After months of anticipation, the 2026 race for Nevada governor came into focus on Monday, with the favorite for the Democratic nomination making his campaign official as he seeks to take down the Republican incumbent.
The race, one of the most prominent in the country next year in a critical battleground state, is heating up. In addition to the parties’ headliners, an unlikely challenger is already mounting a surprising bid. And a former governor may yet attempt a comeback.
The flurry of activity is all part of a growing effort among Democrats to take down one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents: Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is running for re-election in a swing state that has not hesitated to oust its sitting officeholders in recent years.
Mr. Lombardo, the former sheriff of Clark County, home to Las Vegas, will nevertheless be tough to defeat. He has cultivated a reputation as a relatively moderate Republican focused on policy while avoiding much of the flamethrowing partisanship that has characterized G.O.P. politics in the Trump era.
Democrats’ best shot is likely to be Aaron Ford, the state attorney general who announced his entrance into the Democratic primary on Monday after signaling his intention to run for months. Mr. Ford is widely viewed as the favorite to win the nomination, though he will have company in the primary next June.
Mr. Ford, 53, would be Nevada’s first Black governor as Democrats strain to regain the trust of minority voters who voted for President Trump last year. Among working-class voters, Mr. Ford’s blue-collar background could be an asset.
A former public-school teacher, he speaks often about growing up poor in Dallas, where his family sometimes assembled dinner from stale candy bars discarded from the Safeway that employed his father. He attended Texas A&M University through the federal Upward Bound program for low-income students, and became a single father in his early 20s, relying on welfare and public housing to support himself and his son.
In an interview, Mr. Ford suggested that his experiences helped him understand everyday Nevadans, and that his policies would contrast with those of Mr. Trump and Mr. Lombardo, which he said favored the wealthy.
Mr. Ford pointed to Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, which could cause more than 100,000 people in Nevada to lose Medicaid coverage, and Mr. Lombardo’s veto of bills like one that would have provided meals to students. (Mr. Lombardo has said criticism of that veto is unfair because many students are already eligible for free food.)
“My experiences resonate with Nevadans more so than the policies that Joe Lombardo is advocating,” Mr. Ford said, suggesting, for instance, that his time teaching math in Texas had showed him firsthand the consequences when children do not get enough to eat. “We’re sliding backward under his leadership.”
Mr. Ford, who before being elected attorney general in 2018 served five years in the Nevada Senate, is not guaranteed a shot at Mr. Lombardo. He waited more than six months after indicating an interest in the governor’s race to jump in formally, and any hopes to clear the Democratic field were dashed last week when Alexis Hill, the chair of the Washoe County Commission in northern Nevada, announced her candidacy.
Other candidates could run, too, including former Gov. Steve Sisolak, who lost re-election in 2022 to Mr. Lombardo. Mr. Sisolak told The New York Times in April that he was considering another bid for governor.
The Republican side is cheering on a contested Democratic primary. “Aaron Ford wanted a coronation,” John Burke, a spokesman for the super PAC allied with Mr. Lombardo, said in a statement last week. “Instead, he’s going to have to fight it out with Alexis Hill — and possibly others — to win over his party’s faithful as both of them try to out-radical one another.”
Ms. Hill has worked in local government in northern Nevada for more than a decade, focusing on the same issues she says are driving her statewide run: affordability, housing and homelessness. In an interview, she said she was running because she was fed up with what she viewed as a lack of progress from state leaders on those issues.
“I feel that folks who have been in Carson City doing this work have had a lot of opportunities to make these changes, and so I’m kind of sick of waiting, honestly,” she said, referring to Nevada’s capital.
Ms. Hill could struggle mightily with little name recognition outside her part of the state. But if Mr. Sisolak runs again, his prominence and long list of potential allies and donors will instantly threaten Mr. Ford’s candidacy.
Mr. Sisolak may well pass on a run. “I am still waiting and watching how things play out,” he said in a statement.
“Ford is still in the best position to secure the Democratic nomination,” said Mike Noble, a pollster who surveys races in the Southwest. But beating Mr. Lombardo, he added, was no sure thing, pointing to relatively strong job approval and favorability ratings for the governor.
Mr. Lombardo also has a sizable financial advantage, with $5.5 million on hand at the beginning of the year, according to his most recent financial filings. Mr. Ford, who has been hamstrung by a state-mandated fund-raising blackout period for most of the year, had $440,000.
A senior adviser to the Ford campaign said that it expected to close the funding gap significantly now that Mr. Ford is in the race, but predicted that it would be outspent next year.
Still, Mr. Lombardo, who rode a backlash to pandemic lockdowns into office in 2022, now faces a referendum of his own as his party and Mr. Trump grow increasingly unpopular with voters.
At times, Mr. Lombardo has worked with Democrats, including on protecting abortion rights, but he has also shattered veto records to block Democratic-led bills. (Democrats control both chambers of the Nevada Legislature.) Democrats argue that he has stalled progress on priorities like protections for renters and paid family leave.
In a statement, Joe Weaver, a spokesman for Mr. Lombardo, said the governor had delivered results by “expanding school choice, restoring accountability to public education and tackling the housing crisis with the most ambitious bipartisan reforms our state has seen in a generation.”
Perhaps most alarming for the governor’s re-election chances is Nevada’s stubbornly sluggish economy. The state has the nation’s highest unemployment rate.
Mr. Lombardo will need to appeal to independents while maintaining support among the Trump-friendly base that flipped Nevada red last November, a tricky balancing act that his critics think has eroded his persona as an even-keeled moderate.
The governor cheered the “no tax on tips” provision of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill, while remaining mostly silent on the rest of it. He drew condemnation by suggesting that people “maybe need to feel a little pain in the short term” from Mr. Trump’s tariffs in exchange for potential long-term economic benefits.
“Comments around, ‘Hey, Nevadans need to feel the pain of tariffs and those kinds of things,’ we want something different from that,” said Angie Taylor, a Democratic state senator who has endorsed Mr. Ford.
Mr. Ford has also earned the endorsement of Nevada’s senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both Democrats. He said his campaign would visit traditionally Republican areas in rural Nevada, and would emphasize bipartisan actions like his support for charter schools and his efforts to combat the fentanyl crisis.
“I’ve always operated under the premise that you take no one for granted and you talk to everyone,” he said. “I don’t believe anybody has a monopoly on good ideas.”
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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