A historic blue wave hits.

Nevada Democrats now hold the governor's office and both houses of the legislature.

What drove the shift and what it means for Nevadans when lawmakers return to Carson City?

That's this week on Nevada Week.

Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hern, STAT and other supporters.

Welcome to Nevada week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Across the country and here at home, Democrats won big in the midterm elections in Nevada.

The blue wave made history as Attorney General Aron Ford will be the state's first black governor.

Democrats swept all six statewide offices top to bottom, for the first time since 1962.

They also kept control of the legislature and won a supermajority in the state Assembly.

Joining us to talk through what this all means are Ricardo Torres Cortez, local government reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

And April Corbin, deputy editor of Nevada current and in northern Nevada.

Tabitha mueller, Capitol bureau chief with the Nevada Independent.

And Paul Boger, host and producer of State of Nevada.

April, I want to start with you and the governor's race.

The latest unofficial results show that Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo lost by about seven points to Democrat, a run Ford.

What do you credit this loss to?

Is it more Governor Lombardo as a candidate or Lombardo's connection to President Trump?

I mean, I think it's clear from the national wave that we're just going to win up and down the ballot across the thing.

So, I mean, I think we can sort of cherry pick what Lombardo did as a campaign.

I think you have to look at that objectively and say he ran a really good campaign.

He did.

It was a tight if the tightrope walk in terms of trying to distance himself from Trump while not alienating himself from that sort of MAGA base and those, those funders and that huge.

I think he did a really good job, honestly.

Like, he he navigated it and he did.

He had some flubs and some gaffes.

Obviously, he's had a lot of stuff on released videotapes over the entire session that people, you know, tried to attack.

But he did a really good job overall.

And Ford had a clear message of like affordability and those things.

But I think it's just that Nevada was swept up in this whole wave that we saw across the nation.

Does anyone disagree with April there on how good of a campaign that Governor Lombardo ran, or whether you could pick apart some of his time in office?

I actually want to push back on that a little bit.

I actually don't know if Lobato ran a good campaign for a lot of reasons.

First off, the Lombardo tenure in Carson City and in the campaign, he's not been very media friendly.

He has been very difficult to talk to.

Very difficult to get Ahold of.

Very difficult to even get Ahold of his folks to make sure you're getting the right information from the governor's office.

So I think there was a media aversion there.

We did see lots of ads.

We did see lots of, him holding roundtables.

But roundtables aren't going out and meeting with voters.

As a matter of fact, I think it was on Monday.

Lombardo's campaign sent out a tweet saying, look, we knocked on $50,000.

Well, $50,000 is not a lot in a state like Nevada.

If you want to reach a statewide audience and meet with voters in Nevada, which is a retail politics state, where they want to shake your hand and they want to know who you are, you got to go out and meet the people.

And I'm not sure he did that.

so I'm actually going to jump in very quickly because I tend to agree with April.

I think that Lombardo's campaign was very tight.

I do think that there are valid criticisms that he wasn't as media friendly as we would like, but I also think that he was quietly meeting with voters.

I mean, I followed him in the final two weeks of the campaign, and he had event every like he had events, and he was going to small gatherings, those kinds of things.

I also think that they weren't advertised to the media, and that was a choice that his campaign made.

But these these events were happening in churches and smaller settings.

He did do interviews, but it was select interviews with certain audiences.

Right.

So we saw him talking to a conservative podcaster.

We saw him going on a couple of unions podcasts.

It was it was very select and who he was talking to.

And again, not all of it was broadcasted.

Okay.

I'm going to come back to you, Tabitha, about Congressional District two and the history made there.

But I want to bring in Ricardo now, and let's talk about the makeup of the legislature now.

So a supermajority in the Assembly, not in the Senate.

And how is that going to impact what happens in 2027, in Carson City?

Yeah.

Democrats won both majorities there.

As it stands, one vote up short in the Senate.

I mean, they were denied a supermajority.

Basically, they do not get to pass any tax bills without help from at least one Republican.

They also that the law is two thirds majority for any kind of tax measure.

Yes.

Okay.

And they also don't get to in the event that, a Governor Ford vetoes a bill, they don't get to reverse the veto without a two thirds majority.

And that's kind of hard to imagine that governor elect Ford would veto something that Democrats push through.

But April.

Is that a possibility?

