Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) is running for attorney general, telling The Nevada Independent before her scheduled Tuesday announcement that she’s focused on public safety, protecting Nevadans’ rights and fighting for a better economy.

Cannizzaro, the first female majority leader of the state Senate, is in her third term as state senator after being elected in 2016. She most recently won re-election in 2024.

A former prosecutor who litigated cases and worked almost 11 years at the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, Cannizzaro said serving as attorney general would be an extension of her career and legislative experience to fight against federal overreach.

“It's essential to have an attorney general who isn't afraid of taking on the federal government and, of course, brings that legal and courtroom experience to the table,” she said.

Official candidate filing opens next year, but Cannizzaro is the second major Democratic candidate to enter the race for the open seat, as incumbent Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, is in his final term. 

Treasurer Zach Conine, a Democrat, announced his intentions to run for the office in May — setting up a relatively rare high-profile primary between the two Democrats. 

The attorney general is an elected statewide position representing the people of the state in civil and criminal matters before trial and appellate courts in Nevada and the United States. The office also provides legal advice to state agencies and officers through numerous “deputy attorneys general” with specialized expertise, and can help county, local or national law enforcement agencies in investigations or court cases in areas such as consumer protection, Medicaid and insurance fraud. 

Cannizzaro said what differentiates her from other candidates is that she’s the only one who has ever tried a criminal case and has law enforcement experience.

“I've taken on some of the toughest cases [as a prosecutor], homicide, sexual assault, fraud, racketeering, and served as a chief deputy in the gang unit, also earning multiple awards for that work, including taking down a major identity theft ring,” she said.

Cannizzaro earned her law degree in 2010 from UNLV’s Boyd School of Law and passed the bar that same year. She currently works for a personal injury law firm and has three children — one of whom was born during the 2023 legislative session — with her husband, Nate Ring, a labor attorney based in Las Vegas.

After stints at a small insurance defense firm and a commercial civil litigation firm, Cannizzaro joined the Clark County District Attorney’s Office. She did criminal appellate work as a law clerk, before moving into the juvenile division, serving as a deputy district attorney in the criminal division and eventually moving to private practice in 2022.

During her time in the Legislature, Cannizzaro sponsored and passed legislation to ban the possession, production or distribution of artificial intelligence-generated child pornography (SB263), extend the property tax used to employ police officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (SB451), establish a public health care insurance option (SB420) and protected those seeking legal abortion in Nevada from prosecution, regardless of other states’ policies (SB131). 

She also worked across the aisle with Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo to pass a major education accountability bill (SB460), establishing a system to track school district performance and new interventions for underperforming schools and districts. The bill also included $21 billion in funding for pre-K programming and facilities across the biennium.

Cannizzaro survived a recall effort led by Republicans in 2017 and helped pass the largest K-12 budget increase in state history in 2023. In the 2025 legislative session, Lombardo vetoed a measure she pushed forward that would have codified the right to in vitro fertilization and protected providers of the treatment from criminal or civil liability. 

Cannizzaro's launch is accompanied by endorsements from the politically powerful American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 4041, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Locals 396 and 1245, Operating Engineers Local 12, and the Professional Fire Fighters of Nevada.

Born and raised in Nevada with parents who were a waitress and a bartender, Cannizzaro said her parents taught her early the importance of education and giving back to her community. She said she also wants to help Nevadans have the same opportunities she did and expand those opportunities, including for her three children. 

As a young kid, she spent afternoons at the Gourmet Cafe near the Las Vegas courthouse where her mom worked as a waitress, watching attorneys in suits going out to lunch — something that was utterly unfamiliar.

When she told her mom that she wanted to be an attorney, her mom said she had to work hard and go to school. A Millennium Scholarship helped pay for a majority of her tuition costs at UNR, and she became the first member of her family to graduate from college, later attending and graduating from UNLV’s Boyd School of Law.

“I was given a lot of chances to succeed that just would not ordinarily exist for a kid whose parents didn't have a high school education,” Cannizzaro said. “When it came to my entry into political life, for me, this job has been so much more about how are we creating a state and a place where families can get ahead because that's exactly what this state gave to me.”