Utilities in Nevada are backing Republican Governor Joe Lombardo with their checkbooks in his reelection bid in the 2026 gubernatorial race. No other candidates in the race for Nevada’s next governor received utility contributions this cycle – including Democratic challenger and current Attorney General, Aaron Ford.
Southwest Gas and NV Energy give $40,000 to Governor Lombardo and his PAC
Lombardo raised significant contributions in the first quarter of 2026, including through his political action committee, Nevada Way. Throughout 2025 and this year to date, the sitting governor received some of NV Energy and Southwest Gas’s highest contributions to any candidate. NV Energy gave Lombardo’s campaign six times the utility’s median contribution to other candidates in the same period, and Southwest Gas gave five times its median contribution. Neither utility contributed to any other candidate in Nevada’s gubernatorial race to date.
NV Energy seeks Lombardo’s favor
Lombardo’s reelection comes at a critical time for the state’s largest electric utility, NV Energy. Many community and energy industry advocates are urging the Governor to put a halt to NV Energy’s highly controversial peak demand charge, approved by the Public Utility Commission of Nevada (PUCN) last year. The new rate structure will charge customers based on their highest 15 minute interval of electricity use each day, and it is expected to increase bills for some Nevadans significantly. Lombardo has remained silent on his course of action regarding the demand charge, while the state’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, run by current Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford, is challenging the PUCN’s decision. Ford said he will “halt” the demand charge if elected governor. In Nevada, governors appoint commissioners to the PUCN, and Ford stated he would appoint commissioners “who are tasked with lowering utility costs.” Controversy over the demand charge comes on the heels of NV Energy shareholders settling to return $63 million to customers, after PUCN staff found the utility had overcharged customers by more than $65 million since 2002.
Southwest Gas objectives bolstered by Lombardo’s administration
Southwest Gas has benefited from Lombardo’s governorship. The gas utility was one of the largest funders to the governor’s 2022 campaign, and early in his tenure, Lombardo appointed former SWG lobbyist Dwayne McClinton as Director of the Governor’s Office of Energy (GOE). Less than one month later, and shortly after GOE’s State Climate Strategy website went “Under Construction,” Lombardo released Executive Order 2023-007, drafted by McClinton, which established the State of Nevada Energy Policy Objectives. These objectives diverged dramatically from Nevada’s renewable portfolio standard and former climate strategy by excluding a transition from methane gas, including in new home and commercial construction. In July 2023, Lombardo released a letter announcing Nevada’s exit from the U.S. Climate Alliance, citing Executive Order 2023-007 as his reasoning. His office has yet to release any new climate strategy.
In the eleventh hour of Nevada’s 2025 legislative session, Southwest Gas’s alternative rate-making bill – Senate Bill 417 – passed out of the legislature. The bill allows the utility to propose rate-making that could allow rate increases with little oversight, shifting significant financial risks onto Southwest Gas’s customers and opening the door to accelerated, large-scale gas infrastructure construction. SWG President Justin Brown sent a letter to Lombardo stating the bill “promotes regulatory innovation,”
Two days later, SWG lobbyist Dylan Keith sent a letter to Lombardo to “humbly request” his signature on the bill. Lombardo signed the bill the following week, and SWG CEO Karen Haller stated in a release that the move would lead to “improved timeliness of recovery of our costs.” Less than a month later, McClinton, still serving as Director of the GOE at the time, reached out to Lombardo’s policy advisor, Chase McNamara, requesting signed copies of SB 417 on behalf of Southwest Gas and provided as an example a previously signed copy of SB 281, SWG’s integrated resource planning bill.
The Energy and Policy Institute obtained the correspondence about SB 417 from public records requests.
McClinton left the GOE in March 2026 for a position at Red Post Energy Group, an investment and development firm for large-scale energy infrastructure.
