There was no list.

If there had been one, it would have had two names circled at the top — Mark Hutchison and Joe Lombardo.

One was a gregarious former state senator, lieutenant governor and partner in a statewide law firm. The other was the stoic, twice-elected sheriff of Clark County.

Both had prominent name recognition, deep roots in the Las Vegas Valley and connections to wealthy campaign donors with deep pockets — essential factors needed to defeat an incumbent Democratic governor heading into the 2022 midterms.

The question remained: Who would run?

There was no power broker kingmaking session — Lombardo and Hutchison instead quietly met privately, discussing the options and separately ruminating with trusted advisers. Lombardo announced his candidacy in June 2021, and the same day, Hutchison wrote an op-ed endorsing Lombardo for governor and later served as the chairman of his campaign. 

“I ultimately arrived at the decision that I would rather support Joe Lombardo than compete against him and divide Republicans’ limited resources,” Hutchison told The Nevada Independent in a recent interview. “I believed a team approach to defeating Steve Sisolak gave Republicans our best opportunity to break up the Democratic trifecta, take back the governor’s mansion and return to a more balanced government.”

Despite traveling across the state as a gubernatorial candidate and his well-documented first year in office, little is publicly known about Lombardo as a person and the influences that have shaped his personal and political outlook — a critical factor in assessing how the state may fare in the next three (or seven) years given the outsized power the governor wields in Nevada’s political system. 

To hear Lombardo tell the tale, running for governor was a calling. In an almost 90-minute interview with The Nevada Independent late last year, Lombardo said he was motivated by the belief that he could provide direction to a “floundering” state.

He believed Sisolak followed a “herd mentality” when making decisions during the pandemic.

“I just thought I could do a better job,” he said.

Aided by an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, Lombardo cruised to victory in a crowded 14-candidate Republican primary before defeating Sisolak in the 2022 election — becoming the only Republican in the country to flip a Democratic gubernatorial seat.

Lombardo freely acknowledges the difficulty of transitioning to governor after 34 years in policing “because 90 percent of your leadership style is autocratic because you're constantly dealing with crisis.”

“You're like, ‘But I'm the governor,’” Lombardo recalled of a time when his staff pushed back on his executive order to get rid of regulations because several of the rules were codified in state law. “I guarantee you Donald Trump thought the same thing.”

Outside of the political sphere, Lombardo’s family, friends and acquaintances have described him as an intense, private person who participates in off-road races and has a strong moral compass. Some say he can be “gruff” and “reticent,” but, as his wife and close staffers note, catch him rolling on the ground with his 2-year-old grandson and you’ll see a completely different person.

His wife, Donna, who works as the executive managing director at the Cushman & Wakefield real estate firm, affectionately calls her husband “Joey” — she’s the only person who does so — and said he was raised by an Air Force dad who instilled in him values such as “keep your word, do the right thing, don’t ever be a flake about anything.” 

She said her husband’s not the romantic type who buys her flowers or showers her with compliments, but when he says something, he means it, and even though he can appear “stoic … he has a very kind heart.”

Lombardo says he has always been introverted and saw himself as someone who worked better behind the scenes. He doesn’t relish being in the spotlight, used to get nervous speaking in public and avoided taking significant leadership roles before enlisting in the military and climbing the ranks in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

“I may have been introverted, but I wanted to do things better,” said Lombardo. “I don’t believe in the mantra ‘you’re a born leader.’ I think that’s absolutely false. I think people have to grow into it.”

Becoming a Nevadan

Lombardo was a high school freshman when he first came to Las Vegas. He had just moved to the Glitter Gulch of the world from Madrid, Spain. He’d previously lived in Panama City, Florida, where he’d spent much of his free time swimming, surfing and boating off the sandy coastline of the panhandle.

His first thought about the city: Where are all the trees and water?

“It was an environmental shock,” he said. “I’d never lived anywhere that had the desert environment.”

The move to Las Vegas’ Nellis Air Force Base would be the last one his family would make in his father’s 31-year Air Force career as a noncommissioned officer, before working in Metro for 12 years.

The military profession required the family to move every three years or so, taking Lombardo from his birthplace on a small Air Force base in Misawa, Japan, in 1962 to bases in Germany, Italy and eventually Madrid, before returning to the continental United States, where he also lived in Walla Walla, Washington, and Shreveport, Louisiana.

The most difficult part of the military lifestyle, Lombardo said, was making friends, knowing that in a few years, he would be leaving.

“It's tough … especially when you're young, and you show up at a new school, and all the cliques have already formed,” Lombardo said.

