MAGA Report Cards — Nevada

Joe Lombardo's Ad Attacks Aaron Ford for Voting for Nevada's Biggest Tax Increase. The Man Lombardo Made His Chief of Staff Voted for It Twice.

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 07:23:30 +0000

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.

Joe Lombardo Declared His Support for Data Centers Three Days After an AI Investor and His Wife Gave the PAC Backing Him $1 Million. A Week Later Another Data Center Family Gave $1 Million More.

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 06:41:24 +0000

On May 14, 2026, Joe Lombardo, the Republican governor of Nevada, posted a video on X: "I support data centers because they bring jobs, investments, and economic growth to Nevada."

Three days before he posted it, a prominent artificial intelligence investor and his wife had given $1 million to the political action committee working to re-elect him.

Nevada has roughly 70 data centers running, being built, or planned. In the driest state in the country, they need the two things it has least of: water and electricity.

The eleven days

The Lever went through the campaign finance filings for Better Nevada PAC, the committee backing Lombardo's re-election. Three dates sit close together in May:

May 11 — Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia Horowitz gave $500,000 each, for $1 million. Ben Horowitz co-founded Andreessen Horowitz, the venture firm better known as a16z, which has money in a long list of AI and data center companies.
May 14 — Lombardo posted his video endorsing data centers.
May 21 — Jessica Roy gave another $1 million. She is married to Rob Roy, who founded Switch, a data center company currently building facilities in Nevada. Switch has taken millions of dollars in tax abatements from the state, and Andreessen Horowitz is one of its major investors.

Two million dollars from two families invested in data centers, inside eleven days, with the governor's public endorsement wedged in the middle of it. The two donations are not even independent of each other: Horowitz's firm has money in the company Roy's husband founded.

Horowitz is a practiced political donor. He and his business partner Marc Andreessen each gave $2.5 million to Trump's 2024 campaign, and Horowitz later gave $2.5 million to Kamala Harris's.

Lombardo's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The $5 million that followed

A month later, on June 25, the same PAC received $5 million from the Republican Governors Association.

That is normally the least interesting line in a governor's finance report. Not this time. Since January 2025, the RGA has taken at least $8.5 million from people and companies invested in AI and data centers — including $3 million from Citadel founder Ken Griffin and $2.5 million from Paul Singer of Elliott Investment Management. Both firms are heavily invested in the industry.

So the money reached Lombardo through two doors. Two million came straight from the industry's families. Five million came through the party committee that the industry had also been filling.

He knows what data centers do. He says it does not happen here.

The most damning thing in the record is not a donation. It is Lombardo's own op-ed.

In June, writing in the Reno Gazette Journal, he called data centers "an opportunity to diversify Nevada's economy, strengthen our workforce and position our state as a national leader in technology and innovation for decades to come."

In the same piece he acknowledged that data centers are "known to use massive amounts of water… and raise electricity costs for surrounding communities."

Then he claimed "it isn't happening in Nevada."

Here is what was already on the record when he wrote that.

A January report from the Desert Research Institute, a science nonprofit, found data centers consumed 22 percent of all the electricity Nevada generated in 2024, and projected that could reach 35 percent by 2030. Working from the same report, The Lever calculated that Nevada's current development plans could have data centers drinking up to 16 billion gallons of water a year — about what 150,000 households use.

The report's authors put the water demand in terms a Nevadan can picture:

"Assuming the highest level of efficiency, the water needed annually for data center cooling under the projected load growth from NV Energy is more than 14,940 times the water needed for a single household, close to 17 times the water needed for an 18-hole golf course, and approximately six times the water needed for an alfalfa farm."

In May, NV Energy — the state's largest utility — issued its own report saying Nevada's future energy demand will nearly triple because of data centers.

This August, NV Energy sued Tract, a developer building two enormous facilities near Reno, alleging it is trying to push infrastructure and energy costs onto consumers, and to move the fight into a private court to avoid public scrutiny.

