Pot, Meet Kettle
You've heard the saying. It fits here perfectly.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says Nevada added 34,500 jobs from February 2025 to February 2026 — a 2.2% increase, more than double the growth rate of the second-fastest-growing state. Nevada has led the nation in job growth for nine straight months.
Total employment has exceeded 1.6 million jobs for the first time on record.
You might think Nevada Democrats and their big labor allies would be talking about that. You would be wrong.
Culinary Union Local 226 Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge recently told a news outlet that Lombardo has been a “huge disappointment,” pointing to the governor's financial ties to Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta — owners of Station Casinos — as something voters should find “of interest.”
In a court of law, they'd call that speculation. In an election year, Democrats call it a press release.
The Nevada Democratic Party picked up the baton, posting on X that Lombardo was:
“siding with MAGA union-busting billionaire Fertitta brothers over working Nevadans.”
No specifics. No evidence. Just the suggestion that because money changed hands, something must have happened. Interesting claim coming from the people who built Nevada's biggest political machine on casino labor cash.
Follow the Money — Both Ways
Unions and labor groups donated more than $1.6 million to Nevada legislators during the 2024 election cycle — third most among any single industry group — with most of the money going to Democrats.
Unions gave more than $1.4 million to the state's 40 Democratic lawmakers last cycle, with more than 90 percent of all labor contributions going to Democrats.
That's just the check-writing to individual candidates. The Culinary Union is renowned for its political operation — voter mobilization, mail ballot collection, ballot curing, and get-out-the-vote initiatives that drive Democrat turnout. Dollar figures don't capture that.
So when the party funded by organized labor accuses Lombardo of being influenced by casino money, maybe pump the brakes.
Smoke, No Fire
Station Casinos, Frank Fertitta, and Lorenzo Fertitta each gave $1 million to a Lombardo-affiliated PAC. Together, they were responsible for about one-third of all the money raised by Lombardo in 2025.
That's real money. Nobody disputes it.
But the Culinary Union and NV Dems don't stop at noting the donations. They suggest those donations influenced Lombardo's decisions. They just can't say which ones — or how.
Lombardo set a new state record last session, vetoing 87 bills in total. Those vetoes covered housing, education, firearms, elections, health care, and designated days of observance.
The Fertittas own local casinos. Were they pulling the strings on Lombardo's gun control vetoes? His election bills? His veto of Indigenous Peoples Day?
The accusation stretches so far it snaps.
The Machine Behind the Attack
The Nevada Democratic Party didn't build its power in a vacuum. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid leveraged his national donor connections to flood the state party and its coalition of outside organizations with cash.
Nevada has some of the highest rates of unionized labor in the country because its economy is so heavily centered on the entertainment and service industries.
The Culinary Union was the engine of that machine and still is.
The @NVDems are the primary organizations vehicle for Harry Reid's labor coalition. (Except for that one time the socialists took over the party) @Culinary226 asking aloud if @JoeLombardoNV took some page from their playbook would be funny if it wasn't so crass and tone-deaf. https://t.co/Ke1l9ORDY4
— BrutalBrittany💕 (@BrutalBrittany2) June 24, 2026
Twenty-four of the Legislature's 40 Democratic lawmakers received more than 10 percent of their total fundraising haul from unions. The union has shown it isn't shy about using that leverage — it yanked endorsements from 17 Democratic legislators in 2024 when they voted the wrong way on hotel room cleaning requirements.
Allies one day, targets the next.
And yet they want to lecture Lombardo about donor influence.
Inconvenient History
One more thing that the Culinary Union would rather you forget.
Last fall, they were on Lombardo's side when he called a special session partly to pass a massive expansion of Nevada's film tax credit program.
The Culinary Union was among the union backers of the film tax credit legislation. The failure of the proposal was a loss for both Lombardo, who put it on the agenda, and the supporters who poured over a million dollars in lobbying for it.
There's also some important context the Culinary Union would prefer you not think too hard about.
Their years-long feud with the Fertitta brothers over Station Casinos? It isn't a state matter. The labor organizing efforts and challenges are handled by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The governor of Nevada has no jurisdiction over it.
So when Culinary implies the Fertitta donations bought them favorable treatment from Lombardo — with their biggest grudge being the Red Rock organizing fight that's been grinding through federal regulators and courts since 2019 — they can't even explain the mechanism, because it doesn't exist.
And the Culinary's animosity toward Lombardo personally goes back further than his time as governor. When he was Clark County Sheriff, the union accused him of denying protest permits at Palace Station in 2016 — a charge the department disputed.
They've been at war with him for a decade. This isn't a new concern about donor influence. It's an old grudge with a fresh news hook.
The Culinary Union's opportunism isn't random either. It leads somewhere — straight to Aaron Ford, the Democratic nominee for governor.
The Janus Problem
Last December, Ford went on the GangboX podcast — an official broadcast of the Southern Nevada Building Trades Unions — and said this about Nevada's longstanding Right to Work law:
“The moment you send it to me — first term, I ain't waiting. It can be done legislatively. They can send me a bill. And if they send it to me, I'm signing it.”
The 2018 Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME addressed this same dynamic — in reverse. The Court ruled that union fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment right to free speech.
For decades before the decision, millions of government employees were forced to give part of every paycheck to a union, whether they wanted to or not.
Workers were compelled to fund a political machine they may have disagreed with. Janus said that's unconstitutional.
That's the real stakes. Nevada's Right to Work law protects workers from being forced into a political machine. The state law dates back more than 70 years — voters adopted it through a statewide initiative in 1953.
Aaron Ford would like to change that.
Conservatives should keep that in mind every time the Culinary Union sends out a press release between now and November.
The pot can call the kettle black all it wants. But Nevadans know how this kitchen works.
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. This article was written with the assistance of AI. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
