Voters want elected officials to shake thing up. Nevada isn’t built for that. • Nevada Current

Both parties won the election in Nevada.

Donald Trump won the state, and the nation. And, according to him, he also won power to dictate all of humanity’s future, which will forthwith be great. So watch for that.

And yet all of Nevada’s Democrats in Congress who were on the ballot were reelected, including a Democratic U.S. senator.

In the less rarified air of state level politics, Nevada Republicans won enough seats to keep Democrats from having supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, thus retaining the Republican governor’s power to veto things passed by Democrats.

And yet Democrats still easily won enough seats to keep control of both houses, thus retaining their power to reject legislation put forward by Republicans and their governor.

Both parties’ respective legislative campaigns (in keeping with legislative campaign tradition) declined to articulate what might be called a policy agenda.

Gov. Joe Lombardo’s Republicans said they needed to be elected because if they weren’t, Democrats would have supermajorities, Nevada would have single party rule, and single-party rule is eww, icky.

(Neither Lombardo nor any of those Republicans have as yet expressed concern over the fact that as of January 20 the entire United States government will be under single-party rule). 

On the Democratic side, the closest thing to a legislative campaign message was repetitive disapproval of Lombardo’s dozens of vetoes in 2023, the vague but never explicitly stated implication being Democrats would pass those same bills in 2025.

And up until the last couple days of the campaign, Democrats publicly shuddered at the thought that they hoped to win supermajorities (which, for leadership anyway, was probably true; supermajorities would have deprived them of their long-time go-to convenient excuse for not getting things done).

Actually, the 2024 Democratic legislative campaigns weren’t waged in 2024. They were waged in 2021, when Democrats passed redrawn legislative districts that made it easier for Democrats to win more legislative seats.

A key characteristic of the Nevada Democratic political infrastructure – and a hallmark over the years of the much-vaunted “Reid machine” – has been a steely-eyed preoccupation with winning elections. That, not policy, has always been the top priority.

Meanwhile, have you checked out the electorate lately?

A substantial number of voters have had it with business-as-usual politics and policy. 

Business as usual, as it happens, is what Nevada governors and legislators – and the businesses for which they stand – are all about.

Presumably Lombardo’s campaign team will be spending the holidays scouring the populist policy menu for issues and initiatives, or at least gimmicks, that might connect with the all-important Joe Rogan slice of the electorate.

But Lombardo, who endorsed Trump, was only one of many, many government and industry officials who won’t even talk about the potentially devastating impact of Trump’s stated mass deportation plans.

Maybe Lombardo and legislative Republicans, at least the ones in his cadre, hope Trump doesn’t really mean it, and that Republicans and Democrats alike can fritter away yet another legislative session squabbling over minutiae while doing what business says, as per, well, business as usual.

The smothering force of the status quo

With Lombardo and Co. waiting and seeing what Trump will or won’t do, Nevada legislative Democrats have an opportunity to try connecting with a change-hungry electorate on their own.

Whatever other dark impulses and desires were driving voters, including and especially less engaged voters, to vote for Trump, when asked, their top response often as not was the price of things.

The rate at which prices are rising has already fallen precipitously, but the cost of things of course are higher than they used to be. Trump says he’ll bring prices down. Most economists are, let’s say, less than sure that’s going to happen, and many expect his policies to raise prices.

The Nevada Legislature has no influence over what impact the Trump administration will have, for good or for ill, on the national (or global) economy.

But the Nevada Legislature can do tangible, real things that will unquestionably lower prices for Nevadans.

Nevada has sales tax rates that are among the nation’s highest, which only makes the cost of clothing and household goods and cars and so many other things even more expensive. For decades the argument in favor of Nevada’s high sales tax rate is that “the tourists pay it,” which is nonsense.

After sales tax tacks an extra 8% (or more in Clark County) on the cost of a car, Nevadans get slammed again when they insure it – Nevada’s 3.5% tax rate on skyrocketing insurance premiums is the nation’s second highest, and roughly double the rate in most states. 

Lowering both the sales and insurance tax rates would save Nevada households money.

Another way to put additional hundreds of dollars (or more) in peoples’ pockets would be for the state to implement what is effectively another tax cut, and provide a tax rebate by establishing a state-level earned income tax credit.

Nevada could make up the revenue lost as a result of cutting taxes for working people by raising its lowest-in-the-nation taxes on some of the world’s largest gambling corporations.

Anyone who has given more than casual attention to the Nevada policymaking process would agree that such an agenda would be a dramatic policy and political change for the state.

If the election results and exit polls are any indication, dramatic change, especially if designed to save people money, is exactly what a critical mass of voters would like to see.

It won’t happen.

However much Democratic and Republican legislative leadership might disagree, they, along with Lombardo and any Nevada governor, all have something in common: They will never take any action having anything to do with the gambling industry without the industry’s permission. 

And the industry isn’t going to give Nevada’s elected officials permission to raise its taxes.

For all the drama and upheaval and uncertainty of the current moment, the moment also presents Nevada politicians with an unusual opportunity to make real changes that will concretely improve the quality of life for their constituents.

Political leaders in both parties share the same opinion on the prospect of seizing that opportunity: Hard pass.