The utility is suing a data center developer over exactly the cost-shifting Lombardo says is not happening. Nevada has also handed the industry $340 million in state tax abatements since 2021.

"Those billionaire friends provide jobs"

Lombardo has not been subtle about who this is for.

In August he told the Latin Chamber of Commerce that data centers could be a "new gold rush," given the right guardrails. At a separate event, standing next to President Trump, he defended Trump's "billionaire friends" directly: "those billionaire friends provide jobs. And unless you take care of them, those jobs are absent."

That is the argument, said plainly. Take care of the billionaires or the state gets nothing.

Nevada's own cities are not so sure. Local governments across the state have begun issuing moratoriums on new data center construction while they work out how much power and water the things would take. That is what a government does when it does not know. Lombardo posted a video.

His Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, was pointed about the donations:

"Now we know why Joe Lombardo says he's 'wholeheartedly in support of data centers: He's bought and paid for by them. Taking care of his and Trump's 'billionaire friends' at Nevadans' expense is standard operating procedure from Lombardo. I'm running for Governor to pause and audit data centers' tax breaks and block them from raising our costs, because I fight for working Nevadans – not data center billionaires, like Joe Lombardo."

Ford has also sued the federal government over cuts to Nevada's already strained Colorado River allocation. Lombardo supports that lawsuit — while backing the industry that would drink 16 billion gallons a year of what is left.

This is the second time water and Lombardo's PACs have crossed paths

The committees backing Lombardo have been here before, and the subject was water then too.

We documented what happened after Nevada Gold Mines complained about the state engineer who wanted to cut its groundwater pumping: that regulator was fired a month later — the first state engineer removed since 1981 — and three months after that the company wrote a $500,000 check to Nevada Way PAC, the other committee backing Lombardo. Nevada Gold Mines has now given that PAC $1 million, more than it has given any other politician in the state — and Nevada Way PAC has passed $8.25 million of its own money into Better Nevada PAC.

The pattern is not subtle. An industry that needs Nevada's water writes very large checks to the committees backing the governor, and the governor's position lands where the industry wants it.

Lombardo is also not the only Republican whose data center enthusiasm arrived alongside the industry's money. We have tracked eight of them who spent the last year helping the build-out or taking its cash while three out of four Americans told pollsters they do not want one of these things near their home.

What the filings show

Ben and Felicia Horowitz gave $1 million to the PAC backing Joe Lombardo's re-election on May 11, 2026. Three days later Lombardo posted a video declaring his support for Nevada's data center build-out. A week after that, the wife of Switch's founder gave the same PAC another $1 million, and in June the Republican Governors Association — itself holding at least $8.5 million from AI and data center investors — gave that PAC $5 million. In an op-ed that same month Lombardo conceded data centers use massive amounts of water and raise power bills, then wrote that "it isn't happening in Nevada," while the state's own research institute had already measured them taking 22 percent of Nevada's electricity and projected 16 billion gallons of water a year. His campaign would not comment.

Source

Freddy Brewster, "Nevada Governor Backed Data Centers Days After $1 Million Donation", The Lever, August 25, 2026 (archived copy). Also covered by The Cool Down and republished by Truthout. Photo: Getty Images via Truthout.

Two Republicans Crossed Over to Protect IVF in Nevada. Joe Lombardo Vetoed It Anyway.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:15:00 +0000

On February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are "unborn children" under an 1872 state law — a decision the justices said "applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location." Several of Alabama's IVF clinics paused services within days. Families in the middle of treatment — people who had spent years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to have a baby — found out their cycles were on hold.

Nevada's legislature responded the way you'd hope a legislature would. It wrote a bill.

Senate Bill 217 would have established a statutory right to IVF in Nevada law, added protections for fertility providers, and required insurers to cover the diagnosis and treatment of infertility. It cleared the state Senate 15-5, with Republicans Lori Rogich and John Steinbeck joining every Democrat.