Lombardo said the hardest parts of growing up came when his father was deployed in the Korean and Vietnam wars, but said he was close with his mother, who worked for the government as an architect. Though he hesitated to share many details, Lombardo said he is grateful for his upbringing and described it as a “disciplinarian” and loving environment that emphasized the importance of accountability and education.

“It’s a traditional childhood,” he said. “Other than having to move every three years, it was perfect.”

After graduating from Rancho High School in 1980, Lombardo paid his way through UNLV by joining the military, deferring his enlistment by joining the university’s Reserve Officers Training Corps. After graduating with a bachelor’s in civil engineering, he served eight years in the U.S. Army and the Nevada National Guard. 

Because many of his gym buddies from college worked at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Lombardo did a ride-along with one of the officers and said he was “hooked.” 

“You're out in the field, you're dealing with strife, you're dealing with crisis, you're dealing with investigations, people that you can help,” he said. “I thought it would be exciting as compared to sitting behind a desk.”

‘Taxpayers get their money’s worth’

Lombardo applied to the police academy, graduating and joining Metro in 1988. He quickly moved up the ranks, rising from a beat cop to detective in the early 90s, sergeant in 1996, lieutenant in 2001, assistant sheriff in 2011 and sheriff in 2014. While at Metro, he also earned a master’s degree in crisis management at UNLV.

Sources familiar with Lombardo’s time in Metro said he has a police officer’s instinct to “trust but verify.” They warned that the now-governor “doesn’t forget anything” and holds employees accountable for what they were supposed to do. 

As one former Metro employee described Lombardo’s work ethic, “Taxpayers get their money’s worth.”

As sheriff, he worked with Democrats and Republicans, including his future rival Sisolak, who was on the Clark County Commission. He was the only sheriff in the state to not oppose a 2016 ballot question seeking expanded background checks on gun slates, and even served on Sisolak’s 2018 gubernatorial transition committee.

He also has disavowed the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which promotes the belief that local county sheriffs should refuse to enforce any law they deem “unjust.” Two county commissioners in Elko and Lander counties joined the group in 2021.

Lombardo called the group “misdirected” and said, “you don't get to pick and choose on that as far as what your responsibility in a position of authority is.”

Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) said her relationship with Lombardo predates their respective political careers. Then a deputy district attorney for Clark County, Cannizzaro said she often worked with Metro on major cases and had a productive relationship with Lombardo and the department — even to the point of Lombardo presenting her with a commendation after her work prosecuting a racketeering case with multiple defendants.

“He was very much focused on being a sheriff and working that job,” she said.

Lombardo was front and center in handling several major crises, including directly negotiating with rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management as an assistant sheriff in 2014 at the Bunkerville standoff. 

As sheriff, Lombardo also led the response to the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on Oct. 1, 2017 — the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. The events put Lombardo on a national stage, leading to a full-page New York Times feature that described him as a “plain-spoken man whose persona contrasts sharply with his city of flashing billboards and jangling slot machines.”

It’s a characterization Lombardo hasn’t shied away from.

“Do you think I enjoy standing up there in the press conference and everybody in the world knowing who I am?” Lombardo said in a 2017 interview with The Nevada Independent. “I wish I could remain in the shadows and do what I do as the head of the agency, but that’s unfortunately not the way it is.”

Donna said her husband felt responsible for the 1 October shooting because it happened on his watch.

“I don't think he slept for eight days,” she said. “He'd come home, and I'd feed him. And he’d try and turn on the news, and I would turn it off. He’d lie down for an hour, get up and go again … because he felt so responsible to help the community feel safe.”

And he’s still frustrated by the conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting.

“You know in your mind what you did and what actually occurred,” Lombardo said. “And for people to inject their own opinion based off some crazy asinine shit they read on the internet is unacceptable, and they question your integrity.”

Lombardo won two elections in Democrat-heavy Clark County in the nonpartisan sheriff’s race, but he began to tack further right during the 2022 gubernatorial election — highlighted by a coveted endorsement from former President Donald Trump shortly before the state’s primary.

Ahead of that election cycle, Sisolak — the state’s first Democratic governor in more than 20 years — had faced criticism for his handling of the pandemic, which shuttered casinos on the Strip and cratered the state’s tourism-based economy. Lombardo leaned heavily into that frustration, calling the mask mandate “political theater,” highlighting problems with the state’s long-beleaguered unemployment system and criticizing the then-governor for not reopening the economy sooner. 

Facing a crowded Republican primary that included former U.S. Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), Reno attorney Joey Gilbert and North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, Lombardo also sought to burnish his conservative credentials, bragging about his role in processing more than 10,000 deportations and pledging to block tax increases and Critical Race Theory in schools.

