2026Election Stories

The campaign for Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford announced $363,000 in first-quarter fundraising Tuesday, an amount that lifts his campaign war chest to more than $750,000 through the first three months of the midterm election cycle.

In the months after securing her second term in Congress last year, Democratic Rep. Susie Lee's campaign announced more than $600,000 in first-quarter fundraising Monday, raising her cash on hand to nearly $500,000.

With nearly a quarter of the Legislature holding legal day jobs or with a J.D. on their wall, it comes as little surprise that law firms, legal groups and lawyers contributed more than $607,000 to legislative campaigns last cycle.

Members of the central committee voted to approve the censure on a 126-112 vote on Saturday during the party's spring meeting in Carson City, sources told The Nevada Independent. The censure also banned Cegavske from party membership, endorsements or resources for "the intense dishonor her failures brought upon the Nevada Republican Party."

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) raised $2.3 million in the first quarter of the year, a Nevada record for federal office this early in the campaign cycle, leaving her re-election campaign with $4.66 million in cash on hand, her campaign will announce later Friday.

Members of the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee voted along party-lines to approve AB126 on Thursday, the bill from Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson to end Nevada's presidential caucus and replace it with a primary election that would leapfrog other states to the front of the nominating calendar.

The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday morning in a months-long case over an exceptionally close Clark County Commission race, with lawyers arguing whether discrepancies in the voting process met the definition of an election being "prevented."

On the heels of a transition to automatic voter registration (AVR) at the DMV and same-day voter registration, lawmakers are considering bills that proponents say further streamline civic participation and bring more Nevadans into the process.

Lee made the announcement during an appearance on Fox and Friends early Tuesday, saying the state Democratic Party's recent leadership takeover by members of the Democratic Socialists of America had convinced him to finally switch political parties.

Amid the most dire threat to casino profits in the history of the Las Vegas Strip, a gaming industry hobbled by the COVID-19 pandemic still gave more than $769,000 to 52 state lawmakers over the course of the 2020 campaign cycle.

The fight over how Nevada conducts elections may have subsided since last year's election but roared back in full view on Thursday, as state lawmakers held hearings on two measures that drew partisan battle lines and could have a profound effect on election cycles in the state.

Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson (D-Las Vegas) on Monday appointed three lawmakers — Democrats Steve Yeager and Sandra Jauregui and Republican Tom Roberts — to serve on an election contest committee to review a complaint submitted by former Republican Assembly candidate Cheryl Arrington. She lost her bid for an Assembly seat to current office-holder Elaine Marzola (D-Las Vegas) by 1,197 votes, or four percentage points.

Amid a pandemic year that stalled the Las Vegas economy and severely tested the bottom lines of businesses small and large, chambers of commerce and other business interests gave 61 of 63 Nevada lawmakers more than $840,000 in the 2020 election cycle.

Of more than $10.6 million spent on Nevada legislative races in the 2020 cycle, no single group of donors, corporate or otherwise, spent more money than candidates, politicians and political PACs, which combined for more than $1.7 million spread across 61 of the state's 63 lawmakers.

The bill is the the fulfilment of a promise that Frierson made earlier in the session to make the state's pandemic-induced change to mail balloting in the 2020 election permanent, but is also likely to draw staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers who have denounced the expansion of mail voting and have introduced many of their own election-related proposals.

A log obtained by The Nevada Independent through a public records request shows there were 298 election integrity case files submitted to the secretary of state's office from the beginning of September through Tuesday. It does not characterize the complexity of any individual case — such as whether a complainant suggested a single improper vote or submitted a spreadsheet alleging thousands of suspicious votes — or offer names of complainants or the accused.

Health care companies and insurers were among the biggest spenders of the 2020 campaign cycle, shelling out more than $1 million on legislative campaigns over the two year period.

The secretary of state's office wants to transition from a county-led to a state-led top-down voter registration system that could speed up the time-consuming process of verifying that people who take advantage of a new same-day voter registration law haven't already voted in the same election.

As in most election years, no single group of political donors was a bigger booster for legislative Democrats than labor unions, which shelled out more than $1 million on legislative campaigns in 2020, of which roughly 94 percent went to Democrats.

Gov. Steve Sisolak's Home Means Nevada political action committee raised more than $830,000 in the last three months of last year, including $500,000 from Nevada Gold Mines — a joint venture between mining giants Barrick and Newmont — and another $260,000 from the pharmaceutical lobbying group PhRMA, according to campaign finance documents filed Wednesday.