Aaron Ford flips Nevada governor's mansion, ousting Joe Lombardo

Nevada has a new governor. Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford knocked off Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, NBC News projects, flipping the swing state's top office back to the party.

The race turned into a referendum on pocketbook pain, and Democrats made sure of it. Ford and his allies hammered what they called the 'Lombardo-Trump economy,' tying the governor to President Donald Trump's 2025 tax cuts and spending package, which they warned would hit poor Nevadans hardest. Trump's tariffs got top billing too, a raw nerve in a state that lives on tourism.

Lombardo tried to thread a needle. He campaigned alongside Trump in Nevada over the summer and touted wins like tax cuts on tips, but he also broke with the president on tariffs last year and on solar power. He pitched himself as a guy fighting to make life affordable while keeping his distance from federal policies he said he couldn't control. He leaned on his law enforcement background to paint Democrats as soft on crime.

It didn't hold. Nevada is one of the country's most competitive battlegrounds, and its last two governors both failed to win a second term. Voters had costs on the brain — groceries, gas, housing, healthcare — and the economic argument landed the same way it did in 2022, when Lombardo himself unseated Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak by channeling voter frustration.

The win is a shot in the arm for Democrats two years out from the next presidential election. Nevada is also one of the states where Trump allies tried to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 victory by preparing alternate slates of electors falsely declaring Trump the winner.

And it stings for the GOP, coming after Republicans' strong gubernatorial showing in 2022 and Trump's 2024 win. Ford now takes the keys in Carson City.