Nevada's governor race is just warming up. Why has Lombardo's side already spent a fortune?

Outside observers consider the governor's race to be a toss-up in purple Nevada, but there's one area where the competition isn't even close — advertising spending. 

With fewer than five months until the general election, expenditures supporting Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) have dwarfed those of his opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford (D). For every dollar spent to back Ford, there has been $174 to back the incumbent. 

Data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, including local broadcast, ads on internet-connected smart TVs and streaming devices, digital and satellite, shows that Lombardo and Republican-aligned groups have spent more than $13.3 million on ads since December 2025, including positive ones painting Lombardo as an education reformer and negative ones slamming Ford for frequent out-of-state travel. Democrats have spent about $77,000. 

Across the country, forecasters see eight highly competitive governor's races, Allan Keiter, president of 270toWin, wrote in an email. Only two of those races, Arizona and Nevada, feature incumbents, he noted, adding that the limited polling that's been done and the prediction markets indicate Nevada is a 50-50 battle while the governor of Arizona may be in a stronger position. 

"Bottom line — Lombardo is the most at-risk incumbent governor in the country, with a known opponent to attack. If he has the resources to spend, there's no reason not to," Keiter wrote.

J. Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said the spending disparity in a race that's widely seen as competitive stands out in a battleground state. Sabato's Crystal Ball ranks Nevada as leaning Republican in the governor's race, and Coleman said with Democrats eyeing the seat for a flip, the early spending can be a way to try to insulate the governor.

Without a U.S. Senate or presidential race, the state's Republican governor would be most likely to bear the brunt of any voter backlash to President Donald Trump, Coleman said, noting that it would be an incentive for Lombardo to define himself early.

"Maybe part of his campaign's mentality could be … we're never going to let our foot off of the gas here. That kind of could be part of it, but maybe the Democrats are just waiting to spend later, closer to Election Day," Coleman said. "These governors' elections don't happen in a vacuum."

The spending, bolstered by Lombardo's status as the top fundraiser in Nevada this election cycle and the $14 million war chest he had across his campaign and affiliated PACs heading into the primary, is a way to achieve name recognition and shape perceptions of the governor. During the midterms, Republicans, as the incumbent party, are likely to take the fall for an economy that has left voters broadly discontented, UNLV political science professor Ken Miller said.

Though public polling on the race has been relatively scant, Miller said it indicates the race will be close. Lombardo and those supporting him, Miller noted, have an incentive to spend now and define him to voters who may not have strong opinions about his tenure, especially in a relatively transient state such as Nevada. 

"Lombardo has a lot of reasons to be pretty optimistic that he'll buck the national trend, but anytime you've got a national trend like that, you have to pay attention to it," Miller said. "So he has every incentive to spend everything he's got to try to burnish his image, and we're seeing that in the content of his advertising right now, too."

A polling memo from Global Strategy Group in May indicates that Lombardo holds a statistically insignificant lead over Ford by about 3 percentage points, but specifically drew attention to the spending disadvantage. It noted that even after months and millions of dollars in negative advertising, Ford is within the margin of error and holds edges with swing demographics such as registered nonpartisan voters and Hispanic/Latino voters. The poll was commissioned by Ford's campaign.

Zoë Kleinfeld, Ford's campaign manager, told The Nevada Independent in a statement that the negative ads in February were the earliest from an incumbent in the state's history, and signify Lombardo is "running scared." 

Lombardo's campaign wrote in a statement that the governor has "made great progress in a little over three years" on housing, education funding and alleviating a physician and nurse shortage.

"The results are already paying off … and he's just getting started," it said.

Shaping the narrative

Miller said recent campaign advertising pitches Lombardo as a problem-solver, distancing himself from the national party brand and arguing he's made progress over the last four years on so-called kitchen-table issues, such as health care, education and housing. Advertising can help with name recognition and building a candidate's narrative, although it can't guarantee a win.

"As for what is $12 million in advertising spend going to get you? It might not really get you much," he said. "But you have it, so you're going to spend it."

Travis Ridout, a political science professor at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, said Republican incumbents are having to put in the work to communicate with voters because the national political winds favor Democrats. But how much the level of spending matters, he said, depends largely on how much voters already know about a given candidate.