Still, he made moderate overtures heading into the general election — most notably on abortion.  His campaign walked back his previous stance supporting a hypothetical 13-week abortion ban. Though he maintains that he is pro-life, he said after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade that he would not overturn the state’s existing abortion protections. During the 2023 legislative session, he signed a measure sponsored by Cannizzaro that protected out-of-state abortion seekers and those providing reproductive care from prosecution in Nevada, regardless of other states’ policies.

He also acknowledged that President Joe Biden was the duly elected president of the U.S. and skirted a question in the state’s only gubernatorial debate about Trump being a great president by saying he “wouldn’t use that adjective” — a comment that almost led Trump to unendorse him. Lombardo later issued a statement calling the president “great.”

More than $74 million was spent on the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election, according to AdImpact. Despite Democratic groups outspending Republicans by more than $10 million, Lombardo defeated Sisolak by a margin of nearly 15,000 votes. 

Learning to govern the Nevada way

Donna recalled recently coming to their Las Vegas home to find Lombardo still in his suit, pushing his grandson, Teddy, around in an office chair, doing wheelies and laughing.

“I’m like, I could never love you more,” Donna said. “That baby’s brought us so much joy.”

Lombardo said helping care for Teddy put his goals as governor into perspective.

“We need to make sure there's good schools. There’s a good education for him to participate in. And when you bring it home, it makes it more important,” Lombardo said.

From holding his campaign announcement and campaign victory speech at his alma mater, North Las Vegas’ Rancho High School, to pushing for school choice policies in his capacity as governor, Lombardo has attempted to define himself as “the education governor.”

His support for school choice led to a high-profile showdown with Democratic legislators last year after Democrats gutted a proposal from Lombardo’s office to expand Opportunity Scholarships, a needs-based scholarship program for low- and certain middle-income families to attend private or religious schools. 

Lombardo, in his first legislative session, proposed a two-year, $11 billion budget — the largest general fund budget in state history — and signed a Democrat-sponsored proposal to create a $250 million matching fund for teacher raises, a public funding agreement to bring Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas and a measure to increase state worker pay, among other legislation.

But outside of those issues, Lombardo’s legislative agenda — including election law changes and rolling back criminal justice policies approved by Democrats in previous sessions — largely ran aground. 

Cannizzaro said she expected Lombardo to be more partisan as governor than he was as sheriff, but assumed his proposals would be more centrist because Democrats control the Legislature. However, she said from his first State of the State address, Lombardo took strong conservative stances on several issues, including calling for rollbacks of policies Democrats passed in 2021 and criticizing a measure establishing a state-managed public health insurance option she worked to pass as “political theater.”

“We have a race that a governor won by a very small margin. We have a supermajority in the Assembly, we have a very strong majority on the Senate side,” she said. “A State of the State [speech] that has all of these very partisan, ultraconservative ideas, I think, was a little startling from the beginning.”

In an interview during the annual policy and politics-focused Texas Tribune Festival, Lombardo described himself and his governance style as “pragmatic.”

Differences of opinion between the Republican governor and Democrat-controlled Legislature festered during the 120-day session, leading to the death of many Lombardo priorities, including voter ID, raising the exemption for businesses subject to the state Commerce Tax by $2 million, the suspension of the state gas tax, upping criminal justice penalties and efforts to expand school choice — all while the first-term governor issued 75 vetoes, a record number for a single legislative session.

As for where Lombardo stands on his record? “I think 75 vetoes is bad government.” 

“I believe a significant number of those laws that made it to my desk was because of the majority party,” he said. “I personally believe they knew they weren't going to get [the legislation] past me and they said, ‘We're gonna test this governor.’ And I think that's deplorable government.”

Cannizzaro bristled at that characterization.

“I think it's deplorable to suggest that somehow we are wasting a bunch of time to have this partisan test in the middle of a 120-day session,” Cannizzaro said. “It is not a test for us to put on the line whether kids are going to be hungry in school just to see if he'll veto it.”

‘A more complex operation’ 

Lombardo’s transition from sheriff to governor has had its challenges — something even Lombardo acknowledges.

The former sheriff was intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Clark County government and oversaw a budget of more than $1.3 billion and 6,000 employees at Metro, but is now responsible for an entire state. Lombardo used a metaphor to explain the contrast: If the government is a multispoked wheel, then a sheriff manages only four of the spokes. The governor deals with all of them.

