Nevada Current: Unlike his constituents, Lombardo’s campaign won’t be struggling to make ends meet

“Not only will President Trump bring down the rising costs of housing, groceries and gas, but he will oversee a new era of American prosperity,” Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo posted on social media the day after Trump’s election in 2024.

“I’m proud to support him,” Lombardo added.

And yet when the president of the United States was in Las Vegas last week for the first time in fifteen months, Lombardo was nowhere to be seen. 

That’s not to say the governor ignored Trump’s presence.

“I look forward to meeting with President Trump during his visit,” Lombardo posted on X a few minutes before Trump walked into the Lombardoless event in Las Vegas.

So while Lombardo didn’t attend Trump’s April 16 event, instead leaving Trump to endure it while sitting next to an obscure figure with a part-time job, the governor was still eager to meet with the president privately.

Maybe Trump gave him an update on how that “bring down the rising costs” thing is going.

Unless they didn’t meet at all.

Asked via emails Wednesday and Thursday if Lombardo met with the president while Trump was in Nevada last week, and if so, where, when, what was discussed, and what were/are the tangible or noteworthy results of that conversation, spokespersons both in the governor’s office and for his reelection campaign did not respond. Nor did the White House press office respond when asked to confirm whether Trump and Lombardo met.

The fate of their tête-à-tête notwithstanding, Lombardo in his X post expressed the “hope” that he and Trump would “continue our discussions on lowering costs for Nevada families.”

Those costs would be reduced, Lombardo added in the post, by “releasing more federal land for attainable housing, advancing critical solar projects, and restoring the full gaming loss deduction.”

Their merits or lack thereof notwithstanding, those priorities do little or nothing to immediately confront the affordability crisis crushing Lombardo’s constituents now. And thanks to Trump’s war, the crisis could worsen and broaden by the general election, and beyond.

When it comes to what is by far the most pressing issue of the 2026 election, Trump’s bungling and blundering has left Lombardo in the lurch. What’s an incumbent Republican governor to do?

Scraps and dregs

Lombardo is among the Trump apologists taking pains to cast more blame on California than on Trump for Nevada’s high gas prices. It is true that Nevada is captive to the West Coast gasoline market, in which the price of gas tends to be roughly 20% higher than the rest of the country, in part because of California’s anti-pollution policies.

But gas prices have spiked nationwide. California isn’t responsible for that. Trump’s helter-skelter omnishambles of a war is. And that’s what’s responsible for the latest gas price spikes in Nevada as well.

Unfortunately for Lombardo and other Nevada Republicans in competitive races, by about a two to one margin, voters blame Trump for high gas prices. Trump has caused the largest energy shock in history (empowering Iran in the process). Only the most hardline MAGA faithful believe prices at the pump are Gavin Newsom’s fault. And those diehards do not constitute an electoral majority. At least not statewide.

Lombardo is also crowing about recently revised employment reports showing Nevada had the nation’s highest job growth rate in February 2026 compared to February 2025.

There was job growth in only two states over that period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The other state was California. Lombardo and Newsom — they’re like two peas in a pod.)

Employment decreased in two states and the District of Columbia. And employment “was essentially unchanged in 46 states,” the BLS reported.

In other words, given the lethargic labor market during Trump’s second term, having the fastest job growth in the nation is like being the tallest building in Searchlight. 

Also, a job growth stat is sort of like GDP: People can’t eat it.

And Nevada continues to have among the nation’s highest unemployment rate, fourth behind Delaware, California (yet more Lombardo-Newsom symmetry), and the Musk-ravaged District of Columbia.

Another item that might charitably be assigned to Lombardo’s affordability agenda, if you squint, is his “no new taxes” pledge. It’s a golden oldie, but does nothing to alleviate already existing financial pressures on Nevada households. Given the electorate’s mood, a more popular move might be a proposal to give people a break by cutting Nevada’s really rather high rate on sales taxes (the state’s biggest single source of tax revenue) and compensating for the lost revenue by raising a tax, such as Nevada’s tiniest in the nation gaming tax.

But however popular that might be with Southern Nevada voters who pay more than 8% extra when they buy a used car, a shirt, or a sandwich for lunch, shifting the state’s tax burden from working families to the resort industry would not go down well with some of the folks who have given Lombardo’s campaign an obscene amount of money.

Which brings us to what is by far Lombardo’s greatest strength as he seeks reelection: Unlike so many of his constituents, Lombardo’s campaign won’t be laying awake at night fretting over how to make ends meet. 

Lombardo’s campaign will be spending money in a Nevada governor’s race at a pace — to borrow Trump’s ubiquitous verbal tic — like nobody’s ever seen before. By far the overwhelming majority of it will be dedicated not to any cohesive let alone consequential plan addressing affordability, or any other actual policy, for that matter. Instead, it will be spent to portray Lombardo’s opponent, whoever it is, as history’s greatest monster. 

And it might work.

Lombardo has to hope so. Because affordability, or so pollsters tell us, is the issue voters care about most this election year. And Trump has violently ripped the issue out from under Lombardo’s campaign.