By the time the dust settled on the 2025 Nevada legislative session, more than 300 bills sponsored by lawmakers had reached Gov. Joe Lombardo’s desk.

The Republican governor eventually rejected more than a fifth of these bills, vetoing 68 of them while signing 243 into law.

The Nevada Independent analyzed the people behind these proposals to learn more about which lawmakers were (and weren’t) successful during the session — and which ones fell victim the most to Lombardo’s veto pen.

The number of bills signed is a helpful, but not the only, indicator to learn more about internal legislative dynamics and legislator acumen. Passing a bill goes beyond its content — it also requires approval from legislative leadership, indicating that lawmakers with high numbers of bills signed likely have strong enough relationships with the most influential lawmakers.

Democrats are one seat shy of a two-thirds supermajority in either chamber — which would allow them to overturn Lombardo’s vetoes — meaning that the governor’s decision on a bill is very likely the final one, considering it is unlikely that Republican lawmakers would choose to override his vetoes.

Democrats held a significant advantage in the number of bills passed, making up more than 80 percent of the legislator-sponsored measures that reached Lombardo’s desk. But they also made up all of the legislator-sponsored bills that Lombardo vetoed. Lombardo broke his own record for vetoes in a single session — rejecting 87 proposals, including 48 that had support from at least one Republican.

Below, we look at the legislators who had the most and least success in passing bills.

Most successful

Unsurprisingly, Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) were among the top legislators in the number of bills signed. 

As the leaders of their respective chambers, the two lawmakers have considerable sway in which bills come up for a vote, and they are also allowed more bill requests than any other lawmaker and have the ability to propose emergency measures at any time during the session.

Yeager was first among all lawmakers with 12 bills signed into law, including measures to cap monthly insulin costs under private insurance at $35 (AB555), allow restaurants to sell alcohol to go (AB375) and provide funding to hire teachers to hard-to-fill positions and raises for charter school teachers (AB398). It didn’t all go well, though — Yeager also suffered a public defeat when his bill to create a new type of payments bank (AB500) failed twice in his own chamber.

Cannizzaro, meanwhile, had 11 bills signed into law, including the comprehensive education bill (SB460) that she negotiated with Lombardo and a bill to outlaw computer-generated child pornography (SB263).

Also tied for second was Sen. Julie Pazina (D-Las Vegas), who had 11 bills become law. This included her proposal to expand residency training and postdoctoral fellowships in the state’s graduate medical education program (SB262) — which was also part of Lombardo’s original health care bill — and a measure requiring sellers to disclose the total price of tickets, including mandatory fees (SB338).

On the Republican side, Sen. John Steinbeck (R-Las Vegas) passed the most bills, a notable feat for a freshman legislator. His eight bills signed into law represent the most by a Republican lawmaker since 2019. 

He sponsored bills to expand the substances that would warrant a DUI charge (SB309) and strengthen occupational disease protections for firefighters (SB109).

In an interview, Steinbeck said he was not surprised by his success.

“I try to bring in legislation that is realistic,” he said. “I do go into it listening, cooperating and ready to negotiate.”

David Damore, a political science professor at UNLV, said that although freshman lawmakers typically pass fewer bills, Steinbeck’s history as the Clark County fire chief likely gave him a leg up.

“He understands some of the nuances of government that maybe people who have not worked in government would not,” Damore said.

The Republicans with the next highest number of bills to pass were Assembly Minority Gregory Hafen (R-Pahrump) and Assm. Gregory Koenig (R-Fallon), who each saw five of their bills become law.

Hafen sponsored a bill (AB148) to adjust the timeline for voters to receive mail ballots, as well as one to ratify an interstate licensure compact for counselors (AB163) that allows licensed counselors in other member states to practice in Nevada under certain conditions.

Koenig, meanwhile, passed bills allowing domestic violence victims to obtain free, unaltered copies of law enforcement reports (AB193) and expanding the state board of optometry (AB183).

In an interview, Koenig called himself a “realist,” and that if he were to introduce more contentious bills — such as ones on gun rights or election integrity — they would have no chance of moving forward.

“Why am I gonna waste my time and my bills on bills that have no chance?” he said. “There's loud voices and there's effective legislators, and I have wanted to be an effective legislator instead of a loud voice.”

Least successful

Two legislators passed zero bills: Sens. Carrie Buck (R-Henderson) and John Ellison (R-Elko).

All of the 20 bills that Buck introduced failed to meet the first committee passage deadline. She has not passed a bill since she was elected in 2020.

Ellison is a freshman senator who previously served in the Assembly. None of his nine bills made it to the governor’s desk — eight of them died at the first committee passage deadline, and the other — SB311, which would have imposed deadlines for alarm companies to fix defective alarm systems — failed at the second committee passage deadline after unanimously passing in the Senate.

There were 11 lawmakers who had only one bill become law.

Most bills vetoed

The biggest victim of the veto pen was Yeager, who had six of his bills die upon reaching Lombardo’s desk. This included three prominent election bills to implement voter ID (AB499), allow nonpartisans to vote in party primaries (AB597) and beef up ballot drop box access in the days before an election (AB306).

There were six Democrats who had four bills vetoed by Lombardo. He rejected four bills from Sen. Melanie Scheible (D-Las Vegas)  — including ones to prohibit discrimination in health insurance policies (SB352) and mandate greater stock disclosures for elected officials (SB414) — and Sen. Fabian Doñate (D-Las Vegas), such as his controversial bill to limit freestanding emergency rooms (SB378) and one to increase the amount of wages that can be protected from certain debt collections (SB142).

He also rejected four bills apiece brought by Sens. Dina Neal (D-North Las Vegas) and Skip Daly (D-Reno). This included Neal’s proposals to prohibit health insurers from solely using AI to deny a prior authorization request (SB128)  and shift oversight of the Nevada Equal Rights Commission  to the attorney general’s office (SB160). Daly also had bills vetoed that would have criminalized fake elector schemes (SB102) and ensured timely performance of election duties (SB100).

Assm. Sandra Jauregui (D-Las Vegas) also had four measures vetoed by Lombardo, including measures restricting gun possession near an election site (AB105) and banning semi automatic weapon ownership for people under 21 (AB245). Assm. Max Carter (D-Las Vegas) was the other lawmaker to have four bills vetoed, which included his proposals to strengthen protections for people with medical debt (AB204) and restructure the summary eviction process by requiring landlords to make the first filing in an eviction case (AB283).

Notably, Cannizzaro only had one bill vetoed by Lombardo: SB217, which would have required most private insurers and public insurers, including Medicaid, to cover in vitro fertilization treatment.