LAS VEGAS — Democrats looking to win back Nevada’s gubernatorial mansion want to tie incumbent GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo to Donald Trump’s agenda — but the first-term governor is not making it easy.
Despite receiving Trump’s endorsement, Lombardo, a former sheriff, has at times split with the White House and GOP-led Congress. He criticized cuts to Medicaid, publicly complained in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum about cuts to wind and solar projects in Nevada and asked the administratrationto end tariffs on lithium.
Democrats, meanwhile, have attacked the governor for not standing up to Trump, saying in a press release last month that Lombardo “refuses to defend” Nevada after the Trump administration canceled a massive solar project.
National Democrats, buoyed by off-cycle electoral victories earlier this month, see Lombardo as the top governor to unseat in the midterm elections. He’ll face either Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford or progressive Washoe County Commission Chair Alexis Hill. The race unfolds against the backdrop of economic instability in one of America’s most working-class states, even as blue-collar voters have been fleeing the Democratic Party for several cycles.
“Our intention when we run is unfinished business,” said Joe Weaver, campaign manager for Lombardo, in an interview in mid-November. Weaver pointed out that the governor is still trying to finish certain items of his agenda amid pushback from the state’s Democratic-led Legislature, including a crime bill that increases penalties on many offenses. The bill finally passed earlier this month.
Lombardo, at the same time, has vetoed more than 160 proposals sent to him by the state Assembly — and at his campaign launch billed himself as the “last line of defense” between the people of Nevada and “irresponsible politicians.”
Democrats seeking to unseat Lombardo have their work cut out for them. Nevada has shifted to the right in recent cycles, including in 2024 when Trump became the first Republican to win the state in two decades. The GOP has also registered more members than Democrats in the state, a worrying sign for Democrats who see a tourism slump — down almost 8 percent compared to 2024, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority — and economic woes as an opportunity to win back the governor’s mansion.
“The ‘Trump slump’ is real, and Nevada is the canary in the coal mine,” said Democratic Sen. Jackie Rosen, who won reelection in Nevada last year by nearly 2 percentage points — while Trump won by 3 points. She, like much of Nevada’s political establishment, has already endorsed Ford. “Health care and affordability, these are the top things people are worried about … this is what Attorney General Ford has to focus on — what people worry about at the kitchen table.”
But people do not necessarily blame Trump for the state’s tourism drop-off. An October poll of registered voters conducted by Noble Predictive Insights found that 46 percent believe the tourism decline is due to the skyrocketing costs of hotels, dining and entertainment, and only 14 percent believed it was due to political rhetoric or federal policies.
Some Democrats see areas for winning. Independents or unaffiliated voters remain the state’s largest bloc, leaving a door open for Democrats. Rosen and Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto regularly outperform national Democrats in popularity, and the Legislature is blue. The state is one of just five with a divided triplex: Nevada’s governor is Republican, while its attorney general and secretary of state are Democrats.
“In Nevada, I wouldn’t say the Republican Party itself has been very successful in electing candidates,” said Andrew Woods, the director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Center for Business and Economic Research. “I would say Trump has been successful — in his personality and his message — of connecting with dissatisfied voters and workers.”
Lombardo shocked Democrats when he unseated Gov. Steve Sisolak in 2022, and Trump gave the governor partial credit for his presidential win in 2024.
But like fellow statewide electeds Rosen and Cortez Masto, who have broken with their own party (as they did on ending the recent shutdown and on blocking certain arms sales to Israel in August), Lombardo represents a state where voters reward independence and prioritize economic issues. Despite Trump’s praise, it was Lombardo who declined to call Trump a “great president” in 2022, instead referring to him as “sound” — a description his office later sought to walk back.
And there are issues that Lombardo has drifted from Trump on since the president took office. Lombardo said in January that he thought Trump’s mass deportation plan is “not what I believe is an appropriate policy.” When the White House deemed Nevada a sanctuary state earlier this year, Lombardo produced a 10 page-memo to convince them otherwise. In it he outlined how Nevada has adjusted state policy to align closer with Trump’s approach, including pushing the Las Vegas police department to better collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And while he demurred in December when asked if he’d mobilize the national guard to help with ICE operations, he later approved their activation in August.
One in five voters in the state are Latino, and in 2024 they swung toward Trump: 35 percent voted for the current president, while only 27 percent voted for him in 2020. Many Latinos in Nevada value the economy, jobs and education even more than immigration reform, said Nevada-based GOP strategist Jesus Marquez, and are increasingly disillusioned with Democrats’ focus on culture war issues.
“Democrats, for now decades, have been always pursuing the wrong things on behalf of Latinos,” Marquez said. They are still a swing vote, however: Latinos boomeranged back toward Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey earlier this month and a recent Emerson College poll of registered voters showed Ford leading Lombardo with Hispanic voters in Nevada by 16 points.
Democrats are banking on their ability to tether the governor to Trump’s policies, which are unpopular with some voters. The Emerson College poll found that 34 percent of Nevadans approved of Lombardo’s job performance and 30 percent were neutral, while 36 percent disapproved — a lower disapproval rating than Rosen, Cortez Masto and Trump received in the same poll. A July poll showed that voters disapproved most of Lombardo’s support for Trump, and that’s what Democrats are trying to hammer home: accusing Lombardo of failing to stand up to the administration.
“In the months since [Trump has] been in office, we’ve just gotten poorer and sicker, and Governor Lombardo sure hasn’t been able to make any inroads there,” Rosen said, accusing Lombardo of “enabling” Trump. “We just have to focus solely on the president, his policies, his censorship, every single way that he’s moving toward authoritarianism and just not considering what real people, what their struggles are,” she added.
Ford, the attorney general running to unseat Lombardo, echoed Rosen, saying he had little faith in Lombardo to push back against the White House.
“[Lombardo] has stood by idly and silently as Trump has demolished our economy [and] has continued to negatively impact the livelihoods of so many Nevadans,” Ford said. The attorney general has touted his own experience as a single father on food stamps early in his life and has said he wants to work with the state Legislature to counter some federal policies.
A spokesperson for Lombardo, however, pushed back on these accusations.
“Governor Lombardo has delivered real results for Nevada, critical attainable housing legislation, historic funding and accountability for schools, and thousands of new jobs for Nevadans,” the spokesperson said. “He has no business lecturing anyone on putting Nevada families first.”
Republicans are quick to argue that attacking Trump is not an economic plan that works in a purple state.
“Ford’s always been the Democrat culture warrior,” said Jeremy Hughes, a GOP strategist who has worked with the Lombardo campaign. “I have a hard time thinking he’s going to be able to pivot.”
Hill, the other Democratic primary candidate, says tying Lombardo to Trump must be paired with policy ideas. She’s running on a platform of making housing more affordable and diversifying Nevada’s economy to make it less reliant on tourism. “What we learned from the last election is that Nevadans need something to vote for,” Hill said in a recent interview.
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