The Governor’s Race That 2028 Democrats Need To Watch

HENDERSON, Nevada – On a cloudy morning just outside of Las Vegas, the Teamsters Local 631 workers responsible for building the Sin City skyline were back on the picket line for their 266th day of protesting. Carrying signs declaring “NO CONTRACT, ON STRIKE” and chanting in unison, they circled the twenty-foot giant inflatable “Scabby the Rat” stationed outside their employer, one of the largest building materials companies in the country.

Then a visitor stepped onto the line to join them: Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford. A native of Dallas, Ford, 54, has set his sights on becoming the next governor of Nevada and he was here to prove he had the backs of the roughly 60 welders, machine operators and truck drivers — and that Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo did not. It was the first stop of a slog of a campaigning day a month out from the election and Ford, dressed in a well-fitted navy suit and a silver tie, was eager to shake as many hands as possible.

“I'm so proud that you guys have been so strong,” Ford told the group of mostly young Hispanic men. “That's dedication. I'm here to stand with you as well.”

Then Ford, who lived in Mexico as a student, smoothly switched over to Spanish to deliver a similar message: “Te apoyo… Juntos podemos ganar.”

I’m with you. Together we can win. 

As Democrats search for working-class whisperers — in hopes of wooing blue collar voters who’d flipped for President Donald Trump — some hope they have found one in Ford: a Black, Spanish-speaking wonk with five degrees who grew up as a low-income kid sometimes lacking food on the table or electricity in his house. Those hard times might be long behind him, but Ford, the first African American to hold statewide constitutional office in Nevada, wanted those walking the line to know that he, too, knew the struggle.

“As hard as you're working, I'm working to try to ensure that I can be in this office to help you as well,” he told the two dozen workers striking for better pay and to preserve their union healthcare and pension benefits.

Lacking the cash to spend big on TV advertising throughout the campaign, Ford has taken to roaming Nevada’s urban and rural corridors — in both Democratic strongholds and on Republican turf — to share his experiences as a single dad on welfare who went on to become one of the most powerful Democrats in the state. His up-by-the-bootstraps biography is the undercurrent of his campaign against Lombardo, a moderate Republican, whose own massive war chest and relative popularity in Nevada may make him one of the few statewide Republicans to survive this brutal cycle for the GOP. The race for the governor’s office here is proving to be one of the most competitive gubernatorial contests this midterm that will test the strength of the anticipated blue wave — and whether this type of polished Democrat can lure disaffected working-class voters back into the coalition.

“It's a tie ball game,” Ford told the strikers. “[Republicans] want people to stay home. They don't think you're going to show up. I need you to show up.”

Like the long line of Democrats before him, Ford has amassed widespread support from many of Nevada’s labor union leadership, bringing in endorsements from the powerful Culinary Union, many of the trades associations, and prompting the Retail Association to switch its past endorsement of Lombardo in his favor. But he’s navigating a new dynamic: Unlike union leadership, the rank-and-file members are far more skeptical of Democrats in the Trump era, dismayed by a party that they say has abandoned them. Ford wants to prove that he’s different from all those other Democrats. The challenge for him is whether the Nevada working class will look past his shiny resume and smooth talking points and buy his pitch as an ally of the community.

Ford has his fans, including Frederick Viszneki, a business agent for the Ironworkers Local 433: “I’ve called him eight times,” Viszneki said, “and he either picked up right away or called me back within five minutes.” And he has his skeptics, among them John Vellardita, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, a union representing teachers in the state’s largest county, which has endorsed Lombardo.

“He’s a career politician,” Vellardita said. “That shtick has long seen its value in the Democratic Party. The party has lost its way in trying to identify with working-class folks.”

As Ford sees it, he has consistently fought for working-class interests in his capacity as a state lawmaker and two-term attorney general by seeking to raise the minimum wage and put consumer protections into place. During the campaign he has called for repealing Nevada’s right-to-work law, expanding union apprenticeship programs and building more affordable housing.

“They don't have to believe my words. In fact, they've already seen my actions,” Ford said in a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO Magazine, held during a campaign day devoted to touring trade apprenticeship programs with some union leaders he had cultivated relationships with during his 14 years in public life.

For Ford, winning in November would put him on an upward trajectory on the national stage that he has seemingly carefully plotted since his start in politics more than a decade ago. Should he prevail next month, he would be the first Black governor west of the Mississippi. He says he’s close with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and the two Democrats discuss the often lonely experience of being “the only” Black man in the upper tier of politics. (A spokesperson for Moore says the two talk often.) This midterm cycle stands to potentially expand the ranks of Black governors in the U.S. from one to a tiny caucus, with Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms gunning to flip the governor’s mansion in Georgia and Democrat David Crowley looking to succeed Gov. Tony Evers in Wisconsin — not to mention Rep. Byron Donalds, who, if elected to replace Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, would make history as the nation’s first Black Republican governor.

