Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak speaks during the Silver State Equality Awards at the MGM Conference Center Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022.
Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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No one can argue that the past 2 1/2 years were easy. COVID-19 was devastating to individuals, families and businesses alike. Nearly a third of the state — 850,000 people — contracted the virus. Almost 12,000 of our friends, neighbors and family members are no longer here to share upcoming holiday festivities.
Yet good leadership is not measured by how leaders behave in times of triumph, predictability or abundance. Leadership is best measured in times of anxiety, scarcity and fear. Good leadership is not just about doing what people want or what makes them comfortable, it’s about making the difficult and uncomfortable choices that are good for your community, even if it’s politically harmful.
Gov. Steve Sisolak could have governed differently during the past 2 1/2 years. He could have done what was best for himself politically. He could have remained comfortable and scored political points.
Instead, he rose to the occasion and did what was right, saving an estimated 30,000 Nevadan lives in the process.
More impressively, he took a set of circumstances that could have brought a tourism-based economy like Nevada’s to its knees, and he kept us moving forward. Slowly. Cautiously. But always forward.
The result is that Nevada is now enjoying one of the fastest pandemic recoveries of any state in the country.
It’s telling that his political opponents have so little to criticize him for that they have been forced to invent scandal. They’ve lobbed a false narrative at him claiming the Governor’s Office engaged in corruption and cronyism by approving a COVID-lab testing company that was already approved to operate in 43 other states. Its even more telling they’re basing the accusations on a useless sample that represents less than one-tenth of 1% of all tests performed by the company.Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s decision to center his entire campaign on the alleged scandal wreaks of desperation over the fact that he has so little else to criticize about the governor.
Of course, the truth is that the first Democrat elected governor of Nevada in more than 20 years surpassed all expectations of how to effectively manage a sudden and terrible pandemic situation in a state where the Legislature only meets every two years and has no ability to borrow emergency funds.
He fulfilled almost every one of his big-ticket campaign promises, including expanding grant and assistance programs for small-business owners, increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for the thousands of Nevadans seeking health care, and redesigning the school funding formula to increase per-pupil funding and more equally distribute money across the state without raising taxes. And we believe he’s just getting started.
Despite these successes, the unprecedented nature of the pandemic prevented Sisolak from achieving two of his most ambitious goals as governor: restoring Nevada’s broken education system and diversifying the economy.
In our endorsement interview, Sisolak recognized that with the rapid growth in population and cost of living in cities like Las Vegas and Reno, rural and low-income communities in Nevada are being left behind. They need better access to technology, health care and educational opportunities.
Those same resources would help transform rural education, giving kids access to the modern tools, training and expertise they need for success in the modern world. Sisolak has a plan to meet these needs.
“A lot of kids just want a chance,” he said.
Sisolak also shared his belief that four-year college is not valuable or beneficial to everyone while recognizing that education and job training are gateways to future financial security. So he outlined plans for expanding trade school and apprenticeship opportunities to benefit those Nevadans for whom higher education is out of reach or of little interest. By promoting apprenticeships and trade schools, Sisolak said he hopes to give more Nevadans the opportunity to “earn while they learn.”
With a modern education system in place, Sisolak believes Nevada’s economy will rapidly expand into high-tech sectors like health care, energy, engineering, and film and television.
“Education is a primary reason business doesn’t want to move here,” Sisolak said.
We agree, and we believe Sisolak is the man to reverse that.
However, if Sisolak’s vision for a better Nevada doesn’t convince you, the threat to Nevada’s future posed by his opponent should.
We’ve called for Lombardo’s resignation as sheriff multiple times in the past year — not because of his politics but because he is a habitual liar who will say or do anything to gain power.
We recognize that our assertion is harsh and unforgiving, but it is also the truth.
While all successful politicians are opportunists to some extent, Lombardo has crossed lines once thought unimaginable — abusing the memories of victims of the Oct. 1 Route 91 Harvest music festival massacre and ignoring them and their families’ suffering for the sake of political expediency.
In the aftermath of the shooting, with family and friends of the victims focused on him, Lombardo pledged to support commonsense gun control such as universal background checks and restrictions on high-capacity magazines. Later, after announcing he would seek the Republican Party nomination for governor, he recognized that his promise to those families and to our community would cost him the party nomination. Rather than being a person of conviction, Lombardo changed his tune and became a gun-rights absolutist.
His campaign website now proudly declares that he supports unregistered, unidentifiable, untraceable ghost guns — the weapon of choice for repeat offenders looking to evade mandatory background checks.
Lombardo has also been complicit in undermining our elections. If he believes there is evidence to support a claim of mass election fraud in Clark County, then he has a responsibility to investigate — he is the sheriff, after all — which he has not done. If he does not believe there is evidence, then he has a moral and ethical obligation to stop perpetuating the big lie. His silence tells us all we need to know about his character.
As corrupt as his character is, his policies are even worse.
He wants to gut public schools so he no longer has to be responsible for them.
He says he will “always govern as a pro-life governor” — meaning that even if women retain the legal right to seek an abortion in Nevada, he would use regulations and funding restrictions to put as many women’s health clinics out of business as possible.
And when it comes to addressing Nevada’s looming water crisis, his plan is to do absolutely nothing, saying “many people in rural Nevada have water rights for the purpose of ranching and farming, and it is essential to keep those water rights as is.”
Nevadans should not trust the state’s highest executive office — a position with the authority to veto laws, prepare the budget, grant pardons and command the state’s national guard — to a political coward who wouldn’t even respond to our invitation to participate in an endorsement interview. This is especially true when a proven leader like Sisolak wants to continue in a role he has already succeeded in.
The differences are stark.
Sisolak has a demonstrated track record of moving the state forward and can clearly articulate a detailed and realistic vision for continuing that progress.
Lombardo, on the other hand, wants to magically make our communities safe by letting criminals assemble untraceable guns, overcome drought by hoping for the best, fix schools and bring high-tech businesses to Nevada by sending taxpayer dollars to private religious institutions that may or may not teach science, and prevent the next Oct. 1 massacre by offering “thoughts and prayers” while waiting for a barrage of gunfire to rain down on innocent Nevadans.
Lombardo is a threat to Nevada’s future. He must be rejected. We want to see more from Sisolak, to be sure, but we also recognize the tsunami of COVID-stalled progress on many fronts. In any event, Sisolak is an honest, thoughtful, realistic and forward-thinking leader who has helped Nevada rapidly return to prosperity in the aftermath of the pandemic. We endorse Steve Sisolak without reservation and hope you will join us in supporting him.
