'Nevadans are getting hosed': Why affordability is 2026's buzzword

Editor's note: This is the third of three stories focusing on how the economy is playing out in November's election. You can read the first one here, and the second one here.

Nevada's average fuel costs are the fourth-highest in the country.

Grocery bills? Higher than the national average. Car insurance rates are the most expensive anywhere in the country, all while median rents and home prices have outpaced income growth over the past decade and left residents "financially burdened" by housing costs.

As one Republican politician summed up in a recent campaign ad, "Nevadans are getting hosed."

For all those reasons, the buzzword of this election cycle has been affordability. 

Polling has underscored the sentiment, with Emerson College showing a large plurality of Nevada voters (43 percent) view the economy as their top issue, followed by housing affordability (15 percent). A separate poll from Dave Sackett indicated that inflation and cost of living, followed by the economy and jobs, were Nevada voters' top issues.

Economists and regional experts say Nevada's geography, population growth, infrastructure, fuel reliance and proximity to California make those national economic pressures hit harder.

"Depending on the month that you look at, we're either just barely keeping up or just barely slipping behind," said David Schmidt, the state's chief economist.

He noted that while conflicts in the Middle East are affecting fuel costs everywhere, an economy such as Nevada's, which relies heavily on tourism dollars and leisure spending, is more exposed to shifts in consumer sentiment.

"It's a high frequency, high visibility kind of thing," Schmidt said. "When you're paying for the groceries, when you're filling up your tank, when you're sending in your rent or mortgage every month, I think the visibility of those prices also sometimes can affect perception."

That perception is playing a major role in the race between Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) and Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford, with data from AdImpact showing at least 16 campaign ads from both parties in the last 30 days focused on the economy or affordability, half of which are tied to the governor's race.

"It's really the accumulation of all these moving parts that are now colliding together all at once, in addition to the mortgage rates and the $40 trillion debt and wars," said Brian Bonnenfant, project manager for the Center for Regional Studies at UNR. "And so it's all come together and hitting us right now in the face."

Understanding affordability drivers

Taylor Adams, the chief executive of Northern NV Now, an economic development group headquartered in Reno, described affordability as a national crisis but said there were a few local conditions that made the broader economic pressures hit the region harder.

He said housing is the biggest single driver in factoring the cost of living, with housing costs going up in tandem with mortgage rates and a shortage of land. Either more supply or lower rates would help, he said.

A lack of public transit options and a regional reliance on cars mean fuel price spikes hit residents directly, Adams said. High auto insurance rates can stem from the rising cost of cars driven by inflation and supply chain issues, the number and severity of crashes in Nevada and other factors.

Nevada largely depends on California refineries for gasoline, and though active conversations are underway about weaning off that reliance, it will take time.

"At the top line, we're seeing record profits and really aggressive growth, but … we're not necessarily seeing that filter down to the employee on the ground in the present," Adams said. "And then you add in fuel costs and some of the other things that are, I'll just say, that are born out of decisions that have been made in this year at the federal level, and it's really challenging for a family right now."

Despite the challenges, Adams said he is "very aspirational" about the future of Northern Nevada and pointed to the growth of entrepreneurship and other job opportunities in the region as positive signs.

Bonnenfant said transportation costs also have an effect — goods and groceries must cross the mountain passes in the northern part of the state and be transported across the desert in the southern part of the state.

Increased supply needs and in-migration largely from California have driven housing prices up, he said, pointing to mortgage rates near 7 percent and a national debt of roughly $40 trillion that also compounds the problem — rising national debt drives up interest rates.

He noted that Nevada has limited funding for safety net programs, so people who depend on them, such as those on fixed incomes or with no income, often take the full force of rising costs. For those coming from California or other states, Bonnenfant said it comes as a surprise that Nevada doesn't have the same level of services or assistance.

"We're going to continue to be a high-cost state, and again, the tax structure is not there to really help out those who fall in fiscal harm," Bonnenfant said.

Costs and benefits around vetoes

Paul Moradkhan, executive vice president of government affairs for the Vegas Chamber, said affordability is the top issue for Nevadans this cycle — and the topic comes up in "every single conversation" from endorsement interviews to member meetings and volunteers knocking at the door.

Moradkhan added that many of the issues stem from the national level, but the chamber's position is that state lawmakers shouldn't pass any bills that add to costs.

Those costs, he said, could include things such as higher insurance coverage requirements, employer and labor mandates and taxes on small businesses (Lombardo and Ford have pledged not to raise taxes in office).