On June 13, 2025, Joe Lombardo vetoed it.

The reason he gave

Lombardo's veto message did not argue that IVF is wrong. It argued that the state can't afford the insurance piece:

"Without dedicated and sustainable funding this mandate is fiscally impossible considering the current posture of the state's budget, specifically in terms of Medicaid resources."

He said he supports making IVF more accessible, and encouraged agencies to find approaches that are financially sustainable.

Two problems with that.

First, the bill wasn't only a coverage mandate. It also would have written the right to IVF into Nevada statute and shielded the doctors who provide it. That part costs the state nothing. He could have signed a bill with the statutory right and asked the legislature to rework the insurance section. He vetoed the whole thing.

Second, look at what he said about Medicaid budgets three weeks later. On the day the House gave final passage to Trump's budget bill, Lombardo brushed the fight aside as "beltway talking heads" bickering and told Nevadans they should be "excited" about it. That law is projected to strip health coverage from as many as 114,000 Nevadans, and roughly 147,000 Nevadans will have to document 80 hours of work a month to keep Medicaid starting in January 2027.

He knew what it would do. Months before it passed, he had written to Congress warning that rolling back expanded Medicaid and capping federal payments would be "most detrimental for Nevada."

So the state's Medicaid budget was too tight for fertility coverage in June, and a bill blowing a hole in that same budget was something to be excited about in July.

Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, who sponsored SB 217, put it this way: "Even Donald Trump has backed efforts to expand IVF, but Lombardo is picking out-of-state extremists over protecting Nevada doctors and patients."

The record underneath the veto

Lombardo describes himself as pro-life and has generally avoided the subject as governor, on the reasonable-sounding grounds that Nevadans have already settled it at the ballot box. But his stated positions have not moved with that argument.

He still says he would personally support a 15-week cutoff on abortion — nine weeks earlier than Nevada's current 24-week law.
Running in 2022, he said he would support sending voters a 13-week ban as a ballot initiative. His spokeswoman explained the standard: "If the voters and the Nevada Legislature sent a bill to the governor's office, Joe has always said that he would view it through a pro-life lens."
At a primary debate, asked whether he'd support restrictions on morning-after pills and waiting periods, he answered: "Yes, absolutely." His campaign later said he had no plans to restrict Plan B, but wouldn't say which measures he would support.
At the October 2022 gubernatorial debate he said he'd approve mandatory waiting periods and parental notification for minors. Asked why he'd backed off the 13-week ban, his full explanation was: "I thought about it more and evaluated. Not my political position or my campaign. I just thought about it more."

Political scientist David Damore described the approach to The Nevada Independent: Lombardo "hasn't been particularly assertive on the issue, knowing that there's nothing he can do in the legislative process, and they can read the polling just as well as anybody else. He's stepped very, very cautiously around the issue."

Then a bill landed on his desk that he could do something about. He did.

Who this actually hits

IVF is not an abstraction. It is the treatment people use when they want a child and their bodies won't cooperate. It is expensive, it is not usually covered, and the families who need it are mostly ordinary people going into debt over it.

Nevada Republicans in the state Senate looked at what happened in Alabama and decided their state should not be one court ruling away from the same phone calls. Two of them voted with the Democrats to make sure of it.

The governor of their own party said no.

Nevada now has no statutory right to IVF — just the assumption that nothing will go wrong. That assumption is exactly what Alabama had. We deserve better.

Source

"'This mandate is fiscally impossible': Nevada governor vetoes IVF protections bill," Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 13, 2025. Photo: Getty Images via the Review-Journal.

A Mining Lobbyist Complained About Nevada's Water Regulator. A Month Later He Was Fired. Three Months After That, a $500,000 Check.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Nevada is the driest state in the country. The person who decides who gets to pump how much water out of the ground is called the state engineer. It is one of the most consequential jobs in state government, and it is almost never a political job — before December 2025, no Nevada state engineer had been fired since 1981.

