Why a Nevada congressional candidate is pro-Yucca Mountain 

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In today's edition: Congressional candidate Cody Whipple (R-NV) explains why he is "pro-Yucca Mountain." Plus: What you need to know about Gov. Joe Lombardo's second term plans and data centers are the latest ammo in the ad wars.

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Is Yucca Mountain still a third rail in Nevada politics? 

For nearly 40 years, the U.S. government has considered just one place for permanently burying radioactive waste: Yucca Mountain, a ridge 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Opponents had concerns about the project, many of them around transporting radioactive material to the site.

Thanks to staunch opposition from Nevada lawmakers — including the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and former Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) — Yucca Mountain has never come to fruition. This year, President Donald Trump's administration took steps to move past it, while Nevada's senators introduced a bill that would repeal the law that made Yucca Mountain a nuclear repository in the first place.

But one congressional candidate wants to put Yucca Mountain back on the table. 

According to audio from an August campaign event obtained exclusively by The Indy, rancher and small-business owner Cody Whipple (R) said, "As far as Congressional District 4 … Nye County, Lincoln County, we've all been pro-Yucca Mountain for a very long time. I think what happened to the state of Nevada is when they tagged it a 'dump' and 'not great science,' we really lost out on an opportunity. I mean, right now, Tennessee and Utah are begging the nuclear industry to bring that to them."

Indeed, Nye County, which contains Yucca Mountain, has supported the project. This year, five other states, all led by Republican governors, told the U.S. Department of Energy that they would accept nuclear waste in exchange for help growing nuclear energy and creating jobs. 

Asked by The Indy if he is pro-storing waste at Yucca Mountain, Whipple said, "No, I'm for recycling." 

Whipple reiterated the idea that Yucca Mountain has a messaging problem, noting improvements in nuclear reprocessing technology. In his view, bringing spent fuel rods to Yucca Mountain would be safer than the status quo, in which they are stored at the surface next to power plants, creating easy targets for terrorists. 

"Can there be disasters?" Whipple asked. "Of course. … But those are a long time ago, and everybody's learned from them."

His calculation that the opportunity at Yucca Mountain is worth the risks is particularly resonant because his father was a Downwinder who died of cancer at 38. Do Nevadans agree? In 2007, more than 3 in 4 voters opposed the project. By 2017, that number had fallen, but still represented a majority. Since then, polling on Yucca Mountain has been scarce. With Whipple on the ballot, voters can once again signal where they stand. 

Today's economy could shift their perspective. 

"Early 2000s, The Strip is booming," Whipple said. "It's not booming anymore. … We are way too dependent upon the hospitality and casino industry. … I don't want Nevada to be a dump. I want it to be the center of science."

— Mini Racker

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We've got a plan (or concepts of a plan)

Plan? Vision? Policy stances?

Whatever the correct term, Gov. Joe Lombardo's (R) campaign announced his second-term goals for housing, education, the economy, healthcare and public safety.

A few pieces of his vision jumped out to me, mostly on the economy.

As Lombardo has maintained since he first ran for office, he will not raise taxes (absolutely shocking, I know, especially given politicians' proclivity to raise taxes in Nevada). 

What's new is that Lombardo plans to "champion" an annual sales tax holiday timed around back-to-school and rewrite abatement laws to tie every incentive to guardrails and specific goals around jobs, power, water and other investments.

The plan also aims to redirect data center and other abated revenue directly to K-12 education and workforce development. The question is: How will the governor accomplish this? By definition, isn't abated revenue money the state can't collect?

When I took the question to Lombardo's campaign, it pointed me to the Governor's Office of Economic Development. A spokesperson for the agency, Carli Smith, wrote that a tax abatement does not mean a company pays nothing in taxes. 

"It generally reduces the amount of certain taxes owed while the state and local governments continue to receive tax revenue from the projects and related economic activity," she said. 

Smith noted that a company that would not otherwise locate or expand in Nevada can still generate sales tax, taxes from employees spending their wages in Nevada and taxes generated by Nevada suppliers and contractors.

So, in short, Lombardo appears to be proposing that unabated money generated by a data center while receiving abatements be allocated to K-12 education and workforce development, rather than the general fund or another funding source. His proposal doesn't specify the mechanisms on how it would achieve that.

Still no specifics, but we'll keep you posted.

— Tabitha Mueller

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What we're reading and writing

See where the candidates for Congressional District 3 and Congressional District 4 stand on the issues.

The future of suing the Trump administration emerges as a big question in the attorney general race.

The Trump administration ramps up involvement in Nevada elections with subpoenas of election officials. 

The candidates in the most swingy GOP-held legislative seat disagree on just about everything.

An ad targeting a Republican for supporting Trump? Say it ain't so!

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Indy Ad Watch: Attack of the data centers

The data center ad wars are officially upon us.

