Lee Heidhues 7.2.2023
Next door to California is Nevada. The state known for gambling, legalized prostitution and the place to which the Oakland Raiders and, soon, the Oakland A’s will have moved to find greener financial pastures. Translation: Money.
Now, Nevada is becoming rapidly known for something else. A radical right MAGA governor who is putting the torch to any remotely progressive legislation passed by the legislature.
Abortion, voting rights, rent control. It’s all fair game for the radical right Governor of Nevada.
Excerpted from The Nation 6.30.2023
It’s hard to think of a governor who has used his veto power so often and to such destructive effect. Nevada’s legislature is, in many ways, as progressive as those in California, Oregon, and Washington.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lombardo
Yet its efforts to reimagine Nevada’s political priorities are being stymied time after time after time by rookie GOP Governor Joe Lombardo’s uncompromising conservatism and his willingness to use the powers of his office to block popular measures aimed at protecting the rights, and increasing the economic and health care security, of ordinary Nevadans.
Lombardo, the one time sheriff of Clark County, is way out of step with Nevada’s voting public on many public policy matters which he’s used his red pen.
Roughly 70 percent support broad access to abortion, and, presumably, at least that proportion support guaranteeing the right of access to contraception.
Two-thirds support robust rent control policies.
More than four in five voters tell pollsters they support medically assisted dying options.
When the legislative session ended earlier this month, Lombardo ended up with 75 vetoes in a single session, including 43 on the final day that he could issue vetoes. It was the most annual vetoes that any Nevada governor has ever issued.
Of all the vetoes, however, arguably the most bizarre was that of Assembly Bill 383, codifying the right to contraception in the state. It was, advocates urged, a necessary measure in a post-Dobbs legal landscape in which once-established rights are suddenly seen as vulnerable. The bill passed with bipartisan support, including from Heidi Gansert, the leader of the Republican minority in the state Senate, as well as her deputy, Carrie Buck. More than 7,000 Nevada women wrote letters to the governor in support of the legislation. Lombardo argued that it was unnecessary and vetoed the bill.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/nevada-lombardo-vetoes/
Top photo – Then Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo announces his gubernatorial candidacy – June 28, 2021 before a cheering crowd of MAGA supporters
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