Then Adam Sullivan was.

Here is the sequence, as documented by The Nevada Independent's review of nearly 200 emails, letters, attachments, and meetings.

November 12: "It's coercion masked as collaboration"

Sullivan had drafted an order to reduce groundwater pumping in the Humboldt River Basin — an over-appropriated watershed in Northern Nevada where Nevada Gold Mines, a joint venture of Barrick and Newmont, runs 22 mines.

On November 12, a lobbyist for the company emailed Ryan Cherry, Governor Joe Lombardo's chief of staff:

"It's coercion masked as collaboration. Barrick/NGM has not only actively participated in all discussions, they have offered bona fide solutions to the problem of down basin surface flow reductions only to be ignored by the agency. This style of coercion, whether intended or not, affects capital markets in a significant way."

Cherry forwarded it up the chain with two words: "See below."

In December, Sullivan was gone.

To be fair about what the record shows: none of the emails The Indy reviewed directly asked the governor to remove Sullivan. But some records were withheld — including the details of a meeting between Lombardo himself and representatives of Nevada Gold Mines, and emails about canceled water rights permits.

March 5: $500,000

On March 5, three months after the firing, Nevada Gold Mines gave $500,000 to a PAC supporting Lombardo. That brought the company's cumulative giving to that PAC to $1 million — more than it has given to any other Nevada politician. (For comparison: Democrat Steve Sisolak's PAC got $750,000 from the company, and Republican Brian Sandoval $175,000.)

Asked about the donation, Lombardo's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Ken Miller, a political science professor at UNLV, made a point worth quoting in full, because it's more careful than a partisan attack and lands harder for it. Mining money going to Nevada governors, he said, is normal — "It's hospitality and resource management — that's the Nevada economy. That's where you expect the political money to come from." The company gives to whoever is in office, regardless of party.

So the donation isn't the strange part:

"The weird timing might be when the Lombardo administration acted on the water engineer. Why did they make that decision when they made it? Because it appears Nevada Gold Mines is doing what they always do."

That's the question. The check was routine. The firing wasn't.

The man who fired him wasn't qualified to second-guess the science

Sullivan was fired by James Settelmeyer, the Lombardo appointee who ran the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources at the time. Settelmeyer left the agency on March 27, 2026 to run for Congress. In a March 30 deposition in an unrelated case, Settelmeyer explained his reasoning:

"It all coalesced and the continued desire to push forth a draft curtailment order which was based on what I considered to not necessarily be the strongest science."

In the same deposition, Settelmeyer acknowledged that he has no experience or training with water modeling, is not a hydrologist, and does not know how to read a model.

He also acknowledged where his scientific skepticism came from. The hydrologists he had spoken to had been hired by the mining companies.

So a political appointee who cannot read a groundwater model overruled the state's chief water scientist on the strength of advice from scientists paid by the industry being regulated. That is the whole decision, in one sentence.

Sullivan, for his part, told The Nevada Independent he had "faced pressure to rescind decisions or accelerate decisions, or withhold decisions, or to not attend public meetings."

This is the operation, not an exception

Nevada Gold Mines is one donor among many, and the pattern holds across Lombardo's whole fundraising machine.

Of the $4.3 million his campaign raised in 2025, about $1.9 million — 44 percent — came through "bundling," the practice of routing money through affiliated companies to get around Nevada's $10,000 limit on individual contributions. Hotel magnate Robert Bigelow gave $220,000 through 22 different companies, all tied to a single address, all on the same day. Gambler and developer Billy Walters, convicted of insider trading in 2017, gave $200,000 through 20 entities.

In the second quarter of 2026 alone, the Lombardo-affiliated Better Nevada PAC raised $12 million. Over that same quarter, Lombardo collected $9,400 from Nevadans giving $100 or less.

Nine thousand dollars from regular Nevadans. Twelve million from everyone else.