Yeah, it's probably unlikely.

What we see a lot more with sort of a trifecta is that is that Governor Ford would just be able to go to the leaders and say, look, I'm not going to sign this bill if it gets to my desk.

So don't don't bring it to my desk.

And we've seen that happen.

We saw it happen with Senate Majority Leader and governor there.

Notably the death penalty bill in one of the sessions there, Cecile had sort of made it clear behind the scenes that he wouldn't pass it if he was uncomfortable signing it.

So it never got to his desk.

Had said, like, look, I would I would sign this bill if I was the governor.

But like, I'm not and I'm not going to put it out there.

So usually they want to have a relationship that works together and you just won't see bills get there.

It's a pretty high bar for us to get to the sort of veto level, so I don't imagine it happening, but nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

I guess it would also be hard to imagine a Republican doesn't join in a single Republican to veto a Democratic right.

So then what will Nevada Democrats prioritize?

Tabitha.

I think what you're going to see, what we've heard throughout the campaign is affordability, right?

So I think that Democrats have this almost mandate, winning all six statewide offices and having control of the of the legislature to say, look, what are you going to do with this?

Right?

And so I think that they're looking at affordability.

We've heard governor, governor elect Ford on the campaign trail, sort of talking about lowering prescription drug prices.

Those were that was a bill that was vetoed by now Governor Joe Lombardo.

We also saw on the campaign trail calls for some housing reform.

Now, Ford hasn't been super specific on what he wants to change in that realm.

So it remains to be seen whether we'll see, you know, summary eviction reforms passed or those kinds of things.

And so I think that's what we're going to be really closely watching.

And there's also an emphasis here with how much are Democrats going to moderate themselves.

Right.

A lot of times when we saw with governor under Governor Joe Lombardo, is that the Democrats were proactively sort of reaching out to the media and raising their concerns and sort of interacting with us.

If you have a Democratic trifecta, there may be more negotiations that are happening behind the scenes, behind closed doors, and less tensions shown in public, if that makes sense.

Right.

Paul, I wonder your thoughts on this.

Having covered Nevada politics for a while, the Commission on School Funding here repeatedly says that to increase the per pupil funding, they're likely needs to be an increase in property or sales taxes.

And wouldn't this be the opportunity for Nevada Democrats to finally get this through, even if they don't have the supermajority in both houses?

But then you've got governor elect Ford saying he won't raise taxes.

Right.

Well, first off, I mean, when it comes to taxes, there's only so much lawmakers can do, right?

There is a actual constitutional amendment that says they can't instate an income tax.

So there is no possibility of an income tax anywhere in the near future without at least two votes and two different elections.

A b you do have a governor elect who has just said he plans not to raise taxes.

But, you know, there are other measures.

There are fees.

I guarantee there's going to be some looking at.

Look at maybe how much you pay for your your vehicle registration, how much you pay in gas tax.

There may be places where they can look for some money, but then again even those are earmarked.

So they go towards roads, they go towards transportation.

So there's only so much they can do.

That being said, are you definitely going to have to look when I talk to to to governor elect Ford.

A few weeks ago, you know, they said, yes, we want to increase education funding, but this isn't going to be something that happens overnight.

They're going to have to take a real deep dive into the state budget and look for ways they can improve education funding that way.

And it's going to take time.

It's probably going to take two, three, four sessions if they want to get to that increase amount of, I think, $2,000 just to reach the actual average per pupil across the entire state.

So it's going to have to take a lot of money.

All right.

Tabitha.

Prior to this election, Nevada's second congressional district in northern Nevada had never been held by a Democrat.

That is about to change.

President Trump endorsed Republican David Flippo for that vacant seat, and the latest unofficial results show.

He lost that race by about six points to Democrat Teresa Benitez.

Thompson.

Is this about Nevada voters rejecting Flippo, or is it them rejecting President Trump?

I think that it's both.

And when I went to the polls to speak with voters on Election Day, it was really interesting because the voters who said, I'm turning out because I am frustrated with the federal administration, and this is my way of sending a message to the federal government.

There were also voters who were really struggling.

Right.

I talked to a long time Republican who said, I've never voted for a Democrat, and I might be voting for the independent in this election because I don't believe in what Flippo stands for.

And so I think that there was a lot of contention around those two issues.

