For a few minutes during last week’s gubernatorial debate, I thought candidate Joe Lombardo was going to have a genuine breakthrough. For a while, I started to believe he was having a certified political epiphany.

I thought that he might just declare his independence from the cult of Donald Trump.

Sponsored by The Nevada Independent and moderated by its founder and CEO Jon Ralston, the debate was lively and filled with enough one-liners, accusations, misfires, and missed opportunities to fill a dozen pundits’ notebooks. Despite the debate’s mostly civil tone, sound bites from the 90-minute crosstalk session have snapped and crackled for days on social media thanks to the campaigns’ rapid response forces.

One part that caught my attention came when Lombardo was asked whether Trump, the most disruptive American leader since mad King George III, qualified as a “great president.” Given the fealty of Nevada’s Republican candidates to Trump, it held all the promise of a gotcha question.

“I wouldn’t use that adjective,” Lombardo replied.

Somewhere in the bowels of Mar-A-Lago, a ketchup-smeared plate was shattering against a wall.

“I wouldn’t call him a great president,” Lombardo continued. Then he dimmed the lights on his shining moment. “He was a sound president.”

When asked whether he believes Trump’s Big Lie about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, Lombardo again flashed a flicker of independence. Was the election rigged?

“There was a modicum of fraud, but nothing to change the election,” Lombardo replied, offering that Trump’s continued ruse, “bothers me. I’m not shying away from that. I don’t stand by him in that aspect.”

He then stepped back from the edge of making a full declaration, framing the answer in a softer light by noting, “You’re never going to agree with anybody 100 percent and everything they do.”

At least, not when you’re dealing with a stable adult.

In reality, Trump has demanded from those who wish to remain in his good graces no less than nodding affirmation the likes we’ve not seen since the last punch party in Jonestown.

Lombardo’s fleeting intemperance went viral with news accounts shouting that he “seeks distance from former president.”

Call Lombardo’s remarks tepid compared to Trump’s real critics, but don’t miss the point. In Nevada’s Republican Party, it qualified as blowtorch rhetoric. The GOP’s current slate of candidates is larded with election deniers who wouldn’t dream of admitting Trump lost the state by more than 33,000 votes, or that the most high-profile example of voter fraud was committed by a Republican insider.

Instead, they’ll follow U.S. Sen. Candidate Adam Laxalt’s Charlie McCarthy routine and parrot Trump’s democracy-damaging prevarication. Laxalt wouldn’t dream of clearing his throat and admitting he was wrong to carry Trump’s toxic swamp water forward in the form of voter fraud lawsuits that were in themselves fraudulent.

Nor will you find election denier and secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant calling out the hokum being peddled in Nye County, which has decided it can’t trust voting machines but can trust ballot counters hand-picked by a fellow election denier with zero experience supervising the election process. In fact, it’s Marchant who has helped organize this ham-fisted sleight-of-hand.

Candidate Lombardo’s answers weren’t exactly clarion calls, but by veering even slightly from the talking-point responses most Republicans offer he reminded me of another Joe Lombardo, the straight-talking Clark County Sheriff who faced day after day of national press scrutiny and helped guide Southern Nevada through the awful trauma in the wake of the 1 October mass shooting.

The gubernatorial debate came at an intriguing moment for Nevadans as early voting approaches for the November general election. Lombardo spoke up just days before Trump had scheduled a rally in the political hotbed of Minden, where only the cows outnumber the conservatives. The debate was part of an IndyFest policy-discussion weekend punctuated by the announcement of the results of a recent poll sponsored by the news outlet and OH Predictive Insights that showed Lombardo with a 3-point lead over incumbent Steve Sisolak.

Although within the survey’s 3.6 percent margin of error, it shows just how tight the race is and also comes at a time Nevadans are dropping party affiliation in big numbers as they sweat high gasoline and grocery prices amid rising inflation. With registered non-partisans now the state’s second-highest voting affiliation, more people than ever are indicating an interest in breaking from traditional party rhetoric.

A day after the debate, candidate Lombardo re-emerged and walked back his independent moment. He did so not on a debate stage, but with a lame campaign news release via Twitter that gushed, “By all measures, Donald J. Trump was a great President and his accomplishments are some of the most impactful in American history.”

So much for that flicker of independence.

Considering the painful pocketbook issues hitting Nevadans, maybe candidate Lombardo can have it both ways. The polls indicate that it’s possible. Perhaps he can acknowledge the fact there was no widespread voter fraud and sit there grinning as Trump lies again and again about his loss in 2020. For that matter, maybe Lombardo can win by saying he stands by Nevada’s abortion rights law when he knows his own party leadership is hell bent on prohibiting a woman’s right to choose.

Candidate Lombardo is leading by a nose, but I wonder how far ahead Joe Lombardo might be if he had dropped the muddy talking points and decided to speak his mind in a state with legions of registered non-partisans straining for a little authenticity.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.