NV-SEN: The 2026 race for lieutenant governor is all about 2028 (if it's about anything at all)

If the lieutenant governor is a Democrat in 2028, far and away the most consequential impact of a successful Lombardo U.S. Senate campaign would be the swearing in of a Democratic governor just in time for the 2029 legislative session — in a state where the Legislature will also likely be controlled by Democrats.

In other words, a Democratic lieutenant governor would effectively block a Lombardo U.S. Senate campaign. And Cortez Masto would face whoever else Nevada Republican voters might pick from their perennially shallow pool of weak candidates for federal office.

The scenario isn’t entirely unfamiliar to Nevada voters. In 2014, then-Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat, feared popular then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, would easily win reelection and then run against Reid for Senate two years later in 2016. Democrats failed to even put up a serious challenger to Sandoval. Reid instead directed his oft-ballyhooed Nevada Democratic “Reid machine” to focus on the race for lieutenant governor. If Democrats won that, Sandoval would be lashed to the governor’s job, because if he ran for Senate and won, a Democrat would become governor.

It all turned out to be moot. The Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Reid picked lost in that 2014 general election. And Sandoval, who had never indicated any interest in moving to Washington, did not run for U.S. Senate in 2016, even though Reid ultimately decided not to seek reelection. As a practical matter to Nevada households, the race for lieutenant governor in 2014 turned out to be the same as virtually every other race for lieutenant governor: irrelevant.


https://nevadacurrent.com/2026/04/03/the-2026-race-for-lieutenant-governor-is-all-about-2028-if-its-about-anything-at-all/