A Las Vegas waiter feels the ill effects of Trump’s policies

LAS VEGAS — Aaron Mahan is a lifelong Republican who twice voted for Donald Trump.

He had high hopes putting a businessman in the White House and, although he found the president’s monster ego grating, Mahan voted for his reelection. Mostly, he said, out of party loyalty.

By 2024, however, he’d had enough.

“I just saw more of the bad qualities, more of the ego,” said Mahan, who’s worked for decades as a food server on and off the Las Vegas Strip. “And I felt like he was at least partially running to stay out of jail.”

Mahan couldn’t bring himself to support Kamala Harris. He’s never backed 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’s no Trump hater, Mahan said. “I don’t think he’s evil.” Rather, the 52-year-old calls himself “a Trump realist,” seeing the good and the bad.

Here’s Mahan’s reality: A big drop in pay. Depletion of his emergency savings. Stress every time he pulls into a gas station or visits the supermarket.

Mahan used to blithely toss things in his grocery cart. “Now,” he said, “you have to look at prices, because everything is more expensive.”

In short, he’s living through the worst combination of inflation and economic malaise he’s experienced since he began waiting tables after finishing high school.

Views of the 47th president, from the ground up

Las Vegas lives on tourism, the industry irrigated by rivers of disposable income. The decline of both has resulted in a painful downturn that hurts all the more after the pent-up demand and go-go years following the crippling COVID-19 shutdown.

Over the last 12 months, the number of visitors has dropped significantly and those who do come to Las Vegas are spending less. Passenger arrivals at Harry Reid International Airport, a short hop from the Strip, have declined and room nights, a measure of hotel occupancy, have also fallen.

Mahan, who works at the Virgin resort casino just off the Strip, blames the slowdown in large part on Trump’s failure to tame inflation, his tariffs and pugnacious immigration and foreign policies that have antagonized people — and prospective visitors — around the world.

“His general attitude is, ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and you’re going to like it or leave it.’ And they’re leaving it,” Mahan said. “The Canadians aren’t coming. The Mexicans aren’t coming. The Europeans aren’t coming in the way they did. But also the people from Southern California aren’t coming the way they did either.”

Mahan has a way of describing the buckling blow to Las Vegas’ economy. He calls it “the Trump slump.”

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Mahan was an Air Force brat who lived throughout the United States and, for a time, in England before his father retired from the military and started looking for a place to settle.

Mahan’s mother grew up in Sacramento and liked the mountains that ring Las Vegas. They reminded her of the Sierra Nevada. Mahan’s father had worked intermittently as a bartender. It was a skill of great utility in Nevada’s expansive hospitality industry.

So the desert metropolis it was.

Mahan was 15 when his family landed. After high school, he attended college for a time and started working in the coffee shop at the Barbary Coast hotel and casino. He then moved on to the upscale Gourmet Room. The money was good; Mahan had found his career.

From there he moved to Circus Circus and then, in 2005, the Hard Rock hotel and casino, where he’s been ever since. (In 2018, Virgin Hotels purchased the Hard Rock.)

Mahan, who’s single with no kids, learned to roll with the vicissitudes of the hospitality business. “As a food server, there’s always going to be slowdowns and takeoffs,” he said over lunch at a dim sum restaurant in a Las Vegas strip mall.

Mahan socked money away during the summer months and hunkered down in the slow times, before things started picking up around the New Year. He weathered the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, when Nevada led the nation in foreclosures, bankruptcies soared and tumbleweeds blew through Las Vegas’ many overbuilt, financially underwater subdivisions.

This economy feels worse.

Over the last 12 months, Las Vegas has drawn fewer visitors and those who have come are spending less.

(David Becker / For The Times)

With tourism off, the hotel where Mahan works changed from a full-service coffee shop to a limited-hour buffet. So he’s no longer waiting tables. Instead, he mans a to-go window, making drinks and handing food to guests, which brings him a lot less in tips. He estimates his income has fallen $2,000 a month.

But it’s not just that his paychecks have grown considerably skinnier. They don’t go nearly as far.

Gasoline. Eggs. Meat. “Everything,” Mahan said, “is costing more.”

An admitted soda addict, he used to guzzle Dr Pepper. “You’d get three bottles for four bucks,” Mahan said. “Now they’re $3 each.”

He’s cut back as a result.

Worse, his air conditioner broke last month and the $14,000 that Mahan spent replacing it — along with a costly filter he needs for allergies — pretty much wiped out his emergency fund.

It feels as though Mahan is just barely getting by and he’s not at all optimistic things will improve anytime soon.

“I’m looking forward,” he said, to the day Trump leaves office.

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Mahan considers himself fairly apolitical. He’d rather knock a tennis ball around than debate the latest goings-on in Washington.

He likes some of the things Trump has accomplished, such as securing the border with Mexico — though Mahan is not a fan of the zealous immigration raids scooping up landscapers and tamale vendors.

He’s glad about the no-tax-on-tips provision in the massive legislative package passed last spring, though, “I’m still being taxed at the same rate and there’s no extra money coming in right now.” He’s waiting to see what happens when he files his tax return next year.

He’s not counting on much. “I’m never convinced of anything,” Mahan said. “Until I see it.”

Something else is poking around the back of his mind.

Mahan is a shop steward with the Culinary Union, the powerhouse labor organization that’s helped make Las Vegas one of the few places in the country where a waiter, such as Mahan, can earn enough to buy a home 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 worries that once Trump is done targeting immigrants, federal workers and Democratic-run cities, he’ll come after organized labor, undermining one of the foundational building blocks that helped him climb into the middle class.

“He is a businessman and most businesspeople don’t like dealing with unions,” Mahan said.

There are a few bright spots in Las Vegas’ economic picture. Convention bookings are up slightly for the year, and look to be strengthening. Gaming revenues have increased year-over-year. The workforce is still growing.

“This community’s streets are not littered with people that have been laid off,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal analyst with Applied Analysis, a firm that provides economic and fiscal policy counsel in Las Vegas.

“The layoff trends, unemployment insurance, they’ve edged up,” Aguero said. “But they’re certainly not wildly elevated in comparison to other periods of instability.”

That, however, offers small solace for Mahan as he makes drinks, hands over takeout food and carefully watches his wallet.

If he knew then what he knows now, what would the Aaron of 2016 — the one so full of hope for a Trump presidency — say to the Aaron of today?

Mahan paused, his chopsticks hovering over a custard dumpling.

“Prepare,” he said, “for a bumpy ride.”