But should Ford lose in November, it wouldn’t just cut short his broader ambition — a loss here would call into question Democrats’ ability to sell themselves as authentic allies of the working class.

Ford is reluctant to engage in any of the debates animating the Democratic Party since Trump’s latest victory, and instead insists he’s singularly focused on how he can win Nevada, a potential victory that could provide a path for other ambitious Democrats to win over the state in 2028.

“‘28 starts in ‘26,” he said. If his model of appealing to working-class people in red counties proves successful, “national candidates can take a look and they can use it or not.”

“But I don’t feel pressure to light a path for anybody to follow for them to be successful in their own regard. I’m just focusing right now on what’s important.”

There’s an anecdote that Ford likes to tell, over and over again on the campaign trail: When he was a kid growing up in inner city Dallas, sometimes the only way he and his siblings could eat was when his dad would bring home stale food from the grocery store where he worked. Once he brought back a box of candy bars and that’s all the family ate for over a week. These days, he always keeps a candy bar on his desk. To remember, he’ll tell you.

“This affordability thing. That's the word of the day,” Ford said. “But I like to remind folks that before I knew what affordability meant, I knew my parents couldn't afford food at the age of nine.”

A gifted student, he earned a scholarship, which enabled him to attend college at Texas A&M University. There, living away from home for the first time, he ran into some trouble. He was arrested in 1991 for public intoxication and in 1992 for failing to appear in court for a speeding ticket and twice in 1994 for failing to pay for a new car tire and then not appearing at an arrangement for that misdemeanor charge, mistakes he has chalked up to “bad decisions I made as a college kid.” (None of those arrests led to convictions.) Then, when he was 20, he found out his girlfriend was unexpectedly pregnant. When his son was an infant, they split, and Ford became a single dad. Determined to be a good parent — and a good student — Ford scrambled. For several months, he had nowhere to live and crashed on the couch of his fraternity brother. He signed up for food stamps and Medicaid and lived in Section 8 housing. He was seen pushing a stroller on campus. He felt scared.

“He was dealing with something that we didn't understand,” said Clarence Estes, a college classmate.

The first in his family to graduate college, Ford began collecting degrees because he believed they gave him and his son security and options: He earned a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M, master's degrees from The George Washington University along with law and PhD degrees from The Ohio State University. To pay tuition, he worked as a math teacher, taught at various universities and toiled as a legal research assistant and a waiter at Outback Steakhouse (“serving up blooming onions, coming home smelling like steak that I couldn't afford to eat”). In search of greater opportunities, Ford and his wife, Berna, who he met in college and is also a lawyer, chased jobs around the country, eventually landing in Nevada in 2007.

There, Ford worked in private practice doing corporate law. When his 14-year-old son asked him why they’d moved to a state that ranked so poorly in education, he decided to do something about it. So in 2010, he ran for the state legislature in a heavily Republican district against an incumbent. He lost. At the time, his opponent, current Boulder City Mayor Joe Hardy, a Republican, said Ford “had not done his homework” by making the ill-fated decision to run as a Democrat in a bright red district.

It would be the only race he’d lose. Ford ran again two years later under new district lines more favorable to Democrats — and won. He moved his way up and was named Senate leader for the minority then majority. A solid moderate, he had a reputation for often working with Republicans.

“He was just a decent upfront person to work with,” said Patricia Farley, a former Independent in the state legislature whom Ford personally welcomed to caucus with Democrats. “Time and time again, I saw him make the right choice. I saw him do the right thing, even though it wasn't necessarily the best political move. I think he was making the right choice because he understood the people it was impacting.”

He aimed higher and ran for attorney general in 2018, beating his opponent by just 4,533 votes. When he ran for re-election in 2022, his Republican opponent Sigal Chattah said he should be “hanging from a fucking crane.” At the time, Chattah insisted the comment wasn’t racist, and was made to compare him to the terrorist group, Hamas. But Ford said her remark was a “blatant” example of the racist tropes he’s experienced. He won that race by 77,179 votes. (Last year, Trump appointed Chattah to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada.)

There were whispers within Nevada he would eventually run for governor. Or for president.

“We need a new vision of what Democrats can deliver for Nevadans,” said Alexis Hill, chair of the Washoe County Commission who Ford crushed in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. “And so I do think that Ford is on the right track.”