“[The governor’s office] is a more complex operation … but it boils down to people. What is the right thing in the process, and making sure that you keep in mind that we're a service agency,” Lombardo said. “I think that’s what has been missing as part of state government for a long time.”

Though many described him as “not a policy person,” they did say he’s a “facts and data guy,” wanting to know as much information as possible about whatever issue comes before him.

“Sometimes people just want to tell you what you want to hear,” Lombardo said. “You want to trust your people, but you also want to verify. Trust, but verify.”

Lombardo’s former chief of staff and former state Sen. Ben Kieckhefer (R-Reno) described Lombardo as a “thoughtful, inquisitive and decisive leader who’s driven by a sincere desire to do the right thing.”

“He delegates, trusts staff to do the job he hired them to do and requires accountability,” Kieckhefer said. “Even with high expectations, he’s got a great sense of humor and is fun to work for.”

Those who have worked with Lombardo said that the governor inspires respect and has high expectations for himself and his team. However, some have noted his leadership as “coplike” and said the governor will make a declaration expecting it to be followed, in line with a “how high can you jump mentality.” 

That mentality became extremely clear last January, when Lombardo’s second-ever executive order required the state to pull employees out of work-from-home and back to “pre-pandemic, normal and customary office conditions” by July 1 (implementation of the order was delayed until the start of 2024).

Pressed about potentially losing talent over the policy, Lombardo responded, “It's called a job for a reason.”

As governor, Lombardo is juggling his past “autocratic” rule as sheriff and his new self-described “laissez-faire” leadership as governor. 

Sources familiar with the Legislature said that “autocratic” expectation was evident in an instance where Lombardo yelled at members of the Democratic leadership after two assemblywomen publicly confronted a representative of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department during a hearing regarding differing accounts of the agency’s role in deportations. 

A staffer close to Lombardo denied accounts that he “yelled” at leadership but acknowledged that the governor “expressed his concerns to legislators about behavior he found unfair to law enforcement and unbecoming of elected officials.”

He also raised eyebrows last year after an awkward exchange with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm that Politico described as a “pretty-little-lady’s welcome” and prompted a direct response from Granholm on X. A spokesperson for the governor downplayed it as a joke, saying, “People who know Joe Lombardo are familiar with his self-deprecating sense of humor.”

Democrats have also attacked Lombardo over his use of his Clark County sheriff uniform and badge on the 2022 campaign trail — which elicited a formal censure and fine from the Nevada Commission on Ethics. Lombardo is fighting that fine in court. 

Building a better Nevada?

Democrats already hold a 28-seat supermajority in the Assembly and are just one seat short of the 14 seats needed for a supermajority in the state Senate. If the party manages to secure two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers, it will have the ability to override any Lombardo vetoes.

The threat of a veto-proof Legislature has spurred the creation of a network of political groups tied to the governor to boost legislative candidates endorsed by Lombardo and build a narrative around a Democratic “culture of corruption.” 

Lombardo said at a March IndyTalks event that statehouse control did not preoccupy him as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, but after the last legislative session, maintaining his relevance and determining the outcome of legislation during the 2025 session is one of his top campaign priorities. He said he has personally recruited and fundraised for candidates to make that happen.

“The Democrats are trying to achieve a supermajority because they believe that’s to the benefit of the state, which I absolutely disagree with,” Lombardo said, explaining he believes a supermajority does not leave room for consensus building. “It does not work because there's not discourse, there's not consensus, there's not discussion. It's just like, 'Take it. And that's where we're at.' And society can't function that way.”

Cannizzaro disagreed.

“This idea that a supermajority is going to somehow dismantle the state, I think, hasn’t played out when we have had even legislative majorities and a governor's office that are of the same party,” she said. 

Democrats, after the session, dubbed Lombardo the “veto villain” and highlighted popular legislation he rejected, including a slew of housing-related bills that Democrats said were aimed at addressing the housing crisis, gun reform measures and a bill that would have extended a pandemic-era universal school breakfast and lunch program throughout the Nevada education system.

But Lombardo remains broadly popular in the state; January polling from Morning Consult shows Lombardo among the top 20 most popular governors in the country with a 58 percent approval rating.

Despite the hurdles, the potential threat of losing his veto power and more time at the center of Nevada’s political world, Lombardo said he’s looking forward to running for re-election in 2026.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Am I enjoying myself? Hell yeah, because it's a huge challenge, and I thrive off the challenge. And there's a lot of broken pieces that need to get fixed.”

This story was corrected on 4/7/2024 at 10:42 a.m. to reflect that Gov. Joe Lombardo moved to Las Vegas from Spain.