Attorney General Aaron Ford (D) released two new television advertisements Wednesday criticizing Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) on data centers and highlighting Ford's position. Ford pledged to pause new data center tax breaks when he released his data center policy Aug. 19.

The ad noted that "Joe Lombardo handed data centers $200 million in tax dollars."

The government provided more than $200 million in sales and use tax breaks for data centers under Lombardo and his predecessor, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), in fiscal years 2023 and 2024. But Lombardo did not establish the data center tax break program, which passed in 2015. Those tax breaks also specifically refer to foregone tax revenue via abatements, not cash handed over by the government.

Lombardo recently released his own data center ad, pointing to Ford's sponsorship of the original data center tax break legislation, highlighting it had no restrictions on water or power. 

Ford said in a recent IndyTalks that "the data centers of 11 years ago are not the data centers of 2026. … The dynamics have changed."

He added that his position has shifted as everyone has learned more about data centers.

Lombardo's ad claims that Ford's bipartisan data center bill took money intended for schools and gave it to data centers. The bill did give data centers a tax break, which meant schools could theoretically receive less tax revenue than they otherwise would have, but it did not literally take money already appropriated for schools and transfer it to data centers. 

With the new advertisements, Democrats' spending in the governor's race as of Friday has increased to about $1.9 million, but that's still more than $36 million behind Republican spending as of Thursday afternoon. 

A friend who was watching a baseball game recently told me that he saw the pro-Lombardo data center ad at every half-inning's commercial break. He didn't mention the Ford advertisements.

— Tabitha Mueller

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Mini Series: Flocks and drop boxes

📮 A last resort for mail voting — Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D) told The Nevada Independent that his office is researching how to partner with private companies to deliver mail ballots this fall as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to control who receives mail ballots and as whistleblower reports and anonymous leaks warn of chaos and mismanagement at the U.S. Postal Service, the federal agency that traditionally sends ballots.

• Aguilar said his office had reached out to FedEx, UPS and DHL, three of the largest mail carriers in the nation, to discuss a potential contract. He said the state would be unable to work with FedEx because the company was not unionized but said his office had received a cost quote from UPS. His office did not immediately reply to follow-up questions from The Indy about further logistics.
• It's unclear how using a private company to deliver official election mail conforms with Nevada law, which explicitly references the U.S. Postal Service in its rules around the postmarking of ballots.
  • "We're crisis managers," Aguilar said when pressed on the move. "We have to think outside the box. … We have to ensure that we give everybody the opportunity to participate in our elections." 
• Some states considered a similar move during the COVID-19 pandemic, amid concerns that new policies implemented by the first Trump administration would lead to ballot delays at the Postal Service.

🪿❌ Flock ban?— Assm. Selena La Rue Hatch (D-Reno) told The Nevada Current earlier this week that she plans to introduce a bill this session to ban automatic license plate readers, such as those from the controversial company Flock Safety. It comes shortly after the interim Judiciary Committee agreed to bring a bill adding guardrails around the technology — something La Rue Hatch contended didn't go far enough. 

🗳️ Drop box at homeless shelter removed — In the June primary, Washoe County put a ballot drop box at the entrance of the Nevada Cares Campus, a temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness. But it isn't on a list of drop box locations for the general election.

• A person with knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, said about 150 ballots were cast there, which was not enough to keep the drop box running and monitored. Some voters list the shelter as their home address, meaning that's where their ballots are mailed, and the person worried that removing the drop box could make it harder for people staying there to vote.  
• George Guthrie, a spokesperson for Washoe County, said the drop box location was intended "to improve access for a population that may face transportation or other barriers to reaching a traditional Vote Center," but that it was discontinued because of "the relatively low utilization."

👋 Friend or foe? — Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) was a "special guest" at a fundraiser for Albert Mack's political action group, Mack PAC this week. The kickoff event raised nearly $200,000, according to Mack's team. Despite the appearance, Lombardo had endorsed Mack's opponent in a recent bid to be the Republican candidate for Clark County Commission District F. Mack lost against Assm. Heidi Kasama, who won the Republican primary by more than 7 points and will be up against nonpartisan Becky Harris and the Democrat Minja Yan in November. 

• Mack's group was started following his primary election loss and is working to "win battleground races and elect strong conservative leaders across Nevada," according to an X post by the former candidate. 

— Kate Reynolds, Eric Neugeboren, Isabella Aldrete and Oona Milliken

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Looking Ahead

• Tuesday, Sept. 8, at 6 p.m. — Nevada Independent reporter Tabitha Mueller hosts a panel in Carson City with UNR professors and reporter Eric Neugeboren about how the economy is shaping this year's elections. See more info here.
• Thursday, Oct. 22  — First day of IndyFest

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A post that caught our eye: 

DHS v. nuh-VAD-uh

(Screenshot)

We'll see you next week. 

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