With early voting in Nevada’s governor’s race beginning Oct. 17, Attorney General Aaron Ford is spending September on a coast-to-coast fundraising tour—New Orleans, New York, Dallas, and Charleston—instead of delivering a closing argument at home against Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.
Campaign ActBlue pages list a Sept. 8 New Orleans event with former Biden adviser Cedric Richmond; two New York City fundraisers Sept. 23, one with New York Attorney General Letitia James and another with former DNC Chair Tom Perez; a Dallas stop Sept. 30; and a Charleston, S.C., event dated Sept. 22. Ford said today that one of the New York events had been canceled. Even so, that is still an entire month of advertised out-of-state donor stops—and only the ones made public.
Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Camille Buras (D) proclaimed “All politics are local” as she posted photos praising the Nevada attorney general for “showing up for New Orleans.” The question for October is whether a majority of Nevadans show up for Ford.
The money explains the itinerary. It does not explain why a candidate short on cash and time is asking Louisiana, New York, Texas, and South Carolina to rescue a Nevada race.
Second-quarter reports filed in July showed Lombardo with $9.2 million cash on hand in his campaign account against Ford’s $2.6 million. Ford’s campaign talks small-dollar donors and a record second-quarter haul for a non-incumbent. The seven-figure gap remains. The money that counts, contributions over $100, has already been coming from outside Nevada.
Once affiliated PACs are counted, Lombardo is running an incumbent’s campaign. Ford is running an out-of-state collection plate.
The national parties tell the same story on television. The Republican Governors Association put $5 million into a Lombardo-aligned PAC in the second quarter. Democrats spent their summer on vacation from the air war.
This week, The Nevada Independent reported that the Democratic Governors Association has finally spent or reserved more than $12.8 million in Nevada governor ads—including $1.4 million in Spanish—with a new spot hitting Lombardo on affordability. Yet, combined Democratic ad dollars still trail Republicans by about $24.5 million.
A fall reservation is not a summer campaign—and not in a race that looks competitive mainly because the polls say so.
An Emerson College survey of likely voters Sept. 5–8 put Ford ahead 44% to 42%, inside the margin of error. Earlier this month, Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin rated the Nevada governor’s race “Likely R,” an upgrade from the previous “Leans R.” The shift follows a string of polls showing Lombardo’s lead widening. Ford’s own emails call it a “coin flip.”
A candidate in that position usually campaigns in Las Vegas, Reno, and the rural counties. Ford is campaigning on ActBlue.
He was also missing from a job that is not optional. The Nevada Board of Pardons Commissioners—the governor, the attorney general, and the Supreme Court justices—met Sept. 16 in Carson City and Las Vegas. Ford is a statutory member. The agenda included inmate and community cases, including at least one matter his office sponsored. His campaign has not said where he was that day.
That is consistent with the record. The Nevada Independent once waited more than five months for Ford’s official calendar while every other statewide office produced the same records in weeks. The Review-Journal hit the same wall. When the calendars arrived, they were incomplete—which is how 137 confirmed days out of state in 2024 became an estimated 420 days across his tenure once hotels and campaign travel were counted
Last October, the California Globe reported Ford spent about 137 days outside Nevada in 2024—France, Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, Mexico, Cape Cod, Chicago, the Kentucky Derby, Martha’s Vineyard—a third of the year away from the state he wants to run. The Review-Journal and The Nevada Independent mapped the same pattern across his tenure.
Fox News later put the tab at roughly $270,000 in airfare and hotels since 2019, plus more than $140,000 in sponsored travel to conferences, much of it through the Attorney General Alliance, a group funded in part by companies that can land in an attorney general’s crosshairs.
Lombardo has made Ford’s absences the issue. In June the Globe quoted him needling Ford over defund-the-police and another empty chair: “Simple question. Out of town again?”
Ford wants the promotion, but he keeps leaving the state to ask for it. Ford’s campaign says the travel and conferences are part of the job and that he is fighting a 10-to-1 air war. The DGA’s late $12.8 million reservation does not erase a $24.5 million Republican lead on television. And it does not explain why, in the last full month before early voting, the Democrat who needs Nevada voters is in rooms with Richmond, James, Perez, and whoever is writing checks in Dallas and Charleston.
September is when a cash-short challenger makes the case in person. Ford is making it to donors who don’t vote in Nevada.
This article was originally published via CaliforniaGlobe.com on 9/22/2026. The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. Digital technology may have been used in the research, writing, or production of this article. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
