Joe Lombardo cruises past six GOP challengers to secure Nevada Republican gubernatorial nomination
Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo cleared his first hurdle Tuesday night, capturing the Republican nomination for a second term and positioning himself for a general election fight that both parties are already treating as one of the marquee battles of the 2026 midterm cycle.
Lombardo, a former Clark County sheriff, entered the GOP primary as the clear frontrunner and ultimately dispatched six lesser-known challengers to lock down his party's nomination. With the win, he now waits to learn which Democrat will face him in November.
On the Democratic side, voters were choosing between two prominent candidates: state Attorney General Aaron Ford and Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill. Their primary was also held Tuesday, though results were not yet final at the time of the gubernatorial primary call.
Lombardo first won the governorship in 2022, when he defeated Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak. That victory made him the only Republican in the country that year to oust a sitting Democratic governor, and it gave the GOP control of the executive branch in a perennial swing state. Two years later, Democrats are eager to take the mansion back.
Lombardo's path through the primary was, in the end, a routine one. His six challengers were mostly political newcomers or figures with limited name recognition. They included Donald Beaudry Jr., a financial engineer and hedge fund manager who founded an artificial intelligence company and campaigned on his private-sector background; Irina Hansen, a realtor and small-business owner who previously ran for mayor of Las Vegas and ran as an outsider; Matthew Winterhawk, a businessman and nonprofit founder who also pitched himself as an alternative to the political establishment; Kameron Hawkins, a Navy veteran, publisher and conservative activist who previously sought the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2022; Jose Zelaya, a real estate investor who also ran in the 2022 GOP primary and kept a low profile this cycle; and Barak Zilberberg.
None of the challengers mounted a serious threat to the incumbent, and the race was never considered competitive by most political observers.
What happens next, however, is shaping up to be anything but routine.
Nevada sits squarely in the small group of states that decide close presidential elections, and the 2026 governor's race has taken on added weight because no U.S. Senate contest is on the ballot this year. That has made the gubernatorial campaign the state's marquee political event and, by most accounts, the primary engine of campaign advertising spending in Nevada for the cycle.
Both national parties are paying close attention. The winner of the governorship will not only hold sway over state policy in Nevada but is also expected to gain national prominence heading into the 2028 presidential election, when the state's six electoral votes will once again be up for grabs. Whoever sits in the governor's office will play a role in shaping each party's political organization and strategy in a state that has flirted with both parties in recent cycles.
Beyond the governor's race, Nevada voters on Tuesday also cast ballots in primaries for U.S. House seats and a range of state offices. In Henderson, the state's second-largest city, voters were also choosing a mayor.
But the focus from here through the fall will be on the top of the ticket. Lombardo now has several months to prepare for a general election that he enters as a target for a Democratic Party looking to prove it can win back the ground it lost four years ago — and to demonstrate that his 2022 victory was the beginning of a durable Republican foothold rather than a one-cycle fluke.
Results from the Democratic primary were expected later Tuesday night, setting the stage for what both parties expect to be a hard-fought, expensive, and closely watched race through the summer and fall.