Senate majority leader Nicole Cannizzaro takes utility contributions
Senator Nicole Cannizzaro, a Democrat who announced her bid for state Attorney General in 2025, has received considerably more utility contributions in the last year than her Democratic primary opponent, Zach Conine, the current State Treasurer. The week following her campaign announcement, Cannizzaro received $10,000 from Southwest Gas. She received $10,000 from NV Energy on March 24 of this year. Both utilities have donated to Cannizarro and her PAC, Battle Born and Raised Leadership, throughout the years, with contributions dating back to 2023 totaling $24,000 from NV Energy and $27,500 from Southwest Gas.
Southwest Gas has a history of beating back climate action in Nevada, and in 2021, it made an attempt with the aid of Cannizzaro. During the 2021 legislative session, Southwest Gas lobbied against legislation that would have required the utility to file projections of its infrastructure investments and fuel demand, and would have required regulators to compile reports on the role of gas utilities in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Simultaneously, Southwest Gas proposed a bill carried by Cannizzaro that would have allowed the gas utility to replace thousands of miles of pipelines and recover costs through a monthly rate. Neither bill passed. In 2022, Southwest Gas was connected to a smear campaign against the sponsor of a separate bill the utility opposed the year prior.
Utilities spend big in targeted Nevada campaigns and PACs
NV Energy and Southwest Gas made maximum contributions to other campaigns and PACs outside of major office elections. BizPAC, the political action committee representing the Vegas Chamber – the largest chamber of commerce in the state – received $10,000 from NV Energy in the first campaign finance cycle of 2026, as well as an additional $10,000 from the utility in 2025. Southwest Gas has given BizPac $23,312 since 2023. Southwest Gas and NV Energy are both “President’s Club” members of the Vegas Chamber, paying annual dues, and NV Energy’s CEO Brandon Barkhuff sits on the Board of Trustees alongside Southwest Gas’s President and now CEO Justin Brown. The utilities have in the past leveraged relationships with local chambers of commerce to gain support in rate cases and other impactful dockets before the PUCN. That includes the Henderson Chamber of Commerce’s PAC, IMPAC, which received $8,075 from NV Energy in 2025. Southwest Gas has contributed a total of $22,450 to IMPAC since 2023.
Southwest Gas has targeted specific legislators for some of its largest contributions in recent years. Assemblymember Elaine Marzola, chair of the Committee on Commerce and Labor – a committee that is pivotal in determining legislation impacting statutes and regulation of public utilities at the PUCN – has received $35,000 from Southwest Gas since the beginning of 2025, including contributions to her political action committee, Nevada Brave PAC.
In Nevada’s 2025 regular session, Senator Rochelle Nguyen chaired the Senate Growth and Infrastructure Committee and served as vice-chair of the Finance Committee, two key committees for energy-related legislation in the state. Nguyen has championed major gas utility-related legislation and consistently receives some of SWG’s largest financial contributions to legislators. Between 2021 and 2024, Senator Nguyen and her PAC – Nguyening Leadership – received $36,000 from SWG, according to campaign contribution reports. In 2025, Nguyen received $20,000 from SWG, including a $10,000 contribution and an additional contribution to her PAC. Nguyen’s PAC raised $28,500 in 2025, $10,000 of which came from SWG.
One of SWG’s employees is running for the Assembly District 40 seat, representing Carson City, Storey County, and Washoe Valley. Stacy Woodbury, a SWG public affairs manager, was registered as a lobbyist for SWG and its transmission company, Great Basin, as recently as the 2025 regular session and is now running to fill the vacated seat. Woodbury received two contributions of $2,500 from SWG in 2026 and 2025.
Utility campaign contributions remain high
NV Energy and Southwest Gas’s annual campaign contributions increased significantly leading up to the 2022 midterm elections. Analysis of publicly available data shows that Southwest Gas surpassed that all-time high in 2025, spending a total of $318,500. In the first quarter of 2026, SWG donated $92,000.
NV Energy has yet to reach its 2022 contribution. The data shows a significant drop in contributions in 2025, the same year the utility was investigated for its decades-long billing overcharges. But its spending is back up this year: as of the first quarter of 2026, NV Energy spent almost twice as much as it spent in all of 2025, nearly as much as it spent in 2023, and over half of its total spending in 2024.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Wikimedia Commons
