KLAS: “Ford is focusing his campaign on the economy”

Over the weekend, Attorney General Aaron Ford appeared on KLAS Politics Now and exposed Joe Lombardo’s failure to make Nevada more affordable and lower costs for working families. Ford discussed Lombardo’s housing crisis, bringing economic opportunity to Nevada, and the need for increased education funding.

WATCH:

Key excerpts: 

FORD: Unemployment now is higher than it was when Governor Lombardo took office. In fact, over the course of the last year, we have been at least tied for number one, but generally speaking, the highest in terms of the unemployment rate that we've had in the nation.Our housing costs are skyrocketing. $600,000 for a starter home in Reno, half a million dollars for a starter home here. You know [Lombardo’s] kowtowing to the policies of Donald Trump, to the neglect of Nevadans, saying things like, we should be proud of a of a bill that is going to lead to people losing SNAP benefits and Medicaid coverage, and we're going to see rural hospitals closing. These are the failures of the current Governor that I'm going to address because I'm not afraid to stand up to Donald Trump. Joe Lombardo is afraid to stand up to Donald Trump. He can't stand up, but I will.

FORD: I'm a former educator. I taught school, I taught middle school, and I taught high school, I taught math, and I know what it takes for us to be successful. [...] We need to have school funding. We have to have teachers who are accountable but also prepared to be able to do what they can to protect students and to educate students. We have to have students engaged in student accountability in that regard as well. We need parental involvement and parental engagement. These are things that I saw firsthand while in the classrooms, and things that I've [fought] for even in my days back in the state senate, when I passed a bipartisan school choice bill that gave parents more of an opportunity to select what schools the children were going to go to and what accountability measures would be brought to bear if a school was not satisfying curricular needs. [...] But make no mistake about it, I will not support any public money going toward a private institution – that is not a form of school choice that I will advocate for or support.

FORD: The question for me is, are we going to be able to create good paying jobs that allow people to do what I've heard they want to do, which is to have good paying jobs, to buy a home, to take care of their families, right? And that's the reason why I have supported the film Tax Credit. I was the one who actually introduced it back in 2013 because we knew that we could help diversify our economy. When Allegiant stadium came, I dare someone to sit in front of an individual like I did and heard him say to me, “‘I'm living in my car right now. If Allegiant stadium is here, I will immediately be able to get to work in a construction job that can provide for me and my family and bring me the dignity and respect that I once had when I was employed.”’ That's what I look out for. And to be sure, it has to be beneficial for the entire state, which is the reason why, in the Allegiant stadium context, I oversaw and I ensured that we had a community benefits plan that would effectuate benefits to the entirety of the community, in addition to the jobs that were going to be happening at the construction phase, at the design phase, and in the operations phase.

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