A recent article in the Nevada Independent highlighted Attorney General Aaron Ford’s relentless focus on lowering costs for working Nevadans and how he’s centering his campaign around making things costs less. Ford’s focus on relieving families of their financial struggles and ending Joe Lombardo’s cost-of-living crisis comes from his personal experience of similar struggles.

The Indy followed Ford on the campaign trail as he talked with workers, small business owners, and union apprentices and leaders about how his platform will help them lead more financially secure lives and how his record of taking on Donald Trump and the billionaires that Lombardo serves equips him to lead Nevada out of the mess Trump and Lombardo have created.

READ MORE: Nevada Independent: ‘In bid for governor, Ford focuses on affordability, slams 'Lombardo-Trump economy'’

• The conversation was one of dozens Ford, 54, had that day, as he zipped around to six locations in Southern Nevada, including a stop at a union training facility in Henderson and an education press conference in Las Vegas, greeting constituents with a fist bump and a smile. The two-term attorney general and former top state lawmaker has been endorsed by former Vice President Kamala Harris (D), the entirety of the state's congressional delegation, 33 state lawmakers and is decidedly the Democratic favorite to challenge incumbent Gov. Joe Lombardo (R).

• Berlanga said he decided to have Ford tour his shop because Ford has been on the front lines of the fight against tariffs, suing the Trump administration twice on the issue, and isn't the type of person to sit back and just watch. "Look at his record … he fights against stuff that's not right," he said. "We need fighters and he's a fighter."

• He's centered his campaign and conversations with constituents on an "Affordable Nevada" plan centered on housing, healthcare and energy prices, as well as a "Student Success" agenda for education. The plans include lowering security deposit caps for renters, expanding rental assistance programs, limiting corporate investors' ability to buy up homes, capping prescription drug prices, working with nonprofits to cancel medical debt and guaranteeing school meals. 

• "I've lived where too many Nevadans are living right now, from stale candy bars to single parenthood to working eight jobs," Ford said. "I've been a tip worker, I've been in a union, I've been unemployed, I've been without a home of my own for months, so I understand these issues."

• [Senator Cortez Masto] added that Ford saw the crisis in Nevada stemming from the opioid epidemic and was one of two attorneys general who actually took the lead to fight pharmaceutical companies. "He wasn't afraid to take on big pharma, with all of the money they have, all of the corporate attorneys they have, he was willing to stand up and say no, not my state," Cortez Masto said. "That's a true leader, that's somebody who's going to do what's right for people here in Nevada."

• Ford said [ending Right-To-Work] is clear-cut for him, and he took the stance he did because it's what is best for workers. "What's right is right. And at the end of the day, I do what's right, because this job is temporary," he said. "And when I leave, the decisions that I've made are going to last potentially in perpetuity, and if it enables me to help people, then I'm going to do it."