Ford and Democrats more broadly 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 measures met heavy pushback from business-aligned interests, which warned they would increase costs.

Lombardo has touted efforts to eliminate regulations, the creation of more than 100,000 new jobs since he took office in 2022, billions of dollars in private investments and post-pandemic small-business growth, as well as overall wage growth, as evidence of his stewardship of the economy.

He's also presented himself as a check on the Democrat-controlled Legislature. After he broke his own record for number of vetoes in a single session in 2025, he wrote in a statement that, he did not "enjoy using the veto pen, but as Governor, it is my responsibility to protect Nevadans from legislation that goes too far, expands government unnecessarily, or creates unintended consequences that hurt families, businesses, or our economy."

John Restrepo, a longtime Nevada economist, said there's no way to know the exact economic effect of vetoed bills in advance, and fiscal notes estimating the cost of certain bills shouldn't be considered serious, long-term economic-impact statements. 

On the price-fixing ban for example, Restrepo said the economic effect depends on definitions, enforcement and what's covered. A narrow, targeted prohibition on collusion is different from a broader one during supply shortages. He explained that on paid family and sick leave, research indicates that there's evidence on labor-force attachment and employer costs, but the magnitude and distribution of effects varies depending on the program. 

"The common thread is that each policy can redistribute costs and benefits among households, employers and government," Restrepo said. "The key economic questions are the size of those transfers, who bears the costs, who receives the benefits and what behavioral responses follow from the policy design."

'No silver bullet'

Though the governor's direct control over state and national economic factors is more limited than most realize, that doesn't stop campaigns.

In early August, Nevada's Democratic Party made stops in each of the state's 17 counties as part of a "Stuff Costs Too Much" five-day tour. Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno, a state assemblymember running for North Las Vegas mayor, referenced the oft-cited maxim, "When the rest of the world gets a cold, Nevada gets the flu."

"The prices are just too high," Monroe-Moreno told The Nevada Independent. "What I hear is that the reality of what Nevadans are facing — it's them choosing between filling up a gas tank if they're a family or a small-business owner, or only filling it up halfway so that they can buy dinner and prescription drugs."

It's a mirror of 2022, when Lombardo leveraged economic discontent surrounding inflation (or "Bidenflation") and his phrase "[Gov. Steve] Sisolak and Biden's disastrous economic leadership" to become the only Republican in the country to unseat a Democratic incumbent that year.

This cycle, Lombardo has acknowledged the challenges that the state faces as far as housing, healthcare, education, wages and public safety — outlining a vision that highlights his first-term successes while maintaining a pledge to not raise taxes, revisit economic incentives and champion an annual sales tax holiday "timed to when families need it most around back-to-school season."

Democrats, meanwhile, have sought to tie the high cost of food, housing, healthcare and a litany of other expenses affecting voters' pocketbooks to what Ford's campaign coined the "Lombardo-Trump economy" while pushing his own "Affordable Nevada" policy.

But what does affordability mean to Ford, and how as governor would he measure success in making things more affordable?

Campaign spokesperson Prerna Jagadeesh wrote in a statement that Ford's "definition of affordability means that Nevadans can pay for gas, groceries, health care, and still have something left to save for the future and enjoy the present." She said Ford will know the affordability crisis has been addressed when fewer families spend more than a third of their income on rent, utility bills are lower and wages grow faster than prices.

To meet that goal, Ford has a series of ambitious plans (that a Nevada Independent analysis showed would be costly for the state) including raising per-pupil education funding and erasing medical debt — all while not raising taxes. 

He said in an August presser he cannot, in good conscience, raise taxes on individuals "scraping to get by right now." Ford has said he is still "committed and dedicated" to making progress even without raising taxes, and that he doesn't expect to achieve his ambitious policy goals immediately.

"Nothing gets 100 percent. It just can't," Ford said in a past interview. 

Nicholas Irwin, an economist and the research director at the Lied Center for Real Estate at UNLV, said that when it comes to affordability and, more specifically, housing affordability, no actions state lawmakers take will quickly address the cost of living. 

He put meaningful relief about five to 10 years out and said even the governor's housing bill, passed in coordination with the Legislature in 2025, will likely show "measurable effects" only in the next four years or so.

"The affordability crisis is here and now, and that's the issue. There's no silver bullet to fix it. Everything that the state could do really won't have an effect for several years down the road," he said. "We're sort of at the whims of what's happening at a federal and a global level, especially when it comes to energy and cost of materials."