Lombardo's campaign says "there is nothing unusual or improper about the makeup of the Governor's donor base." Aaron McKean of the Campaign Legal Center put the problem plainly: "It's always going to raise that question for regular folks — what is this person buying? … it does … undermine the confidence that the public has in our elected officials."

What it costs

We've documented Lombardo saying he doesn't "get paid very much" while drawing a governor's salary and a $199,175 police pension at the same time, and name-dropping himself out of a traffic ticket in about 15 seconds.

This one is bigger than either. Water in Nevada isn't a perk. The Humboldt River Basin is over-appropriated, which means more water is spoken for on paper than actually exists. Somebody has to decide who gives some back. That decision was headed toward the mines, and then the person making it was fired by someone who can't read the science, after a lobbyist wrote a heated email to the governor's chief of staff.

Three months later the company wrote a check for half a million dollars.

We deserve better.

Source

"Mining industry privately griped to Lombardo about top Nevada water regulator before firing" and "Why is Nevada Gold Mines one of Lombardo's top donors in governor's race?," Eric Neugeboren and Tabitha Mueller, The Nevada Independent, 2026. Photo: The Nevada Independent.

Joe Lombardo Says He Doesn't 'Get Paid Very Much.' He Draws a Governor's Salary and a $199,000 Police Pension.

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:22:00 +0000

A television reporter asked the governor of Nevada about his pay. Joe Lombardo said he doesn't "get paid very much."

Here is what the public record says.

Lombardo earned $182,000 in wages and benefits as governor in 2023. On top of that, he collects a pension from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. That pension paid him $199,175 last year, according to Transparent Nevada, the public database of Nevada government pay.

Two checks. Both from taxpayers. Put those two numbers together and you're over $380,000 a year.

The average Nevadan earns just under $60,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nevadans work more and earn less than people in any state that borders them.

So the governor makes about six times what the people he governs make. And he told a reporter he doesn't get paid very much.

His spokesman's explanation: "While he could have phrased his remarks more clearly, his point was simple: he didn't choose this work for the salary."

How he ended up with two checks

The pension is not a mistake or a loophole he tripped into. It is the result of a choice he made the moment voters gave him more power.

Lombardo spent decades at Metro and rose to assistant sheriff. In 2014, Clark County voters elected him sheriff — the top job at the department. So he retired from his old job, started drawing his police pension, and then took office as sheriff, collecting a second public salary.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal caught this in a 2017 investigation into what it called double dipping. Reporters found the practice was costing Nevada taxpayers at least $23 million a year, and that two dozen elected officials were collecting a salary and a pension at the same time. Lombardo was one of the three the paper singled out by name. He was collecting nearly $325,000 a year in salary and pension combined.

Most public retirees in Nevada can't do this. If they go back to work more than part-time, their pension stops. But state law carves out an exception for elected officials — and for jobs a government agency decides to label "critical."

Edward Zelinsky, a law professor who studies pensions, put it plainly to the Review-Journal:

"We don't give them pensions so they can double dip. We give them pensions so they can retire."

Lombardo defended it. "I had a very good career serving the residents of Clark County for 27.5 years, and I am being appropriately compensated after retiring from that job," he told the paper.

That is a real argument, and it deserves a fair hearing. He did work those years. He did earn a pension. Nothing here is illegal.

But keep it next to the other thing he said. He is being "appropriately compensated" — and he doesn't "get paid very much." Both of those came out of the same mouth.

His pay went up. His police force went down.

While Lombardo was sheriff, his own salary climbed steadily.

2015: $159,201
2017: $168,857
2022: $192,000, according to the financial disclosure form he filed himself

That's a raise of about $33,000 over his time in the job — roughly 21 percent — on top of the pension.

Now look at what Metro looked like on his way out the door.

In April 2022, with one foot already in the governor's race, Lombardo personally walked Metro's budget request in front of the department's Fiscal Affairs Committee. He asked for more than $715 million — an 8.17 percent increase, the biggest jump in years. In his own letter, Lombardo admitted the request was "considerably larger than recent years."

