Lombardo, Ford are campaigning on the economy. What can a governor actually do about it?

Editor's note: This is the first of three stories focusing on how the economy is playing out in November's election.

In 2022, then-Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo leveraged economic frustrations to unseat then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, becoming the only Republican in the country to oust a Democratic incumbent.

Four years later, the tables have turned. 

Now seeking a second term, Lombardo has pushed a narrative of economic progress while countering that broader federal factors and global inflation are outside his control. That hasn't stopped his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, from hammering the governor on rising gas prices, the higher cost of living and other economic lines of attack.

It's a pertinent strategy — recent Emerson College polling of the governor's race shows a large plurality of Nevada voters (43 percent) view the economy as their top issue —  and one that echoes a dance that often takes place in Nevada when an incumbent governor faces a challenger, especially when voters are upset about the economy. 

"I'm sure Steve Sisolak would have told you that the economy and all its weirdness was from COVID fallout and fiscal policy that Congress passed … and he didn't have control over it, and Republicans would have gleefully said, 'Yeah, but we still won,'" said Jeremy Gelman, a UNR political science professor. "This is just how politics works." 

Economists and political scientists told The Nevada Independent that voters punish a governor for economic struggles more than they reward them in times of plenty. Voters typically make decisions based on immediate economic conditions and use elections to signal a desire for change. 

Many noted that the governor's direct control over state and national economic factors is more limited than most realize, but that doesn't matter to voters.

The party at the top of the ticket reaps the consequences for what voters are experiencing in the lead-up to Election Day — and even though the president isn't on the ballot in a midterm election, it still becomes a referendum on what's taking place at the national level. In the 2022 governor's race, exit polls showed a plurality of voters (35 percent) listed inflation as their top issue.

"Whether it is fair or not, people are just going to ascribe the economy and how it's working right now to the president," Gelman said.

The governor has some power, no control over federal situations

In audio leaked from a meet-and-greet with veterans in July, Lombardo said there's a big difference between the federal and local economic spheres and how he can shape them.

"When we talk about affordability and inflation rates and everything, I can't control that as a governor," Lombardo said.

Those comments are a tacit admission of what economists and political scientists say — that  the governor's power over the economy is limited but not nonexistent.

In Nevada, the governor prepares and submits the two-year state budget to the Legislature, shaping the state's multibillion-dollar spending priorities. Unlike some governors around the country, Nevada governors do not have line-item veto power once lawmakers finalize and return the budget for final approval. 

The governor can also veto or sign bills that influence the economy and call special sessions to address economic issues, as Sisolak did during the COVID-19 pandemic or former Gov. Brian Sandoval did to attract Tesla to the state in 2014. In 2023, Lombardo called a special session to bring the then-Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas by sending up to $380 million in public money toward the construction of a $2 billion baseball stadium on the Strip. 

And major tax policy changes have been rare in recent years — any tax increase in Nevada is a major lift because it requires not only the governor's signature but a two-thirds majority vote from state lawmakers. Lombardo pledged not to raise any taxes as governor, and even roundabout efforts to change the state's property tax system through the ballot box have fizzled in recent sessions.

The governor also appoints regulators and directs state agencies that can influence economic development. In his first month in office, Lombardo issued an executive order freezing new regulations and cutting what he called burdensome ones. The push led to the Gaming Control Board eliminating dozens of outdated regulations that removed licensing hurdles. 

On the campaign trail, he has highlighted this — touting 900 cut or streamlined regulations — but The Indy could not immediately verify this total because Lombardo's office said it didn't have a list of all relevant regulations.

Beyond those specific duties, the governor has soft powers in the form of a bully pulpit to advocate for changes at the federal level. In February last year, Lombardo spoke out against the GOP's possible Medicaid cuts, asking Congress not to slash Medicaid funding to the extent it was considering. He warned that while fiscal responsibility is vital, cuts to the "safety net program" could have "serious consequences" in a state heavily dependent on the federal health insurance program. 

In a union podcast interview, Lombardo also said he spoke with the president about potential federal policies that could harm Nevada's solar industry — an industry Nevada is particularly reliant upon — and that he worked with the Trump administration "to make sure Nevada's renewable energy supply is protected."

Mark Pingle, an economics professor at UNR, said that with a Democrat-controlled Legislature, Lombardo has had little ability to drive legislation that could significantly change the economy — such as his unsuccessful 2023 effort to pause the state's fuel tax for a year — but his primary impact as governor has been his record-breaking number of vetoes.

Democrats have criticized a wide swath of the governor's vetoes that they said would have benefited Nevadans' pocketbooks, including a price-fixing ban on essential goods proposed by Ford, a bill to significantly expand paid family and sick leave, and legislation to increase the amount of wages protected from a type of debt collection known as garnishment.