Public polling in the governor's race has been scarce, but a November 2025 poll from Emerson College found that 18 percent of voters were unsure or had no opinion on Lombardo — compared to 24 percent who said the same for Ford. Where spending matters the least is presidential races because there's a lot already known about the candidates, he said. Further down the ballot, though, spending is likely to matter.

A senior adviser with Ford's campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely share thoughts, said the campaign expected the spending discrepancy but also downplayed its importance, saying that voters inundated with ads earlier in the cycle can lose sight of specific messaging.

The adviser added that the campaign is comfortable with its position and intends to be on the air in due course. On the trail, Ford has tried to tie Lombardo to Trump and the pain voters are feeling over the rising cost of living.

An uphill battle

Incumbents typically have a fundraising advantage over their opponents in gubernatorial races, especially at this point in the cycle. 

Campaign finance reports for the first quarter of 2022 showed then-Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) raised about double what Lombardo raised from January through March that year. 

When Lombardo defeated Sisolak in 2022, he was the only Republican to unseat a Democratic governor, even though he was outraised by a 3-2 margin through Election Day by Sisolak. 

Sisolak benefited from incumbency and a Democratic fundraising machine, but the gap between the two was partially closed by billionaire hotel mogul Robert Bigelow, who contributed millions of dollars to pro-Lombardo PACs and was also the largest individual donor to Lombardo's campaign through Election Day. Bigelow owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain and Bigelow Aerospace, a company focused on outer space technology.

During the first quarter of 2026, Lombardo raised almost twice as much as Ford, not including money raised by political action committees and other entities.

This cycle, Lombardo has relied on a strong fundraising apparatus, including a 'dark money' nonprofit, and again tapped into and expanded upon the business-friendly base of large companies and developers that supported him when he first ran for governor. His campaign also announced a "record-breaking $15 million cash-on-hand" heading into the June primary. 

To counteract Lombardo's continued fundraising and what will likely be increased ad spending, Miller said Ford's campaign will have to drive earned media coverage by news organizations and hold events and outreach — all strategies the Ford campaign is leveraging. 

The senior adviser who spoke with The Nevada Independent acknowledged the fundraising gap, saying it's easier for incumbents and Republicans to fundraise — especially when a candidate is perceived as more pro-business. 

Ford's campaign has responded by painting Lombardo as driven by "corporate interests" and has touted raising about 25 times as much money from donations of less than $100 than the governor. Lombardo's campaign said there is nothing unusual about his donor base, which includes a variety of major businesses but is topped by $3 million from Station Casinos and the Fertitta family, which owns it. 

Mo' money, mo' spending

Ridout said a big debate among political scientists and campaign strategists is whether it's better to spend money early or late. If money is spent early to define an opponent negatively, it could be hard to dislodge that view from voters' minds, he said. On the other hand, candidates may want to save money until after Labor Day, which is often seen as the earnest start of general election campaigns.

"It's hard to know if this is a sign of an inability to raise money or if it's a sign of a campaign strategy where they're saying, 'you know, what, we don't think that early money is going to matter all that much anyway. We want to save our resources for when we think it'll matter more,'" Ridout said of the Lombardo-Ford spending gap.

Miller said incumbents such as Lombardo, who don't face a serious primary challenge, can take advantage by going on the attack against their expected general election opponent early in the campaign. Though Ford handily defeated his most serious primary challenger, Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill, and earned 63 percent of the vote, Lombardo had an even easier race, taking 91 percent of the Republican primary vote.

The factors benefiting Ford, Miller said, include an electorate fairly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and an incumbent governor who has to walk a tightrope with the national party brand. Political scientists and political figures generally agree, however, that Lombardo has been successful in balancing his connection to President Donald Trump while avoiding pitfalls associated with his presidency.

"He's been slick enough to not be so tied to Trump without having the MAGAs get mad at him," former Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani (D) said in a June interview.

Miller said it's somewhat surprising for spending to be so far apart in a governor's race that's widely considered competitive. 

"Small proportional differences in campaign spending between candidates just cancel each other out, and they don't really matter," Miller said. "But the scale with which Lombardo is going to outspend Ford is probably going to matter … if he can outspend him on the order of 20 to 1, 30 to 1, those sorts of proportional differences, that's going to make a small difference."