The request included no money for a single additional police officer.

And Metro was short. Back in 2016, Lombardo himself had championed the Clark County sales tax increase known as the More Cops Fund. It came with a promise: two officers for every 1,000 residents. By the time he was asking for that $715 million, Metro had been below that ratio for the entire fiscal year and didn't expect to hit it again until June 2023.

Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft said it out loud at the meeting:

"We're not meeting that obligation."

Lombardo's answer on when Metro would catch up was that it was "incumbent upon the community." He said fewer people were applying, and blamed a shift in how people feel about police.

He pushed the sales tax to put more cops on the street. Metro never got to the number he promised. His own pay went up anyway.

The fiscal hawk act

None of this stopped him from campaigning as the guy who makes the hard money calls.

In September 2021, Lombardo posted this:

"As Sheriff of NV's largest county I'm no stranger to tough decisions that affect a budget's bottom line. I know NV can do better &, as Gov. why I've vowed to veto any new tax increase."

A year earlier, in a guest column for the Las Vegas Sun, he had warned that COVID budget cuts could "hamper our ability to police." He argued that cutting police funding would hurt the very communities asking for change.

So: budgets are tight, cuts are dangerous, and he's the man who knows how to make tough calls. Also, he needs 8 percent more money, zero new officers will be hired, and his salary and pension both go up.

He didn't tell us everything about his money, either

There is one more piece of this.

Nevada requires officials and candidates to file a financial disclosure every year. The point is simple: let voters see where an official's money comes from, so they can spot conflicts of interest.

Lombardo married Donna Alderson in 2015. She worked as a commercial real estate broker at CBRE. He left her employment off his 2016, 2017 and 2018 disclosure statements. In 2019, he didn't file at all by the January 15 deadline. Under state law that carried a minimum $2,000 penalty.

He wasn't fined. In 2019 a deputy secretary of state said the office couldn't remember fining any public official over a disclosure form. And the Secretary of State's office told the Nevada Current it doesn't actually review these forms for accuracy — there's no one on staff to do it.

"We rely on the public checking on everybody," a spokeswoman said.

So we're checking.

"I can't control that"

Two days ago, the Nevada Current reported what Lombardo is telling Nevadans now about the cost of living.

Asked at a July meet and greet how he'd deal with grocery and housing prices, the governor said: "There's a big difference between the federal space and the local space, right? And when we talk about affordability and inflation rates and everything, I can't control that."

He went further. "Any politician who stands before you and says, 'Well, I'm going to fix inflation.' That's bullshit."

This is the same man who won his first term by blaming Governor Steve Sisolak for the national economy. "Let me be clear: this recession is a direct result of Sisolak and Biden's disastrous economic leadership," he tweeted in 2022. Asked why the national economy was Sisolak's fault but not his, his campaign spokeswoman would not answer.

He also isn't powerless. Governors have levers — tax policy, housing supply, utility rates. Lombardo vetoed a record 87 bills last session, including one that would have expanded paid family and medical leave, one that would have provided free school meals after pandemic funding ran out, one that would have temporarily capped rent for seniors and Social Security recipients, and one that would have blocked drug companies from charging more than the Medicare price.

Meanwhile, his political operation has never been healthier. The Lombardo-affiliated Better Nevada PAC raised $12 million in a single quarter this year.

The pattern

Three days ago we wrote about the 15 seconds it took Lombardo to talk his way out of a traffic ticket — he interrupted the sergeant to say "I'm Joe Lombardo," said "come on, man," and drove off.

It's the same shape as this story. There's a rule, and there's a version of the rule for him.

Nevadans pay a sales tax he pushed for a staffing level Metro never hit. Nevadans file the disclosure forms nobody checks. Nevadans get told inflation is somebody else's job. And the man saying it collects a salary and a pension from the same taxpayers — and says he doesn't get paid very much.