All three of the measures met heavy pushback from business-aligned interests, but were supported by consumer rights advocates and Democrats. 

"People will disagree with what's good or bad," Pingle said. "But the governor has very significant power with that veto power to influence legislation." 

Democrats have reiterated messaging about the struggles Nevadans are facing and tied that to Lombardo and Trump. They've pointed to reports showing that between 2024 and 2025 the Strip experienced an 81 percent decline in net income. In the first seven months of 2026, visitation to Las Vegas was flat. Alongside this, tariffs increased costs for families and Nevada stands to lose anywhere from an estimated $6 billion to $11 billion from federal healthcare spending cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

But Pingle, who has previously described himself to The Indy as more on the conservative side, noted that while the president has directly shaped national economic policy and outcomes, the governor has little to no direct control over the cost of housing and gas, and is limited in response to broader conflicts such as the Iran war, tariffs and rising mortgage interest rates. Though Nevada's gas supplies rely heavily on California, the most Lombardo could do when the neighboring state was weighing emission policy changes was write a letter.

Even with recent changes that Lombardo has touted, such as an attainable housing program that supports new construction and interest rate buy-downs and the elimination of regulations, Pingle said it takes time beyond Election Day to see the effects of those policies.

On the campaign trail

In an August IndyTalks interview, Ford defended his campaign's repeated use of the "Lombardo-Trump" economy phrase on the campaign trail, saying that Lombardo's support of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and President Donald Trump (R) justifies the characterization.

Ford said Lombardo should have pushed Trump to back off tariffs and not sign the budget package and has pointed to Nevada's 5 percent unemployment rate as of July — 46th worst among all U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

As for the lack of criticism of Trump, Lombardo has been careful about his connection to the president. He's appeared at in-state rallies with the president, whose approval ratings are sinking into the negative double digits, but has otherwise not explicitly run on his connections to or support of Trump even as Democrats repeatedly attempt to tie the two Republicans at the hip.

Ford has also said the governor should not have vetoed legislation to provide universal school meals and cap prescription drug prices — two policies he said would help families better navigate what politicians have framed as an affordability crisis in Nevada. 

Lombardo wrote in a veto message that the bill to cap prescription drug prices "would ultimately lead to higher costs and less accessibility to certain forms of care," pointing to the potential for unintentionally restricting patients' drug choices if a pharmacy could not acquire a drug at or below the negotiated price and the state's Medicaid program possibly losing millions of dollars in drug rebate savings. On universal school meals, he has said more than 80 percent of students are eligible for free meals and that "every student in need can receive free school meals."

Lombardo has touted the creation of more than 100,000 jobs since the start of his administration, the attraction of more than $6 billion in private investment in the Silver State and the state's progress in leading the country in job growth for 11 months in a row as of June. Lombardo attributed the changes to lower taxes and fewer regulations.

The Lombardo administration has also highlighted positive rankings from researchers and the media showing Nevada leading the nation in post-pandemic small-business growth, ranking among top states for business strength, Nevada's label as the seventh best state to start a business, the largest increase in hourly pay in the country and climbing 15 spots in the U-Haul Growth Index.

UNLV political science professor Rebecca Gill said Ford's strategy to tie the poor economy to Lombardo looks to a tendency among voters upset with the current state of affairs to vote for change.

"It's not necessarily a bad way to make decisions," she said, noting that voters only have so much time and bandwidth to make a determination on how they are going to vote. 

Looking ahead to Election Day

In a time when wealth inequality has steadily grown since the 1980s, David Damore, executive director of The Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West, said voters are feeling the pinch, and broader pessimism is shaping their political decision-making.

Partisan voters, Damore said, are going to support their party's candidate regardless. But for non-politicos who only tune in during the late months of the election, Damore said economic conditions loom large. Polling from Dave Sackett indicates that inflation and cost of living, followed by the economy and jobs, were the most important issues for Nevada voters.

In a state such as Nevada, where more than a third of voters are nonpartisans and every election sees an influx of new voters, it's easiest to focus on the price of groceries and the rising cost of gas.

Damore said Lombardo leveraged rising inflation and delays in responding to a torrent of unemployment claims stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic to rise to victory in 2022.

With both candidates pledging not to raise taxes this time around, Damore said neither can make much of an impact on the state's economy because there's little revenue to pay for it.

"A little bit of the double-edged sword of living in Nevada is the people who move here, they come with some sense of the expectation that the services will be here," Damore said. "They don't make that connection, well, if I'm not paying taxes, that's fine. But no, everybody's not paying taxes, so you don't have great transportation. You don't have great social services. You have a weak healthcare network."