Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and Attorney General Aaron Ford won their parties' nominations for governor on Tuesday, locking in a general-election matchup that both national parties expect to be among the most competitive — and expensive — governor's races of the 2026 cycle.
Lombardo, the former Clark County sheriff seeking a second term, brushed aside several low-profile challengers in the Republican primary, taking 91.4 percent of the vote with 102,021 votes in early returns. Ford won roughly two-thirds of the Democratic vote, defeating a Washoe County commissioner to become the first Black nominee for governor in the state's history to head a major-party ticket into November.
The fall contest carries outsized national stakes. Lombardo won his first term in 2022 by less than 2 percentage points in a state decided at the margins in every recent cycle, and Democrats have made him a top target as they try to claw back governorships ahead of the next presidential map-drawing fights.
Ford enters the general election with statewide name recognition from two terms as attorney general and a record built on consumer-protection and housing litigation. Lombardo will run on a first term defined by tax restraint, school-choice expansion and post-pandemic economic recovery in a state still heavily dependent on tourism and gaming.
Both campaigns pivoted to the general election within hours of the race calls, and the contours of the fight were immediately visible: Ford tied Lombardo to national Republicans and rising costs for working families, while Lombardo cast Ford as a partisan litigator out of step with a state that split its ticket repeatedly over the past decade. Election Day is November 3.