A campaign ad for Joe Lombardo flashes a line across the screen about his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford:

"FORD VOTED FOR THE LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN NEVADA HISTORY."

That is true. It is also a Republican achievement, and the man Lombardo picked to run the governor's office voted for it too.

What the 2015 tax package actually was

Nevada's largest tax increase was enacted in 2015 and valued at $1.3 billion at the time. It created a gross receipts tax on business, raised the payroll tax, extended taxes that had been due to expire, and raised the cigarette tax.

It was spearheaded by Republican Governor Brian Sandoval, working with the gambling and resort industry. Republicans controlled both the Nevada Senate and the Assembly at the time, and the package cleared the state constitution's two-thirds requirement in both chambers comfortably.

The Senate voted on it twice, and the tally was 18 to 3 both times. Ford voted yes both times. So did eight Senate Republicans, Nevada Current editor Hugh Jackson wrote on September 6 — among them Ben Kieckhefer.

Kieckhefer voted for the package on final passage on May 15, 2015, and again on June 1, when the Senate accepted the Assembly's version and sent it to Sandoval. He went on to become Joe Lombardo's first chief of staff, ran the governor's office through the 2023 legislative session, and stepped down in January 2024.

Jackson's column names a second man, James Settelmeyer, and on that one the record is split. Settelmeyer voted for the package on May 15. On June 1 he was one of the three no votes on the version that actually became law: the Senate journal records "NAYS—Goicoechea, Gustavson, Settelmeyer—3." Lombardo appointed him to run the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources on January 6, 2023, less than two months after his Senate term ended, and he stayed there until March 27, 2026, when he left to run — unsuccessfully — for the Republican nomination in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, with Lombardo's backing.

If casting that vote disqualifies a person from being governor of Nevada, Lombardo handed his own office to a man who cast it twice.

The other ad has no receipts

A second anti-Ford ad, from the Lombardo-aligned Better Nevada PAC, says Ford voted to raise taxes 15 times, totaling $3 billion.

Jackson asked the political consulting firm November Inc. — whose Jeremy Hughes leads Better Nevada PAC, per the firm's own website — to identify each of those 15 votes and their dollar amounts. The firm did not respond.

At least two of the votes, and about half of the $3 billion, appear to be the 2015 Sandoval package again. Which is to say: about half the ad's biggest number is one Republican governor's tax bill, counted twice.

Hughes also managed Sandoval's 2014 reelection and consulted on Mark Hutchison's campaign for lieutenant governor that year, according to the firm's website. Hutchison, later a Better Nevada PAC fixture, came to the lieutenant governor's office straight from the Republican side of the state Senate and was a vocal supporter of Sandoval's 2015 agenda.

The data center half of the same ad

The ad's other charge is that Ford is bad because he has supported tax breaks for data centers.

Lombardo supports data centers. He said so on video on May 14, 2026: "I support data centers because they bring jobs, investments, and economic growth to Nevada."

He said it three days after AI investor Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia gave Better Nevada PAC — the same PAC now running the tax ad — $1 million. A week later the wife of Switch's founder gave $1 million more. We laid out that timeline last week.

So the ad attacks Ford for a policy Lombardo holds, using money from the industry that policy benefits.

What it adds up to

Joe Lombardo's campaign is attacking Aaron Ford for a 2015 vote that a Republican governor asked for, that eight Senate Republicans cast alongside him, and that the man Lombardo would later hire to run the governor's office cast twice. The same ad attacks Ford over data center tax breaks that Lombardo publicly supports, and the PAC behind the companion ad took $2 million from data center money in the two weeks around Lombardo's endorsement of the industry. When a reporter asked for the receipts behind the ad's "15 tax increases" claim, the firm running the PAC did not answer.

Source

Joe Lombardo and the largest tax increase in Nevada history by Hugh Jackson, Nevada Current, September 6, 2026. Photo: Nevada Current.