I also feel, you know, if you were following Congressional District two election, you really saw that Flippo had a lot of issues that came up, right?

He had lied about his military record or overexaggerated if he listened to his campaign.

There's a lot of problems that that arose that he got criticism for from both Republicans and Democrats.

Okay.

Another frustration at the polls were long lines, right, Ricardo.

And you got to talk about that issue, I believe, with with who at the state level was that?

Francisco Aguilar, Secretary of state, who won reelection?

Yes.

What are the solutions to that?

They don't know.

Registrar of Voters Lorena Portillo yesterday said they would be looking at the process like they do every election.

She dodged questions about.

And that's here in Clark County.

Yes.

Here in Clark County, where the last vote was cast after 11:50 p.m.

and that is is Clark County kind of rare in this in the whole state?

I mean, was that happening anywhere else?

Paul, you want to jump in?

Yeah.

No, we saw that in Washoe County, too.

I know there were long lines at UNR.

A lot of students were voting for the first time.

A lot of folks were filling out provisional ballots because the same day registration.

But I was actually at the Galleria mall down in Henderson on election night.

I was there, I was there between about three and six, and when I left at six, there was a line that stretched the entire length of the mall.

It took me a good five minutes to walk the entire length of that line at a good clip.

So, I mean, there were lots of folks who were lining up to take to take part in the election.

I think one of the biggest issues in Clark County is that this election, they changed the process, right?

They were new voting machines that were different for a lot of folks.

We also saw.

I was at Desert Breeze earlier in the morning.

They they lost power for a few minutes.

About 15, 20 minutes they lost power.

So at least half of the voting machines there were inoperable for a little while.

All that being said is that this was a big turnout election.

And there were, what, 40 judges that folks were voting for in Clark County.

So when folks greater than expected turnout, folks were taking a long time to vote in a process that usually does not take more than 1520 minutes for most folks.

So I think there was just a confluence of issues that high turnout, a change of process, a long ballot.

It just led to some complications.

I've been speaking to election advocates about this, people who are watching the polls and sort of have advocated for better access to that.

And they all agree that four plus hours, six plus hour lines are unacceptable.

That's a form of voter suppression, essentially, where most people don't have the luxury of standing in line that long.

They've got to go to work, they've got to go take care of their kids.

They got to go to sleep because they got to get up.

So people are sort of wildly understanding of that thing.

And they said, like they said they will.

There are ways to improve the process, though, and I think it's a little too early now since, I mean, votes are still being processed, they're still going through that.

But there will be a big postmortem.

And the thing to remember is that 2028 is right around the corner in political land.

And Nevada has a big spotlight on it because it moved up a little bit in the system.

Still not first in the nation for the primaries, but obviously Nevada Democrats especially, and election officials are very aware that they need to speed up this process.

They need to make things quicker.

They need to get election results out quicker.

And election results did come out very quickly after the last voter voted.

So the issue was that you had to wait until all of them and that sound policy that everybody agrees with, because we remind our viewers of that policy.

Yeah, yeah.

So in in Nevada, they are not allowed to release any election results until the last ballot has been cast.

And I think that sound policy that nobody really disagrees with, because if you think about it, but it happens around the country, it's true.

And I think that I think that most people agree that you don't.

Every vote counts, right.

And we want we don't want somebody to be dissuaded because of that.

So imagine you're in Galleria mall.

You've been there for four hours already.

It's past 7:00, and all of a sudden the election results got released early, or because it was past closure and they were going to let you vote, and you saw that Joe Lombardo was probably going to lose, or you saw that it was a wipeout up and down the thing.

Are you going to stand in line and say, well, I should just do this because it matters, or are you going to be like, oh, well, I guess the election's already called, you know?

And I think and that kind of mentality is, is bad for voters.

We should wait and to trust the process.

The answer here is to speed up the process.

And I think we'll they'll be looking at a lot of logistical ways to fix that.

I think we have some great voter access.

There's obviously mail ballots, which are really popular.

I think half people use that early in person voting, obviously a two week period.

But still, we have to acknowledge that some people just want to wait for Election Day.

Some people are just procrastinators, or they want to wait until they have all the information or they like the, you know, circumstance of it.

They like the tradition of going on Election Day.

And I think we need to respect that and doing it.

I know Washoe County changed its system where there were fewer voting places, but there were more voting booths to kind of like, because they acknowledge that everybody needs to go places.

