As in legislative sessions past, The Nevada Independent is publishing a series of profiles featuring the new lawmakers in the state. Check back in coming days for additional stories on new legislators' backgrounds, interests and policy positions.

Assemblymember Lisa Cole

• The freshman Las Vegas Republican succeeds Assm. Richard McArthur (R-Las Vegas), who launched an unsuccessful bid for Senate District 18.
• She represents a district in the northwestern Las Vegas Valley that includes Centennial Hills.
• District 4 has a slight Republican lean in registered voters (32 percent Republican, 29 percent Democrat and 39 percent registered as nonpartisan or to other political parties as of January 2025).
• Cole had no opponent in the Republican primary, then defeated Democrat Ryan Hampton in the general election, carrying about 56 percent of the vote.
• She will sit on the judiciary, commerce and labor and legislative operations and elections committees.

Profile

When Gov. Joe Lombardo’s team contacted Lisa Cole in 2023 to gauge her interest in running for an Assembly seat, she recalled immediately feeling a sense of confidence.

“I was like, ‘I can do it,’” she said.

That confidence, according to Cole, stems from her decision to attend law school on top of working full-time in her 40s. She ultimately graduated summa cum laude and passed the Nevada bar exam on her first try.

Her graduation from the Mitchell Hamline School of Law — an online law school based in Minnesota that allows students to complete school on top of full-time employment — was the latest milestone  for Cole since she moved to Las Vegas in 1998.

Born and raised in Somerset, Pennsylvania, a town of about 6,000 people southwest of Pittsburgh, Cole was a self-described “nerd” growing up. She attended Allegheny College in her home state and graduated with a degree in environmental science.

Her career in Las Vegas began running a warehouse — a far cry from a post-college desire to be a park ranger — but eventually saw a job posting for a water rights manager at the Apex Industrial Park business center in the northwestern Las Vegas Valley.

She would go on to be involved in Apex for more than 20 years, including serving as the vice president since 2010 of Land Development Associates, which coordinates almost all of the business center’s infrastructure initiatives.

And her work with Apex might have been why she received that call from Lombardo’s team, as she was profiled in a Las Vegas Review-Journal article in 2023. The industrial park is home to major online retailers' distribution centers and manufacturing facilities and was once eyed as the home of electric car manufacturer Faraday Future, spurring a special session of the Legislature. 

As a legislator, Cole said she is driven by passing legislation that does not have unintended consequences. She was particularly outspoken about the Legislature’s 2023 passage of AB398, a little noticed-bill that prompted an emergency regulation after the fact amid fears that it could lower the availability of liability insurance and increase costs for policies covering construction defects, medical malpractice and more.

Cole has proposed a bill to repeal that legislation.

Despite her experience in environmental issues, Cole will not be serving on the Assembly’s natural resources committee — a decision that she admitted disappointed her at first, but she said that she is looking forward to sitting on the judiciary committee, where she will be able to show off her skill of “really digging into” the law.

As a law school student, she decided to immerse herself in topics that other students were not as interested in, such as the legislative process and energy law — expertise she thinks will serve her well in Carson City.

“I’ve got a very interesting skill set that is unusual for a legislator,” she said.

On the Issues

Education

Cole said she did not support funding universal school meals for K-12 students because it would involve spending money on students who do not need free meals.

“I would not support spending money to feed students who don’t need the help and who would just throw the food away if they got it because they have other options they deem better,” she said.

She said that she is “in full support” of providing students with Opportunity Scholarships, the school choice program that provides private school scholarships to students from low- and middle-income households.

Health care

Asked what she would do to limit the state’s uninsured rate, Cole said her focus is instead on increasing the number of health care providers.

Housing

Cole does not support changes to the state’s summary eviction process, which requires the tenant, rather than the landlord, to make the first filing in an eviction case. She said that doing so would make it “more onerous on landlords” and could disincentivize them from putting residences up for rent.

These changes to summary eviction were vetoed last year by Lombardo, who has since expressed more willingness to alter the law.

Elections

Cole said she wants the state’s election rules to align with a ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that prohibited the acceptance of mail ballots received after Election Day. This is a similar stance as Lombardo’s.

Asked whether she would support beefing up resources for local election offices (the preferred ballot counting change from the secretary of state’s office), Cole said she would want to learn more about staffing levels first to determine if more resources are necessary.

Gun reform

Cole opposes increasing the age to 21 to buy certain semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, saying the U.S. Supreme Court “has been very clear on its enforcement of Second Amendment rights.”

Environment

Cole was critical of the state’s efforts to reach near-zero emissions by 2050 — calling it “not possible without extreme and unnecessary policies that cause major economic disturbance.”

She also condemned the state’s requirements for renewable energy (under state law and a recently passed constitutional amendment, the state requires at least half of the electricity sold to Nevada customers to have come from renewable sources by 2030). She called this an “artificial mandate system” that removes flexibility for utilities and could increase costs.

Film tax credit

Cole called tax credits a “powerful tool” to incentivize industries to come to Nevada, and that she wants to ensure that efforts to attract the film industry “accomplish the goal while not giving away too much.”

Line-item vetoes

Cole was unsure whether governors should be allowed to issue line-item vetoes on budget items, saying she would want to learn more about the history of these vetoes.