As attorney general, Ford sued drug makers and secured $1.2 billion to address the opioid crisis. He challenged social media companies for enticing young users to obsessively use their platforms. He tried — and failed — to build a credible criminal case against Republicans who falsely claimed to be presidential electors for Trump. A judge, in dismissing the case, said the prosecution failed to present evidence demonstrating “the requisite intent to defraud.”

The electors' case was a rare setback, his highest profile loss.

In his capacity as Nevada’s top lawyer, he travels often, attending conferences in Singapore and Mexico and Taiwan. Starting early on in the campaign, Lombardo aimed his massive war chest at criticizing Ford for spending so much time outside of Nevada. A TV ad from June paid for by Better Nevada PAC backing Lombardo depicts men of color working in auto shops and construction trashing Ford for “missing work.” “If he worked for my boss, he’d be fired,” one man says.

Ford, who says he’s only taken 15 vacation days over the last seven years he’s been in office, sees those attacks as infused with racist undertones. “People who know, know,” he said. “They recognize, specifically Black people would recognize, that this is a veiled effort to say I'm shiftless and I'm lazy, that I'm a grifter who doesn't work and only wants to take advantage of a system… I've had to contend with this my whole life.”

A former Clark County Sheriff who ousted Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak in 2022, Lombardo has the unenviable job of trying to separate himself from an unpopular president. But the close nature of the race suggests enough Nevadans see the two Republicans as distinct and may be willing to give Lombardo a pass even while the economy limps along. The Lombardo campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Cracking the code of winning over Nevada’s diverse, working-class population matters more than whether Ford can kick Lombardo out of Carson City. With its newfound position as the second nominating state on Democrats’ presidential primary calendar, battleground Nevada is poised to become one of the most politically relevant states in the near future.

It’s a fate Nevada Democratic leaders are reckoning with as they brace for the barnstorm of 2028 aspirants that will be unleashed immediately after November. Eager national Democrats are using Ford’s campaign to pledge their allegiance to Nevada, with governors like Wes Moore, JB Pritzer, Andy Beshear and others donating time and money to his bid.

It reveals how Democrats view Nevada as key to their own political futures, perhaps the best place to gauge the appeal and authenticity of a rebranded, affordability-obsessed party. Thousands of service and hospitality jobs make up the backbone of the state’s tourism industry, which is quick to feel the strain of an economy squeezed by higher grocery bills and $5.79 gas. Most of those workers are Latino, the coveted demographic swinging wildly between the parties. And there are more independent voters than Republicans and Democrats, making elections here not just about base turnout but also persuasion.

Ted Pappargeorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, said since Trump won Nevada in 2024, working-class voters are now moving towards candidates who are “talking kitchen table issues” while Republicans “have no answer” for rising costs. An endorsement from Culinary, which has a long history of backing Democrats, delivers the organization’s massive block-walking program that juices turnout in Nevada’s urban cores.

“Democrats that win Nevada,” Pappargeorge said, “can win the country.”

Later in the day, Ford popped by a Salvadoran joint in an unassuming shopping plaza a 20 minute drive from high end restaurants on the Las Vegas strip. On the door of San Salvador Restaurant was taped a sign in Spanish: “Due to the current situation,” the price of a dozen pupusas would rise to $23. “AGRADECEMOS SU COMPRENSION!” — thank you for your understanding.

Inside the compact restaurant with a pantry full of Jarritos and snacks like dried tajadas, or fried plantain chips, the restaurant's owner explained to Ford that higher prices for ingredients like limes had forced the establishment to jack up its prices. “We try to take the hit as much as we can, but I mean it definitely affects us because then our profits are affected quite a bit since all these tariffs,” said Bryan Madrid, who co-owns the restaurant with his parents. “So we're just kind of trying to push through. But there's just so much people can take.”

“Well, on those tariffs, particularly, you may recall that when they were passed, Governor Lombardo was asked about that,’” Ford responded. “You remember what he said? ‘We should have to feel a little pain from those.’”

“I sued over those tariffs,” Ford told Madrid, “and I won.”

After he stepped out of the restaurant, Ford stood beside the sign announcing the pupusa price hike. His campaign saw an opportunity. As a staffer whipped out a camera to record a video to later post on social media, Ford began to speak again in Spanish.

“Ellos, así como ustedes, merecen un gobernador que va a ver por ustedes y que va a bajar los precios. Yo lo voy a hacer.”

They, like you, deserve a governor who is going to look out for you and who’s going to lower prices. That’s what I’m going to do.

“Me llamo Aaron Ford. Y espero que yo pueda ganar su voto.”

My name is Aaron Ford. And I hope to win your vote.