Maybe Clark County could look at that.

Maybe they could just look at what that process is like in terms there's going to be fixes, but it's going to be logistical.

And the good thing is that with a good thing for election advocates, I think, is that Democrats have control in Carson City now, and that means that there's going to be less fighting about things like voter ID, which is already settled now because that passed and they're not going to be there.

They're all in the same page in terms of voter access generally.

And so they'll be able to boost that system without a whole lot of fighting, I think, and hopefully we'll see a lot of improvement in 2028.

And that Registrar of Voters, Portillo yesterday said Clark County had enough machines and enough staff.

We did look at the turnout numbers for Election Day in Clark County, and they seem to be flat compared with the last midterm election.

So I don't know.

There was more million votes and more early voting, but the day of turnout was similar to four years ago.

So they will have to take a look to see what happened.

But as Paul mentioned, there were there were a lot of judges.

It was a two ballot.

She said she did mention that.

Yeah, four page ballot and almost 60 judges actually.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

Overall thoughts on turnout.

I mean, two years ago, Nevada elected a Republican president for the first time in 20 years.

What has happened in two years?

Where did those voters go?

Who wants to start?

Paul I'll go, I'll go, I think I think there was just a lot of dissatisfaction.

I mean, in a lot of ways, Donald Trump came in and he did some of the things he was going to say, whether it was, you know, he increased harass, he, tried to re Shaw manufacturing, which is stuff that Americans have talked about wanting for a long time.

But at the same time, I mean, he also betrayed a lot of his voters, right?

I mean, I remember sitting at those rallies, those Trump rallies in 2024, listening to him talk about only deporting the worst of the worst and criminals not starting a new forever war, you know, getting ending wars in Ukraine versus Russia.

And instead we are in a war with Iran.

We are seeing mass deportations across the country.

And I think a lot of voters were just tired of the constant vitriol coming from the white House.

I mean, listen, he still obviously has his supporters.

Republicans did not do terribly in this election, just more Democratic voters showed up, is really what it comes down to.

So I think that if is this a complete repudiation of the Trump administration and Republicans?

I don't think so.

But I do think that it is going to be more difficult for them going forward, at least for the next two years.

And I think Nevadans are very voters, probably nationwide are very reactionary.

I think that while Joe Lombardo campaigned really heavily on how many jobs he's brought to the like to the state and, and sort of all of this progress, I think if you talk to most normal Nevadans, they don't feel like they have more money in their pocket, like health care costs are going up with 13, 17% for people who are on the marketplace.

It's going up equally as high for people who are in the private marketplace through their employer.

You know, if you talk to people on the strip, they're still feeling the lack of tourism and they're feeling that lag and people are hurting.

And I think that's a message that registered with people.

And when you're the party in power, both at the federal level and in the state level, you're going to be blamed for that.

We saw that with Sisolak, where it was his.

Everything that happened in Covid was his fault even.

And we can you know, and we're seeing that again, I think with the economy that sorry, Lombardo, but you're going to be blamed for that because people are still feeling that and they need somebody to promise to do better.

And I think this election is a sign of that.

How well aware do you all think that Governor Lombardo was aware of that?

And I bring that up because on Election Day, he released a strategic plan for the next four years.

What does that indicate to you about his thoughts on how he was going to do that day?

Super superficially, possibly.

He was showing confidence, but.

Right, but but that confidence was not merited.

What were you going to say, Tabitha?

It's interesting because I think that when you sort of look at his campaign strategy, he had released some what he had called some goals, right, or some kind of strategic broad points, but they weren't fleshed out.

And he did get some criticism for that about midway through the election cycle.

And I think what we saw was sort of a I don't want to say spaghetti at the wall, but like, all right, the returns are not looking good for us.

We're seeing a lot of Democrats turning back in ballots.

We're seeing a national sentiment that is very, very much favoring Democrats.

I mean, it was interesting and I'm sure that April could talk about this, but at the watch parties that folks went to, I mean, Democrats were already celebrating and we weren't even getting any returns because of what was happening nationally.

I mean, we saw states like North Carolina, Mississippi, I mean, just returns that were just shocking and results that I think no one would have expected in in a long time.

I mean, when we're talking about what a historical year Democrats have had, the one congressional district two for the first time ever, they have more than 30 seats in the state Assembly for the first time ever since 1977.

