Las Vegas Sun: Lombardo Calls Data Centers "Gold Rush" While Ford Calls Them 'Threat to Wallets and Water’

New reporting by the Las Vegas Sun highlights the contrast in the Nevada governor’s race on data centers: Joe Lombardo calls them a “gold rush” and is backing them fully, while Aaron Ford is fighting to prevent them from threatening “Nevadans’ wallets and water.” While Lombardo attempts to rewrite the history of him giving data centers $240 million in tax breaks, Ford has a plan to halt data centers’ tax breaks, verify whether they’ve kept the promises they made to get those tax breaks, and block them from raising Nevadans’ costs by even once cent.

Lombardo’s data center gravy train is further proof of him being a doormat for Donald Trump at every opportunity – both share the same data-center-invested billionaire donors, and both have been data centers’ biggest cheerleaders in Nevada. In contrast, Ford is running for Governor to block anything that would raise Nevadans’ costs, including data centers.

In Nevada’s governor’s race, one candidate calls data centers the “new gold rush.” The other calls them a threat to Nevadans’ wallets and water.
The split between Gov. Joe Lombardo and Attorney General Aaron Ford has turned data centers — specifically new data centers — into one of the most contentious issues of the 2026 campaign, with the two men staking out opposite positions as Nevada grapples with a potential boom in the facilities.
Lombardo, the Republican incumbent, is backing data centers as a key part of the state’s economic growth strategy… he told the Latin Chamber of Commerce this month that data centers are the “new gold rush.”
Ford, a Democrat, has taken the opposite stance. He said he would halt tax abatements for the construction of data centers if elected and also plans to call for developers to “bring their own water” and “pay for their own electricity” to operate any new data centers.
Ford’s campaign has worked to tie Lombardo to Trump on multiple fronts, pointing to Nevada’s tourism slump partially brought on by the president’s tariff and immigration policies. The campaign continued the comparisons with data centers.
“Reality check: what’s actually making Nevadans poor is data centers jacking up their bills, and what’s actually ‘backwards’ is Lombardo and Trump backing the data centers draining Nevada’s tax dollars and natural resources without any proof that they’re delivering on their commitments to Nevada,” Ford said in a statement. “Unlike Lombardo, I’ll pause data center tax breaks, block them from raising costs, and make them pay up.”
Ford also criticized a Lombardo-aligned political action committee — the Better Nevada PAC — for recently accepting $1 million from Jessica Roy, wife of Switch founder Rob Roy, according to The Lever.
“Now we know why Joe Lombardo says he’s ‘wholeheartedly in support of data centers’: He’s bought and paid for by them,” Ford said.

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