The 2026 race for lieutenant governor is all about 2028 (if it’s about anything at all)

The two people with the most on the line in the 2026 race for Nevada lieutenant governor aren’t running for lieutenant governor.

One of those people is Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

Which means the other person with the most at stake in the lieutenant governor’s race is Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.

If Lombardo wins reelection this year, he immediately becomes the top Republican recruit to run against Cortez Masto when she’s up for reelection in 2028.

As long as the lieutenant governor in 2028 is a Republican. 

If the lieutenant governor is a Democrat in 2028, far and away the most consequential impact of a successful Lombardo U.S. Senate campaign would be the swearing in of a Democratic governor just in time for the 2029 legislative session — in a state where the Legislature will also likely be controlled by Democrats. 

In other words, a Democratic lieutenant governor would effectively block a Lombardo U.S. Senate campaign. And Cortez Masto would face whoever else Nevada Republican voters might pick from their perennially shallow pool of weak candidates for federal office.

Seriously? People are running for lieutenant governor? Again?

The scenario isn’t entirely unfamiliar to Nevada voters. In 2014, then-Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat, feared popular then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, would easily win reelection and then run against Reid for Senate two years later in 2016. Democrats failed to even put up a serious challenger to Sandoval. Reid instead directed his oft-ballyhooed Nevada Democratic “Reid machine” to focus on the race for lieutenant governor. If Democrats won that, Sandoval would be lashed to the governor’s job, because if he ran for Senate and won, a Democrat would become governor.

It all turned out to be moot. The Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Reid picked lost in that 2014 general election. And Sandoval, who had never indicated any interest in moving to Washington, did not run for U.S. Senate in 2016, even though Reid ultimately decided not to seek reelection. As a practical matter to Nevada households, the race for lieutenant governor in 2014 turned out to be the same as virtually every other race for lieutenant governor: irrelevant.

The same could ultimately apply to this year’s race. Lombardo could lose his reelection bid this year, dimming (though perhaps not wholly obliterating) his star power in a 2028 Senate race. Or Lombardo could win, but decline to run for Senate in 2028, a la Sandoval in 2016. The prospect of Cortez Masto retiring a la Reid in 2016, seems far-fetched, but one never knows.

Anyway, that’s it. That screwball scenario — the chance that the outcome might mean something in 2028 — is the only remotely notable thing about the 2026 lieutenant governor’s race.

It’s better than nothing (maybe)

As befits a contest for a part-time job with no inbox, lieutenant governor campaigns are superfluous and easily ignored.

Stavros Anthony, the current occupant, has garnered headlines for inappropriately using his office’s resources to hype the imaginary crisis of transgender people in sports. Anthony basing his reelection campaign on a redundant (Nevada high schools already limit transgender athletes in school sports) but deliberately divisive and hurtful gimmick isn’t surprising. But there was a surprising revelation when the state ethics commission dismissed an allegation that Anthony was making his office’s staff work on anti-trans branding efforts.

The lieutenant governor has a staff?

Can’t a lieutenant governor wake up in the morning and check the headlines to see if something has happened to the governor on their own? 

If a lieutenant governor falls in a forest… 

Because that’s pretty much the sum total of the job description of a Nevada lieutenant governor. Unless you count  breaking a tie in a state Senate with an odd number of senators.

A primary will determine which Democrat gets to challenge Anthony. What might be called the party’s institutional candidate is Sandra Jauregui, a state legislator whose chief claim to fame is her failed crusade to transfer billions of dollars in Nevada tax revenue to California film companies and the Howard Hughes Holdings commercial development behemoth. 

Another Democratic candidate, Courtney Burke, is a nurse practitioner. Frankly, if Burke wants to best serve the state and its people, she should consider staying in her current job, which is far more useful and important than lieutenant governor, especially given the state’s health care provider shortage.

And another Democratic candidate is Bridgette Nicole Schreiner, who goes by BridgieNix. Her website describes a career that includes film work, live entertainment, and fire performance. There being no real job requirements for lieutenant governor by virtue of it not being a real job, Schreiner sounds not only every bit as qualified as Anthony or Juaregui (if not Burke), but potentially less dangerous, in the event that something were to happen to a governor.

Yes, there’s always the chance a Nevada governor someday might not be able to finish out their term for reasons other than being elected to the U.S. Senate.

But barring such irregularities, if the 2026 race for lieutenant governor has any tangible effect on … anything,  that effect would be determining if a second-term Republican governor can run against a Democratic incumbent U.S. senator in 2028.

At least that’s something, however speculative. Usually the lieutenant governor race, like the office itself, is about nothing at all.