They had the largest margin of victory in Congressional District three with a 21 percentage point lead.

And they had the largest margin of victory in a gubernatorial race since 1994.

I mean, these numbers are not just like random.

It's, I think, a response to that broader that Paul was talking about, that broader message of we are frustrated with where the administration is going.

A woman I spoke to on Election Day, she was she comes out and she's like, I voted for Trump in 2024, and I voted Democrat the whole way down this time because I'm upset with him at immigration policy specifically, was her sort of point of concern.

And and so anyway, that's, I think, just worth mentioning and talking about when we're having this discussion, and I think that Lombardo got caught up in that, I don't know, you know, he ran a tight campaign, but I don't know if anything he would have done maybe would have stopped that.

And but that effort, you know, the last minute things sort of saying, here's our plans.

I think it was a way to say, let's try.

Yeah.

Just to reiterate Tabitha's point about how is it it was just going to be a big year for Democrats.

Is that putting aside the governor campaign, which was always going to be controversial, we saw it further down the ballot, election results that are just kind of really surprising.

So if you look at like the state comptroller race that was currently currently held by a Republican, Andy Matthews, who has a great reputation, did a lot of fundraising, did all of that, lost to somebody who was not even endorsed by the Democratic state Party at one point like it was.

They were.

There's nothing wrong with him.

He was just a newcomer.

They didn't really put a lot of energy into that race but still got wiped out.

And that's his.

And Matthews is not a controversial figure like he is widely respected, I think by both parties or whatever.

And then if you go further down the ballot, if you look at the Board of Regents races, there is a sitting incumbent to Fort State, former state assembly person for senator, state senator, sorry.

And who was appointed to that board has not caused any problems.

Widely respected, not seen as some crazy MAGA guy or whatever.

Rural Nevada runs a far like salt of the earth kind of guy.

Everybody respects him, is wiped out by somebody who had $0 in fundraising, who asked for zero endorsements.

But he's on paper a Democrat, and that just shows you how deep that wave went.

If you had an R next to your name, it was over unless you were in the deepest, deepest, deepest red districts.

And that's just kind of the truth of it is.

And Paul, what did all of this show about?

If you had money, did money make a difference in this election?

Boy, that's always a tough question when it comes to politics.

I mean, it's yes and no.

I mean, Governor Lombardo had very, very deep pockets.

I know that's something that Indy was covering, watching very closely, but at some point, Tabitha cracked me for wrong.

He had $20 million cash on hand close to going into the election.

And it was just absolutely we we definitely saw it.

On the ad spending.

When you look at ad spending across the entire country in this election, we're going to we're going to spend 11 close to $11 billion just on ads.

So I mean, money does matter in these elections, but only so far as what message you're presenting.

Right?

And right now, the Republicans messaging was just not there speaking to voters and speaking about the down ballot races in Washoe County.

You're going to see four for the first time, four of the five, county commissioners probably be Democrats in a county, which it's typically three versus two Democrats and three Republicans.

They've just doubled their numbers.

So it's very much a blue wave election.

And some of those folks did not have a lot of money to spend.

It was more about having that d by your name.

Final question.

Oh yes.

There was a oh sorry.

One last thing.

I think that there was an anti-incumbency sentiment as well.

I think people were really frustrated with incumbents.

And you saw an overturning.

I mean one person I spoke to said I'm voting against anyone that's currently in office.

Which I thought was an interesting sentiment on Election Day.

Wow.

Okay.

And so then final question for each of you, real quick answer please.

Is Nevada now a blue state?

Ricardo, the Democratic Party yesterday we spoke to party chair.

She says it could be a fleeting moment.

So they're going to work hard to hopefully keep it a blue state.

But she's not taking anything for granted.

Okay, people.

Absolutely not.

I think as easy as big and blue as this wave has been, it could easily go in in the next direction two years from now, depending on how Nevadans are feeling, depending on how much things cost, depending on if we're still in a war that everybody hates, so it could easily swing the other way.

We're still purple.

Oh, Paul.

Tabitha, I'm going to have to ask you a different time because we have run out of time.

But thank you so much for joining us.

All of you here at the desk and in northern Nevada.

And thank you for watching.

To see all of the election results from Nevada go to Vegas pbs.org/week, and I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.