How the race for governor has gone about as expected

Happy Saturday. And happy first day of early in-person voting, and No Kings rallying, if either or both of those are on your agenda today. Per the former, here’s the Nevada Current Voter Guide.

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The 2026 midterms have conjured up comparisons to the 2006 midterms, when a deeply and broadly disliked Republican president and his blundering warmongering prompted a blue wave in which Democrats won back control of both houses of Congress.

And in Nevada that year, a Republican who was sort of a doofus won the 2006 Nevada governor’s race anyway.

In 2026, the race for Nevada governor has gone about as expected. 

A core strategy of the Joe Lombardo campaign has involved ginning up that beloved staple of campaign professionals from coast to coast: micro-scandals that have nothing to do with real problems faced by households. To wit, the campaign’s opening gambit was Aaron Ford’s travel schedule. 

The Lombardo campaign also started by going back to the well and hauling up images of Lombardo the Lawman. Now in the stretch run, the campaign has accentuated the cop branding by tying Ford to the Black-people-are-criminals trope, which Republicans also deployed against Ford when he first ran for attorney general in 2018. 

Is that the campaign Nevada voters deserve? 

It doesn’t matter. It’s the one they were bound to get.

Affordability has never been a serious focus of the governor’s campaign, and it never was going to be. He and his people ride like they ride.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this year’s race for governor is that neither Ford nor his allies have made a big buy for an ad starring a really quite self-important and haughty Joe Lombardo declaring “I’m Joe Lombardo” and “C’mon man.” It’s probably the one thing even the most casual of voters remember about Lombardo’s performance on the campaign trail. Oh well.

Prediction markets have been moving in Ford’s favor, for whatever that’s worth. Which may not be much — there’s a school of thought that says prediction markets are “informed by polls more than anything else,” and “downstream” of polling. And there’s been a dearth of public polling on the Nevada governor’s race.

Yes, Trump’s approval rating is pathetic. 

But then, so was George W. Bush’s on the eve of the 2006 midterms.

On the one hand, judging from polling over the years, inasmuch as casual voters think about governors, if they ever do, that thought tends to be “yeah, there should probably be one,” which usually works to an incumbent’s advantage.

On the other hand, the fundamentals — a catastrophic garbage fire of a Republican president, and during a midterm to boot — work in Ford’s favor.

In conclusion, this year, yet again, there’s one thing Nevada voters can count on: whoever wins, now, clearly, is no time to raise the gaming tax.

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Here is some of the news and commentary we published in the Current this week we wouldn’t want you to miss.

Jen — Trump administration blocks maintenance funding for Nevada national parks

Dana — Lombardo’s policies designed to benefit campaign contributors, not Nevadans, Ford says

Michael — Hit to NV economy from Trump immigration policies could top $400 million by year-end, report says

My column —  How spending $2.75 million on a campaign for a part-time job pencils out. If it does.

Good luck