OPINION
A new commentary argues that Gov. Joe Lombardo’s criticism of Aaron Ford’s tax record is undermined by the fact that Republicans helped pass Nevada’s 2015 tax package.
There is a fair point buried in that argument: the 2015 package was not a Democratic project. Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval championed it, Republicans controlled the Legislature, and the measure passed with broad bipartisan support. Anyone pretending otherwise is rewriting the record.
But the response from the Current goes too far in the other direction. Aaron Ford’s vote does not disappear simply because Republicans voted with him.
Ford voted yes. That part is not in dispute.
Senate Bill 483 passed the Nevada Senate 18-3. Ford was one of the 18 senators who voted for it. Contemporary reporting described the package as the largest tax increase in Nevada history, with more than $1 billion in new and extended taxes tied largely to education funding.
Ford did not merely cast a procedural vote. After passage, he called the decision “historic” and defended the additional spending on education.
That does not mean Republicans are blameless. It means the vote belongs to everyone who cast it.
Guilt by association is not a rebuttal
The Current’s central argument is that several Republicans associated with Lombardo also supported the 2015 package. That is true. Former Republican lawmakers who later served in or around Lombardo’s administration were part of the coalition that approved the tax increase.
That history is relevant when judging their own records.
It does not erase Ford’s.
If a candidate votes for a major tax increase, voters are entitled to examine that vote even when members of the other party joined him. Political accountability is individual before it is tribal.
The stronger criticism of Lombardo would be inconsistency: if he condemns Ford for supporting that package while excusing Republicans who made the same vote, voters can reasonably question that distinction.
But inconsistency by one politician does not retroactively make another politician’s vote vanish.
The honest version of the 2015 story
The full record is more complicated than either side’s campaign shorthand.
SB483 was backed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval. It permanently extended several taxes that had been scheduled to expire, increased the modified business tax, raised the cigarette tax and created the Commerce Tax. It ultimately passed with bipartisan support.
Ford voted for it.
Republicans voted for it.
Sandoval signed it.
Those facts can all be true at once.
That is why campaign arguments should focus less on pretending one party acted alone and more on what each candidate believes now: What taxes would they raise, preserve or repeal? What spending would they cut or expand? And what did Nevada actually get in return for the tax increases lawmakers approved?
Voters deserve records, not absolution
Campaigns simplify. Commentaries simplify too.
Lombardo’s allies are entitled to criticize Ford’s vote. Ford’s allies are entitled to point out that Republicans helped pass the same bill. Neither side is entitled to pretend the other fact does not exist.
The relevant question is not whether Aaron Ford was solely responsible for Nevada’s 2015 tax package. He plainly was not.
The relevant question is whether he supported it.
He did.
And the relevant question for Lombardo is whether he is willing to apply the same standard to Republicans who supported it.
That is the part voters should demand both campaigns answer.
Sources: Nevada Legislature, SB483 (2015); Associated Press and KUNR reporting from the 2015 legislative session; Nevada Current commentary published September 6, 2026.