“[Lombardo] finds himself in a neck-and-neck race […] yoked to a highly unpopular president, a wobbling economy and a Middle Eastern war that has sent gas prices in the state soaring from $3.50 to $5 a gallon.”
In a recent interview with Politico, Joe Lombardo told reporters he was “concerned” about his odds of re-election. This comes after he admitted earlier this year that he’s “not enough of a motivator” to turn out voters this fall. With every public poll showing the gubernatorial race within the margin of error and a worsening affordability crisis, Lombardo knows he is the most vulnerable Republican governor up for re-election.
Under Joe Lombardo, Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. The Lombardo-Trump tariffs are raising costs on working families and forcing small businesses to close. Gas and energy costs are through the roof. Homelessness and housing costs climbed to record highs. Health care premiums are on the rise at a time when health care costs have already risen faster in Nevada than anywhere else in the nation.
Read more:
Politico: ‘This is the new Ohio’: Why everyone’s watching the Nevada governor’s race
- Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo is trying to run a reelection campaign befitting the neon-drenched, sagebrush-pocked desert he has for five decades called home.
- President Donald Trump is making that hard.
- The Republican governor started the year with a sevenfold fundraising advantage, double-digit net favorability ratings and the tailwinds of a swing state the GOP presidential candidate carried for the first time in two decades. Five months later, he finds himself in a neck-and-neck race with Democrat Aaron Ford, the state’s attorney general, yoked to a highly unpopular president, a wobbling economy and a Middle Eastern war that has sent gas prices in the state soaring from $3.50 to $5 a gallon, among the highest in the nation.
- “Yes, I am concerned,” the governor told POLITICO in a recent sit-down interview at Starbucks in Las Vegas. “Not only because of my re-elect but because of Nevada, right? What’s the proverbial line — all politics are local? It’s no longer that way. What’s happening worldwide, nationally, either we embrace it or we don’t.”
- Lombardo’s race, while reflective of the idiosyncrasies of Nevada’s economy and politics, offers one of the earliest and most instructive tests of whether Republicans in battleground states can separate themselves from Trump’s political fortunes without alienating his coalition — a question with implications not just for 2026 but for the party’s path in 2028. And the gravitational pull of Washington politics looms large over the race: Nevada Democrats are all too keen to blame any discouraging headline on the “Lombardo-Trump economy.”
- Stung by tariffs that have chilled travel from Canada and Mexico and an immigration crackdown that has made international visitors wary of coming to the United States, Las Vegas saw 7.5 percent fewer guests last year — the worst non-pandemic decline since the city started tracking in 1970 — a heavy blow to a state economy still so reliant on tourism. Nevada’s unemployment rate remains among the highest in the nation, and the hospitality workers who form the backbone of the Las Vegas economy are seeing reduced hours, smaller tips and layoffs.
- “Just last month, Lombardo said that Trump was doing a fantastic job as the war with Iran has skyrocketed our gas prices,” Nevada State Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno said in an interview. “Talking to folks in the Tahoe area, there’s a gentleman, I mean, he paid $7 a gallon for gas. What that does to your budget, your limited budget — and if you’re a hospitality worker whose hours have been limited, now you’re bringing home less money but you’re paying more for groceries and now gas.”
- Ford, like most other Democrats this cycle, is running on an affordability message, including housing costs, health care and energy prices and has sought to tie the governor directly to the president’s economic agenda. He’s pointed to Nevada’s unemployment rate as evidence that Lombardo’s stewardship has fallen short. And he’s attacked Lombardo for repeatedly blocking legislation that would have limited corporate homebuying — a policy, he notes, even Trump has endorsed.
- “Is your life better today than it was two years ago?” Ford said, asking a version of a question Democrats will be likely asking voters in 2028. “The answer is going to be absolutely no.”
- He’s also grappling with the problem that has plagued two consecutive incumbents. It is the same argument Lombardo himself made against then-Gov. Steve Sisolak in 2022, when he hammered the Democrat for presiding over an economy that looked better on paper than it felt at the kitchen table as the state struggled to recover after Covid. Two years later, that same disconnect helped swallow Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
###
