Ford seeks to upset Lombardo, become Nevada’s first Black governor 

Among the stack of lawsuits Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has filed in his two terms is one of particular significance to the state and its bread-and-butter gambling industry – the effort to keep prediction markets out of states with regulated sports betting.

But on Wednesday, Ford briefly eschewed his adversarial posture and in a fundraising pitch, touted prediction platform Kalshi’s take on his chances against Gov. Joe Lombardo, whom he hopes to defeat in November. 

The market has the race in a virtual tie, with momentum for Ford on the upswing. It’s likely not a place Ford or Lombardo thought the challenger would ever be. 

Lombardo, a two-term Clark County sheriff turned governor, declined to be interviewed for this story.

Ford is Nevada’s first Black attorney general and would be its first Black governor, a longshot in a state long known as the Mississippi of the West. 

He grew up poor in Dallas, Texas, and was arrested four times on misdemeanor charges as a young man – once for public intoxication, once for stealing a tire (he paid $100 restitution and the charge was dismissed) and twice for failing to appear in court. He was never convicted.  He was also investigated but not charged for being in his ex-girlfriend’s home without permission.

Ford’s encounters with the law have been a prominent focus of lawman Lombardo’s campaign.

Lombardo has recently criticized Ford for placing the clemency bid of a Nevada inmate who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a pregnant woman and her baby, on the state Pardons Board agenda, portraying the move as Ford coddling a criminal. 

“Aaron Ford cares more about criminals than victims,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson says in a new campaign ad for Lombardo, adding the two have “worked together to put violent criminals behind bars.”   

It’s a tough pill to swallow for Ford, given Lombardo’s embrace of President Donald Trump, a 34-time felon who pardoned insurrectionists. 

“It’s a Willie Horton redo,” Ford said, referring to the notorious campaign ad George H.W. Bush used to paint Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. “I’m criticized for putting an item on the agenda.” 

Ford says it’s “the height of hypocrisy for Gov. Lombardo to campaign with a person who is convicted of 34 felonies and who has been adjudicated a rapist and is in the Epstein files 5,300 times, and also beg for his endorsement.”

The AG added he’s not taking advice from Lombardo on issuing pardons, “especially when the  guy he’s endorsed pardoned January 6 assailants who assaulted law enforcement officers. It’s the height of hypocrisy. It’s also politics. He’s losing this race, and he’s desperate.”

“We stood up for crime victims and cracked down on domestic abusers,” Wolfson says in Lombardo’s campaign ad. 

In August the Current reported that in 2020, Wolfson and Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, who was undersheriff to Lombardo at the time, ignored a recommendation as board members of Hope for Prisoners to terminate the founder, Jon Ponder, a three-time convicted bank robber and domestic abuser. An investigation substantiated allegations that Ponder engaged in sexual misconduct with program participants and employees. 

Lombardo, the sheriff at the time, has refused for years to address the allegations or say if Metro conducted an investigation of HFP, which is one of Metro’s community partners.

Ponder was arrested and charged in August with sexual assault and other crimes. He has since been indicted on two dozen counts, including four counts of sexual assault, dating back to 2015 and extending through this year.  

Ford said it’s “crucial for more information to come to light, not just about what Ponder was doing, but about who knew about it and failed to stop it. There are allegations that Wolfson and Lombardo may have known about it, but that’s for an investigation to uncover.”

He called Ponder’s alleged crimes “appalling, and I’m praying for the victims to receive the full measure of justice.”

He declined to comment further, given the pending case. 

A Democrat has not defeated an incumbent Republican governor in Nevada since 1982, when then- Attorney General Richard Bryan mounted an anti-high energy cost crusade against Nevada Power, precursor to NV Energy, and defeated Gov. Robert List. 

Ford is hoping for the same result. He’s challenging a ruling from the Lombardo-appointed Public Service Commission that is slated to change the way electricity bills are calculated beginning in January, and he’s lashing out at out Lombardo’s support for data centers, their potential for increasing energy costs, and their insatiable thirst for water in a state that is enduring drought. 

Last month, Lombardo, who has declared a data center gold rush, doubled down on his commitment to the industry, but issued an executive order curtailing some tax incentives.

The order came days after Axios reported that a Trump pollster warned GOP candidates that “unqualified support for building more AI data centers is a losing position” and they should avoid using the phrase “build more data centers.”

Lombardo’s campaign maintains the plan was not the result of that warning. 

“We’re going to pause those tax incentives,” says Ford, who, as a state senator, was one of the original cosponsors of 2015 legislation approving tax breaks for data centers. “That’s not to say that they will never resume. We have to be contemplative, deliberative, have conversations, and weigh the pros and cons. It’s not dogma over changing dynamics.” 

Nevada, according to experts, has one of the most regressive tax systems in the nation and is in need of an overhaul that lessens the sales tax burden on low-income residents. 

Lombardo has pledged not to raise taxes. 

Ford agrees. Nevadans, he says, “can’t afford gas, groceries or rent. People are struggling right now, and I’ve been in a circumstance where I couldn’t think beyond my circumstance, let alone to improve it.” 

Lombardo has never lost an election. In 2022 he defeated incumbent Steve Sisolak by one and a half percentage points, buoyed to victory by a bandwagon of pandemic-weary Nevadans.

Two years later, Lombardo tied his fortune to the second coming of Trump — a decision that has proved fraught with peril for the governor. His tenure has been marred by Trump’s agenda, which even the governor acknowledged benefits billionaires.

With the help of the Republican Governors Association, the Better Nevada PAC, and the Nevada Way PAC, Lombardo’s campaign amassed more than $16 million in the second quarter alone. 

Ford, as of July, had about $2.6 million on hand. Third quarter contribution and expense reports are due on Wednesday.

It’s unknown if voters, many of whom are put off by Trump’s vanity agenda and penchant for self-enrichment while in office, will view Lombardo’s multi-million dollar haul as a show of strength or of fealty.

Ford says the primary reason he ran for governor is because he knew Lombardo “wouldn’t stand up to Donald Trump. I knew he’d kowtow, capitulate and kiss up to Trump at every turn.” 

The second reason he ran is the “racist dog whistles” on the campaign trail. 

“The first message I got after I won the primary — a direct message on Facebook said, and I’m quoting, ‘Great, a f–king n—-r AG,’” Ford said. 

In his campaign for attorney general, Ford’s opponent, Sigal Chattah, suggested he should be “hanging from a f–king crane.” 

Members of Lombardo’s campaign staff, critics contend, have engaged in what some call ‘race-baiting,’ which is the practice of deliberately engendering fear or hatred based on race. 

“Nevadans deserve to know their top cop wants a promotion with an arrest record involving public intoxication, stealing tires, and failing to appear in court, in addition to trespassing a woman’s home without her permission,” Lombardo campaign spokeswoman Halee Dobbins said in a statement. 

“It’s no surprise that Joe Lombardo, who has disdain for our community in so many regards, is stooping to this level,” Ford said.