

We've seen problems in previous redistricting.

We have to just go back 10 years to 2011, where we had a court-appointed panel making some of the mapping decisions here.

You start thinking of lawsuits, especially on the GOP side, and a lot of protests there.

Do you think it's going to be a contentious redistricting process, or do you think it will be easy?

-You know, it seems like everything is sort of contentious politically these days.

It wouldn't surprise me if there were lawsuits that were filed in relation to any of these.

The law sort of actually is pretty clear on what you can and can't argue for.

So like if you're splitting up racial or ethnic groups so you can sort of dilute their vote and put them into two different districts, that's a court case that, you know, you can challenge and you can likely win.

But pure gerrymandering in terms of just I want to move these Republicans out of, you know, Mark Amodeis' district and move them somewhere else, those kinds of things, that's not illegal.

That doesn't mean there won't be challenges because you can file a lawsuit for anything, and who knows what will happen.

But it's pretty clear cut on the things that you're allowed to challenge and the things you aren't allowed to challenge, and depending on what the Democrats do with their district, we'll have to see I guess.

-Let's talk about federal and state elections in general, of course how redistricting is going to impact this; I want to ask you both.

Dan, I want to ask you first.

You specialize in Congressional elections, so let's talk specifically about that.

How do you think redistricting could potentially impact our Congressional elections that are coming up, and let's remember every two years, we've got five of these coming up.

-Right.

So I think it's important first to see where we stand with the districts and what they look like today.

So we have one, you know, leans-- one's heavily Republican, one heavily Democratic and two swing districts, right?

And Democrats hold three out of those four seats, so they hold both of those swing competitive districts.

So what we should expect, again given that Democrats control the process, is they're going to try to make those two swing districts safer for the current incumbents who are both Democrats, right, particularly Susie Lee's district, the third district.

That's one that went for Trump in 2016, just by a few votes went for Biden in 2020, so that is especially a very close district that was held by Republican Joe Heck a few years ago.

So it's a matter of, you know, how do we-- again, that was just suggested, how do we move these Republicans or Democrats around to make the second and fourth-- I'm sorry, the third and fourth district safer for Democrats, for the Democratic incumbents.

-And then of course the third and the fourth district.

Let's talk about Southern Nevada district one of course is a part of this conversation here.

Congresswoman Titus' district, long-term Congresswoman.

We could see some changing around there.

Of course she's been very competitive in that district.

Do you think we're going to see the districts change to a point where her district demographically can switch a lot here?

-Right.

So that's where all those excess Democrats, the Democratic voters are, right?

So that's what-- her district is going to be part of the calculation, like how do we give some of her voters to, you know, the third and fourth districts to make those more Democratic.

So for sure the way it's going to be drawn is going to weaken her advantage, right?

So she might not like, you know, how redistricting is going to go but, you know, in terms of the party, the Democratic Party trying to maximize how many districts they can win is definitely going to influence her district directly.

-April, let's talk about the state competition and some of the elections here too.

Positive deviation, negative deviation, meaning there's kind of a mean they're looking for in the number in each district.

If you look at our senate districts, two-thirds of our senate districts showed negative deviation, and over 50% of our assembly districts showed that, meaning they're going to have to add people from other districts.

Which races are you tracking, really excited about, looking at where those redistricting numbers are going to be?

-You know, I mean, I think you can look historically to some of the really close races in the previous election.

So in state politics, Keith Pickard's district over in Henderson won by 16 votes, right?

That was what kept-- his race is what kept the Democrats from having a super majority during the last legislative session which got a lot of headlines, so I would focus on that.

The Democrats and the Republicans are both going to be watching that because the Democrats may want to strengthen their area there.

But again there's so much growth, and there's so many of those districts that need to be re-tweaked that it's-- it's a tall ordeal, and there are going to be very highly paid political consultants who go through all these numbers and redo them.

But the southwest, in Vegas and all the districts in that area, there's so much growth that they're going to have to be shifted around.

And what they do with it and how they-- you know, which seats they decide to be the strongest, it'll be fun to watch, but it's a little early for me now to know exactly where their mind is because, you know, all of this is happening behind closed doors right now because it's a political process.

So we don't really know what they're thinking yet, but we'll see that once the maps come out.

-And what a great segue.

We got about a minute left and Dan, I want to come to you.

Behind closed doors, this is a legislative process as we mentioned, it's legislative dominant, but there are other states that have brought in commissions that are more nonpartisan or at least a little more equal to make these decisions.

Do you think we can ever see this in the state of Nevada?

-Yes, that's a possibility.

There is this trend to doing this.

There's been a lot of complaints about partisan gerrymandering, so this is where Republicans are going to probably bring lawsuits because you would imagine, well, there's a few more Democrat than Republican voters in Nevada, but it's pretty close to 50/50 so they should both roughly split the legislative seats both for Congress and the state legislature, but there's this imbalance so what we could see is the Democrats trying to strengthen their majority, right, trying to win more of the seats like disproportionate to their actual support in the state.

So we're seeing this all around the country, right, and usually it's Democrats complaining about Republicans doing it because again, this is made by state legislators.

There's a lot more unified Republican state governments and we see more of these Republican gerrymanderers, so what's going to happen is-- sorry, I just lost my train of thought.

-You know, that's okay.

Unfortunately we're out of time, but great answer.

We want to make a note that we invited lawmakers from both parties to join this conversation.

One declined the offer and another one did not respond to our request.

Thank you, Dan Lee from UNLV, and April Corbin Girnus from the Nevada Current for your insights.

We really appreciate them.

This week the Las Vegas Golden Knights were back on the ice for training camp, the Las Vegas Raiders have started their season, and the Las Vegas Aces are again one of the best teams in the WNBA.

