One big difference between 2006 and 2026

Happy Saturday. The 2026 campaign year has been drawing comparisons to 2006 when, riding a wave of public disgust with an unpopular Republican president, his noxious warmongering, and its attendant high gas prices, Democrats took control of both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate away from Republicans. 

Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid’s seat wasn’t on the ballot in 2006, but that was the election that elevated him to Senate Majority Leader, a post he would hold until the Republicans regained the Senate in the red wave of 2014.

In what most non-Nevadans would agree was a more consequential development for the nation at large in more ways than one, 2006 was also the election year that made Nancy Pelosi the first woman to be Speaker of the House.

How big a year was it for Democrats? Here’s a few bits gleaned from Wikipedia’s entry on the 2006 cycle:

—No Democratic incumbent in a congressional or gubernatorial race lost their reelection bid;

—Republicans failed to flip any congressional or gubernatorial seat that had been held by a Democrat, even if the the Democratic candidate was a newbie;

—and in the races for governor nationwide, Democrats picked up a net gain of six seats.

Which brings us to the part of the 2006 election that Nevada Democrats hope will not be paralleled this year: Nevada was not one of the states to flip control of the governor’s mansion in 2006. Despite all that Democratic winning across the country, in Nevada Democratic candidate Dina Titus lost to Republican Jim Gibbons.

In another less than encouraging omen for 2026 Nevada Democratic gubernatorial nominee Aaron Ford, two years prior to the 2006 election, George W. Bush won Nevada in the presidential race. It was the last time the Republican presidential nominee would win Nevada until, well, two years before this year’s election.

Like every election year, 2006 had its peculiarities. Reid, the Nevada Democratic Party’s proprietor, had made an unholy non-aggression pact with Republican Sen. John Ensign, who was running for reelection that year. Reid made it clear that Ensign must and would be treated with kid gloves, so no Democrat who was anybody filed to run for the seat, and newby Nevadan Jack Carter (yes, Jimmy’s kid), the Senate nominee by default, was publicly snubbed by Reid. What should have been the marquee get-out-the-vote race of a midterm cycle — a U.S. Senate seat — was effectively skipped in Nevada that year.

(It wasn’t the first time Reid would perpetrate such antics; in a cockamamie and ultimately needless scheme, he made sure Democrats had no serious candidate for governor in 2014, doing his bit to assure the blood red wave washed over Nevada as well as the nation that year.)

But of course the biggest difference between 2006 and 2026 — and the one most likely to worry Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s campaign — is that in 2006 Donald Trump was a game show host.

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Here’s some of the stuff we published in the Current this week we wouldn’t want you to miss.

April — Lombardo doubles down on data centers, offers trimmed tax breaks, ‘commitments’ to wary public 

Jen — Public Utility Commission approves gas plants to power data centers

Michael — Clark school district police use of force report raises more questions about tactics, racial bias

Dana — Business group abandons Lombardo in favor of Ford

My column — NV senators voted against it, but Trump’s flagrant self-enrichment is what killed the crypto bill

Good Luck