Source

Lombardo defers to feds on affordability, inflation issues: 'I can't control that' — Dana Gentry, Nevada Current, August 4, 2026, and $715 million: LVMPD to request 8% increase in budget, but no new officers — April Corbin Girnus, Nevada Current, April 26, 2022. Photo: Lombardo campaign, via the Nevada Current.

'I'm Joe Lombardo': Nevada's Governor Name-Dropped His Way Out of a Ticket

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:22:10 +0000

On May 15, 2026, a Las Vegas police sergeant pulled over a Ford pickup near Mandalay Bay. The driver was Joe Lombardo, the governor of Nevada. His wife, Donna, was in the passenger seat.

The sergeant walked up to the passenger side, said hello, and started to explain why he'd stopped the truck. He never got to finish the sentence.

"The reason I'm stopping you is for the —"

"I'm Joe Lombardo," the governor says.

"I'm aware. For the red light violation back there. Your right turn onto Giles —"

"Come on, man," Lombardo interjects.

"You are good to go, sir. Appreciate you. Have a good day."

That's it. That's the whole thing. The stop lasted about 15 seconds, and the governor drove off without a ticket.

We only know about it because police body-camera video was obtained and released by the Associated Press in July — two months after it happened. Metro confirmed Lombardo didn't get a citation, but wouldn't say why.

He said his name. Then he said "come on, man."

Lombardo's campaign has an explanation, and it's worth reading closely:

"As the officer approached the vehicle, he introduced himself to Governor Lombardo, who responded in kind by simply saying, 'Joe Lombardo,' as a matter of courtesy. At no point did the Governor invoke his office and seek — or expect — preferential treatment."

Just being polite. Trading names, the way people do.

Except that isn't what the video shows. He didn't say his name after the officer explained the stop. He said it over the officer, cutting off the sentence that was about to tell him what he'd done wrong. And when the sergeant got the words out anyway — a right turn on red without stopping — Lombardo's answer wasn't "sorry" or "I didn't realize." It was "Come on, man."

"Come on, man" is not a courtesy. It's a request. Everybody who has ever been pulled over knows exactly what it means.

And the officer's reply tells you he understood it too. "I'm aware," he said, when the governor announced who he was. He already knew. There was no introduction to be made.

He ran the department that pulled him over

Here's the part that makes this different from you or me getting a break on a traffic stop.

Lombardo isn't just some guy who happens to be governor. He was the sheriff of Clark County. He ran the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — the same agency whose sergeant stopped him — for eight years before he was elected governor in 2022.

So when he said "I'm Joe Lombardo" to a Metro sergeant, he wasn't handing over a name. He was handing over a résumé.

The police union backed him up. The Las Vegas Police Protective Association — which has endorsed Lombardo and given money to his campaign — is the group that handed a copy of the video to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Union president Steve Grammas called it "an absolutely nothing car stop" and said thousands like it happen every month without a ticket.

He may be right that minor stops often end without citations. But notice who's making the argument: the union that endorsed him, using video it released itself, to defend the former head of the department. That's not an independent review. That's the home team.

Metro itself, the agency that could actually explain the sergeant's decision, said nothing about why there was no ticket.

He wants cameras to catch the rest of us

The hypocrisy here isn't subtle, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada put its finger on it right away. Executive director Athar Haseebullah said Lombardo "attempting to flex his political muscle after potentially running a red light would be an obvious example of an abuse of power, especially as his office continues to rail against Nevadans disregarding traffic laws."

Rail against them he has. In February 2025 — fifteen months before his own red-light stop — Lombardo told Channel 13 he wants automated cameras catching red-light runners in Nevada, a practice state law currently bans.

"In today's age and ability via technology and it is a civil violation versus a criminal process, I would support red lights and the enforcement of that."

Think about what a red-light camera actually does. It doesn't recognize you. It doesn't know you used to run the police department. It doesn't hear "come on, man." It takes a picture of the plate and mails a ticket to whoever owns the car.