Of all the things that have changed in Las Vegas over the past few years, professional sports is one of the most visible and perhaps one of the most influential.

The Nevada Week team has a look.

Touchdown Raiders!

-One for three, how about that!

Las Vegas is going all in on professional sports.

With new arenas and new franchises, the city's tourism leaders are suddenly touting Las Vegas as the "Greatest Arena on Earth."

But why now?

What's attracting professional sports teams to Las Vegas?

(Nancy Lough) The changing of the legal landscape with regard to sport betting is what opened up Las Vegas for sport business.

The gambling issue was a major issue that was keeping pretty much every commissioner of any major sport from considering Las Vegas as a viable market.

Your Las Vegas Raiders!

The other big factor that drew like the Raiders here is the public/private partnership.

Sports franchises, the private entities, seek incentives which they're finding in Las Vegas.

We created a tax structure that added a little bit to the room nights, and that tax goes directly towards paying for that beautiful new facility that we get to call home here, the Allegiant Stadium.

In addition to all the other factors attracting professional sports to Las Vegas, there's always the lure of the city's tourism base.

More visitors means more fans, more money and more teams coming to the town in the future.

It's an exciting time to be in Las Vegas.

There's more professional sport teams on the horizon; a great example, we already have two major ownership entities who are competing for the name of the new MLS team coming to town.

Both entities have already gone through the process of trademarking the name of Las Vegas' proposed Major League Soccer team, a sign things are serious.

But you also know right now, the Oakland A's have been to Las Vegas multiple visits-- I don't know if we're on six or seven at this point-- they're very, very serious about relocating to Las Vegas; probably even more likely than both of those is an NBA franchise.

And Las Vegas is actively preparing for the influx of professional sports and all that comes with them.

That preparation includes a ready workforce.

The University of Nevada Las Vegas is paving the way.

We have offerings at the academic level that are going to prepare these people to work in all of these franchises, all of these events, the management of these new facilities.

Las Vegas is world-famous for its gaming, lodging, entertainment and culinary offerings.

Soon the Entertainment Capital of the World may also be known as "Sports City."

For Nevada Week, I'm Heather Caputo.

-Thanks, Heather.

Well, Tupac Shakur was more than a musician.

He was a hip-hop innovator and a provocateur.

He was shot and killed in Las Vegas 25 years ago this month.

Earlier in a separate conversation for a Nevada Week segment we're working on to air on Saturday nights, I spoke with journalist Andreas Hale about Shakur's life, death and legacy.

For those that that aren't too connected to hip-hop, maybe don't know the personal story of Tupac Shakur, what is important for us to understand?

(Andreas Hale) Wow.

What's important.

What's important, because he wasn't just a rapper.

That's what's really important.

A lot of rappers, their whole lives revolve around being an artist and selling a million records, and some people talk about excess, whatever it is, but Tupac was just-- he was a Renaissance man.

He wanted to do so much more than just be a rapper, and I think that's changed the perception of hip-hop.

After his death, we've seen so many rappers from 50 Cent to, you know, LL Cool J, like everybody's being an actor.

Everybody's gotten involved in something else.

The foundation of that is Tupac Shakur.

You know, people talk about the greatest rappers alive.

He may not have technically been as great as Biggie or Jay-Z, but you couldn't rival his passion for the subjects that he talked about and his passion for the people.

You look at those old interviews and you say wow, that kid talked like that?

You know, he was just-- the term bigger than rap sounds cliche, but Tupac was bigger than rap.

-Yes, and he talked like that, and what a great segue to a clip we want to show.

At a time, we need to mention-- I want to come out of the clip talking about this-- the evolution of rap going on, and Tupac was kind of in the middle of that.

In 2013 PBS Digital Studios took an interview that Tupac did in 1994 and turned it into a short for its Blank on Blank series.

Here's part of what he said.

(Tupac Shakur) There's a machine that I have nothing to do with.

It's called the Tupac Machine, and the media in this country have just skewed it and made me a monster that people just-- they say I'm a criminal, I have hateful, vicious, violent lyrics.

You know, it's like I'm ready to be the bad guy.

I'm already-- they gave me that job.

I'm ready to have it.

-That was so interesting, right?

This machine that he refers to, the music machine, the business side of this.

The media machine is another part of this too.

We need to remember, and I think for the general public too when you have somebody-- that fight the night that he was shot ends with a violent death, that becomes somewhat of a moniker for him.

But obviously from this conversation, it's not the only moniker we need to remember.

I mean, let's talk a little bit about how that machine kind of generates the persona of Tupac and how that's maybe evolved.

-You know, it's kind of interesting because today everything's about a headline, right?

What can we fit into 140 characters on Twitter, and usually it's the most salacious things, and Tupac gave you that a lot.

But there were so many layers to him that the salaciousness is what sold, but a lot of people try to avoid the political aspect of Tupac or the community aspect of Tupac because that didn't always sell.

It wasn't always interesting to people, and Tupac understood the machine.

He understood how to sell himself, he understood marketing, but he also understood how something he could say would be turned against him.

And as a journalist myself, we all look for the headline, you know.

As much as it pains us sometimes to see two people fighting or two rappers beefing and talking about each other's families, that becomes a headline.

And I think Tupac was-- at his age I felt like he was finally getting to a point where he recognized I don't need to be part of the machine.

I need to kind of escape that and take control of my own destiny.

I think it was getting close to that.

But he was trapped in that, and he had a song called "Trapped" and the machine will trap you if you're not aware and conscious of what's going on.

-We also talked to Andreas Hale about boxing in Las Vegas and Muhammad Ali's influence on the city.

Now, to see that interview, go to our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

You can also access any of the resources we discussed in this show on the site.

You can also of course follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week.

♪♪♪