When someone says they "can" do something, what does that mean?

In You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder's surreal documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the since-imprisoned founder of Theranos — a failed Silicon Valley blood-testing startup — claimed that she meant "can" in the future tense. According to her, the company's blood-testing machine was supposed to be a platform that "can run any test" from a single drop of blood — provided chemistry research reached a sufficiently advanced state to enable the machine to run the test successfully, anyway.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.

Though the movie was vague about Holmes' sincerity, the facts surrounding the collapse of Theranos and her subsequent conviction are far more straightforward. Holmes told customers and investors that Theranos was using its technology to perform blood tests, which wasn't true — instead, it was using more traditional blood-testing machines from better established competitors behind the scenes because Theranos' devices didn't work. She forged documents that claimed pharmaceutical companies had validated her technology. Even as federal investigators were picking the company's claims apart, Holmes told employees that it successfully developed hundreds of tests — even though most of the tests never completed the initial research phase. Whistleblowers were shunned or driven to suicide.

Theranos ultimately collapsed under the weight of her lies. Investors, including former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, lost their shirts. Holmes was ultimately charged and convicted of four counts of wire fraud and is now serving a lengthy sentence in federal prison.

On X, meanwhile, long-shot nonpartisan gubernatorial candidate Danielle Ford said she is "probably going to win the election."

This, I suppose, is technically possible. She is indeed a candidate for governor, just like Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Attorney General Aaron Ford, his Democratic challenger. If all else were equal and voters selected gubernatorial candidates at random, she would have as good of a shot of winning as anyone. She can win her race every bit as much as Theranos' equipment can test anything with a single drop of blood — for a frustratingly idiosyncratic definition of "can."

Polling, however, suggests otherwise. An Emerson College Polling/KLAS-TV survey of Nevada voters in September found only 2.4 percent of voters supported her, while a poll conducted by Noble Predictive Insights earlier this month suggested up to 7 percent of voters may support her. Both polls, it should be noted, have a 3.7 percent margin of error, so her true level of support is likely somewhere between those two percentages. Neither percentage is anywhere near enough to secure a plurality of the vote.

History also suggests otherwise. Nevada's last foreign-born governor, Reinhold Sadler, was also the last governor to be elected without being a Republican or a Democrat. His election, however, was in 1898. Sadler's successor, John Sparks — yes, the namesake of Reno's eastern neighbor — ran as a member of the Silver-Democratic party following the Silver Party's merger with the Democratic Party at the turn of the century. 

More recently, only one minor party or nonpartisan gubernatorial candidate has received more votes than "none of the above" — a nonbinding ballot option that seldom receives more than 5 percent of the vote — since 1994. Brandon Davis, the Libertarian gubernatorial candidate in 2022, beat "none of the above" by 53 votes; Davis and "none of the above," however, only earned 1.46 percent of the vote that year. Davis still received 5,000 fewer votes than Independent American candidate Christopher Hansen received in 2006 — Hansen's 20,019 votes were enough to secure 3.4 percent of the vote that year.

Note that neither Davis nor Hansen were nonpartisan candidates. Also note that neither candidate came remotely close to winning the election.

Her fundraising abilities, however, foreclose any realistic chance. Danielle Ford didn't receive a single campaign contribution until August — her April and July contribution and expense reports listed no donations and no campaign expenditures. Since then, her reports show that she's raised $2,200, with two of her three largest donations coming from out-of-state residents.

Though there's certainly an argument to be made about the place and role of money in politics, it's safe to say that any candidate seeking the approval of hundreds of thousands of voters is going to need to spend more than a penny per voter to earn that support. That may explain why the only mailers voters are receiving about her are from Republican political operatives who are trying to convince credulous Democrats that she's the "AOC of Nevada."

If Danielle Ford — I'm intentionally not calling her "Ford" in this column to avoid confusion with the Democratic challenger — were a political neophyte, her delusions of grandeur would be forgivable. She, however, has won two elections and is currently serving as an elected member of the State Board of Education.

Like Holmes, she knows better. It's impossible for her not to.

Speaking as someone who's been in Danielle Ford's position before — I ran an earnest if largely unsuccessful campaign for state senator as a Libertarian in 2016 — it's tempting to assume that she's merely trying to keep her team motivated. Even a decade later, I still remember the frustration I felt when I encountered people who swore they would be happy to knock doors, make phone calls, donate and otherwise support the right candidate — just as soon as they found one who would build a winning charismatic movement around the exact political and policy positions they and they alone held, all without expressing any doubt about the righteousness and inevitable success of their cause.

Look, I get it. Really, I do. Who doesn't want to be popular for being right about everything before everyone else? Please like, follow, subscribe and share this column and so on.

It's also tempting to assume that Danielle Ford, like Holmes, is merely trying to "fake it 'til she makes it." Silicon Valley's penchant for puffery and imaginative marketing was even brought up by the judge who oversaw Holmes' case. Sure, the argument goes, Holmes didn't have the technology to successfully test blood — but if she really believed she could, and if she could convince investors she could, and if they gave her enough time to try, could she have succeeded?

A jury of Holmes' peers rightly decided that she couldn't — not by lying to employees, investors, customers and the public. 

The jury's still out on Danielle Ford's fanciful gubernatorial aspirations. Voters, however, will be delivering their verdict soon.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager and an award-winning columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.