Lombardo wants that machine pointed at every driver in Nevada. When a human being with a badge pointed the rule at him, he said his name and drove away.

Somebody filed a complaint

A Nevadan watched the video and did the thing the video invites you to do: he asked the state to look at it.

On July 17, a Reno resident named Zachary Miller filed a complaint with the Nevada Commission on Ethics, FOX5 Vegas reported. It alleges Lombardo unlawfully used his position to obtain "privileges, preferences, exemptions and advantages for his personal benefit," in violation of state ethics law, and that he interrupted the officer and behaved in a way "unbecoming of a public official."

Lombardo's campaign told FOX5 he "fully complied with all instructions," praised the sergeant's professionalism, and described the stop as brief questioning about whether he made a full stop while turning.

A complaint is not a finding, and the commission may well decide this was nothing. But note where it has to go to reach that conclusion.

This is not the first time the badge came in handy

There's a pattern here, and it's already been through a formal proceeding.

In July 2023, the Nevada Commission on Ethics censured Lombardo and fined him $20,000 for putting his Clark County sheriff's badge and his Metro uniform into campaign ads, social media, and other materials while he ran for governor. Censure is the harshest of the three sanctions the commission could have chosen.

The commission's own lawyer argued Lombardo had been warned in September 2021 that the ads broke the law and kept going anyway — "a knowing and reckless disregard of the ethics law." The commission's executive director had asked for more than $1.6 million in fines across 60-plus separate violations.

Two things to be fair about. The commission specifically voted that Lombardo did not violate the provision barring officials from using their position to secure unwarranted privileges. And Lombardo fought the ruling in court and eventually won a much softer landing: in September 2025 the commission approved a settlement in which he accepted a single non-willful violation and paid $5,000, and his lawsuit against the commission was dismissed.

But strip away the legal wrangling and the through-line is the same. For years, the answer to "why should this go your way?" has been the badge — on television, in campaign mailers, and now leaning out a truck window on Las Vegas Boulevard.

"A little pain" — for everybody else

The reason this 15-second clip landed so hard is that it fits everything else Nevadans already know about this governor.

When Trump's tariffs started driving up the price of groceries and threatening the tourism economy that Nevada runs on, Lombardo's advice to Nevadans was that "I think we maybe need to feel a little pain" in exchange for long-term benefits.

When Trump's budget bill came up — the one Lombardo himself had warned Congress would be "most detrimental for Nevada" if it capped Medicaid — he turned around and told Nevadans they should be "excited about the potential impacts" of it.

Feel a little pain. Get excited. Document 80 hours a month of work to keep your health coverage. Wait in a longer line at Social Security. Those are the rules he's fine with, for us.

Then a police sergeant tries to explain a red light to him and the answer is come on, man.

The Nevada State Democratic Party said Lombardo "was caught using his position of power to avoid accountability after breaking the law and being pulled over by a Metro Police officer trying to do their job." The Democratic Governors Association called it "more proof that Joe Lombardo is a corrupt and out-of-touch politician who thinks he can play by a different set of rules than everyday Nevadans." Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Democrat who will face Lombardo this November, declined to comment on the video.

He didn't really need to. The video says it.

A ticket is a small thing. That's the point.

Nobody's pretending a red-light citation is the crime of the century. It's a fine. Most Nevadans who got one would grumble, pay it, and move on — because that's the only option they have.

That's what makes this worth talking about. The stakes were tiny. There was no pressure, no crisis, no hard call. Just a routine moment where a powerful man had to decide whether the rules applied to him.

He said his name.

Source

Video shows Gov. Lombardo avoiding citation in Las Vegas traffic stop — Mark Robison, Reno Gazette Journal, July 14, 2026, and Complaint alleges Governor Lombardo used position privileges after Las Vegas traffic stop — FOX5 Vegas, July 22, 2026. Photo: body-camera screen grab released by the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, via the Las Vegas Review-Journal.