LAS VEGAS (AP) — Republican Joe Lombardo, a career Las Vegas police officer and sheriff who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has been elected governor of Nevada.
Lombardo defeated Steve Sisolak, returning the governorship of the Silver State to the GOP and making Sisolak a one-term Democrat after two decades of Republicans.
“It looks like we’re about a percentage point short of victory,” Sisolak said in a statement, trailing Lombardo in the race shortly after the Clark County voting results were announced. “That’s why I reached out to the sheriff to wish him luck.”
Nevada ballots took several days to count in part because of a vote-by-mail provision passed by the state legislature in 2020. It requires counties to accept ballots postmarked on Election Day if they arrive within four days later.
Lombardo, 60, started as a Las Vegas police officer in 1988 and served two terms as Clark County Sheriff, the nonpartisan elected head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the state’s largest police agency.
He withstood campaign attacks on rising crime, acknowledging the increase over the past two years and blaming funding constraints and mandates from the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
During the campaign, Lombardo at times distanced himself from Trump and never supported unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 presidential election was marred by fraud. Lombardo said during his only pre-election debate with Sisolak that any irregularities were not enough to change the outcome of the election.
Lombardo, who entered the general election from a crowded GOP primary field, mocked the version of public health insurance passed by the Legislature and signed by Sisolak and said he views abortion through a “pro-life” lens.
But he acknowledged that a state law approved by Nevada voters in 1990 allows abortions before 24 weeks of pregnancy. “There is nothing the governor can do,” he said, to change this law.
