2026Nevada Voter Guide

The board is composed of 13 elected regents who set policies and approve budgets for Nevada’s entire public system of higher education: four community colleges, one state university, two doctorate-granting research universities and one research institute. The Nevada System of Higher Education serves more than 100,000 students.

The board is also responsible for hiring the system’s chancellor and presidents for the institutions.

As in states across the country, colleges are facing pressure from a Trump administration suspicious of academia and challenges in proving the value of increasingly expensive college degrees.

The board recently faced backlash from students for voting to raise tuition and fees to address a looming budget shortfall attributed to faculty pay raises.

Two regents are running for re-election, and Regent Pete Goicoechea is running for his first full term after being appointed to the board in 2024.

The Clark County Commission is the overarching bureaucratic body that supervises county operations in the greater Las Vegas Valley. County services include overseeing airports, child protective services, marriage licensing, rental assistance, the coroner, courts, parks and more. The commission also oversees unincorporated areas such as the Las Vegas Strip, Spring Valley, Enterprise and parts of Summerlin. The board also administers the county’s roughly $10 billion budget, roughly 10,000 county employees and a population of more than 2 million people countywide.

The board has seven partisan members elected every four years and is largely Democratic — there is only one Republican county commissioner currently serving.

That Republican presence could expand depending on who wins the District F seat, which is open after Democrat Justin Jones, facing a controversy over deleted text messages surrounding a real estate development near Red Rock, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election.

Assm. Heidi Kasama (R-Las Vegas), the progressive Democrat Minja Yan and the independent Becky Harris, a former Republican state senator, will face off in the general election in November.

If that seat flips to Kasama, the board would have two Republican county commissioners, more than it’s had in more than 10 years. The last Republican commissioner the county had before April Becker was elected in 2024 was the long-serving Bruce Woodbury, who retired in 2009.

However, if elected, both Harris and Yan could change the political makeup of the board — Yan for being a young progressive, and Harris for being an independent candidate.

Clark County is tackling new issues after tourism declined in 2025 — and the region aims to diversify through sports, entertainment and new development. The board determines how the county’s budget is allocated and what sort of projects are being approved.

The Clark County School Board is made up of 11 members, seven of whom are elected by voters. The board oversees the state’s largest school district with under 300,000 students. They make budget and policy decisions, including approving pay increases for staff and school consolidations, and are responsible for hiring and managing the superintendent, but do not handle day-to-day operations inside of schools.

The district is facing a precipitous enrollment decline, which means less per-pupil revenue coming in. The district has already begun making decisions to address these budget constraints.

In June, the district announced it was looking to lay off as many as 60 licensed educators.

Another step the district could consider is whether to close schools that are underutilized.

There’s also more pressure for school districts to improve student performance following legislation from Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Democratic leaders including Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro that demand greater accountability from districts for student proficiency and consequences if they don’t meet standards. All three incumbents are running for re-election.

The mayor is considered one of the five voting members of the North Las Vegas City Council, which sets a budget, funds a police department and oversees a staff of 500 employees in the city of nearly 300,000 people.

Longtime Councilmember Scott Black is up again against Nevada State Democratic Party Chair Assm. Daniele Monroe-Moreno in the run for North Las Vegas mayor. Monroe-Moreno got a higher percentage of the vote in the Democratic primary, though both will go on to the general election in November.

North Las Vegas is growing fast, and is looking to bring new development to the region. With the construction of new industrial parks in North Las Vegas on the outskirts of the city, the freeing up public lands is also a question of concern. Mayoral candidates have discussed how to navigate the new growth and ensure that it is sustainable.