Nevada’s attorney general, Aaron Ford, reclaimed the governor’s office in Nevada for Democrats, according to The Associated Press, giving his party new momentum in a swing state that had voted for President Trump in 2024.
Mr. Ford defeated the incumbent governor, Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in one of the nation’s tightest races.
Mr. Ford, who will be Nevada’s first Black governor, jumped into the race in mid-2025. He spent the entire campaign emphasizing rising costs and tying the sitting governor to the president’s least popular policies, blasting the “Lombardo-Trump economy” at every turn.
His dual focus on affordability and Mr. Trump will likely be seen as a playbook for Democrats looking to win purple states, and Mr. Ford’s allies hope that his success this year will set up the party for a pivotal presidential contest.
Mr. Lombardo, a relatively moderate former sheriff, had for months been favored to prevail. But as Mr. Trump’s waning popularity dragged down Republicans across the country in polling, analysts declared the Nevada race a tossup.
To hang on, Mr. Lombardo had aimed for a delicate balance, praising some of Mr. Trump’s policies without fully embracing the MAGA right. He attacked Mr. Ford as too liberal, comparing his policy goals to socialism, and accused him of politicizing his lawsuits on behalf of the state.
And Mr. Lombardo had tried to convince voters that his administration had made inroads in diversifying the state’s economy, curbing unemployment and securing new funding for schools.
But most Nevada voters were deeply unhappy with the status quo. They said they were struggling with housing prices and expensive gas, while unwanted data centers proliferated. In Las Vegas, a slowdown in tourism had generated a wave of negative headlines, and the powerful Culinary Union christened the period the “Trump slump.”
Mr. Ford leaned into his working-class upbringing, describing a childhood pocked with hunger and his role as a young single father reliant on social services to get by.
“This isn’t just a theme for me, y’all, it’s my life,” Mr. Ford told a crowded church in Las Vegas a few weeks before the election as he discussed his focus on affordability.
Mr. Ford, who is fluent in Spanish, also prioritized reaching out to Latino voters, who make up about 20 percent of Nevada’s electorate and helped Mr. Trump win the state in 2024.
During the campaign, Mr. Ford has pledged to repeal Nevada’s longstanding “right to work” law, which weakens organized labor by allowing workers to opt out of unions at unionized workplaces. He also railed against corporate homeownership and vowed to cancel millions of dollars in medical debt for the state’s lowest-income residents.
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