Both Nevada gubernatorial candidates, incumbent Joe Lombardo and challenger Attorney General Aaron Ford, have traded shots back and forth for a while now.
Attack ads have aired on KTVN 2 News Nevada numerous times, so we wanted to take a reality check to see how factual they are.
The Committee to Elect Aaron Ford has been running two ads, “Wholeheartedly” and “Build” for almost a month now.
The ads attack Lombardo on his stance on data centers.
Claim 1: Raising costs
Ford starts off “Wholeheartedly” by saying, “Data centers are raising our costs.”
Verdict: False
At least for now, NV Energy says that data centers pay for their own energy and are looking for plans to have them pay for an increased demand on the electrical grid.
Data centers are increasing strain on the grid, according to NV Energy.
"Currently, NV Energy has requests for service totaling approximately 22,000 megawatts of new demand, far exceeding anything previously contemplated,” the company sent in an email. “For context, Nevada’s total peak electric demand in 2025 was about 8,500 megawatts, meaning current requests represent nearly three times the state's peak load.”
So if more infrastructure is needed, costs could shift to customers if an agreement is not made to have data centers pay for build-out to meet the demand.
Truckee Meadows Water Authority also said data centers pay for their own water use.
Claim 2: Wholeheartedly
The ad continues by playing a short clip of Lombardo saying, “I am wholeheartedly in support of data centers.”
Verdict: True
Lombardo said this in a one-on-one interview with 2 News Nevada back in May.
The governor has also visited data center groundbreakings and has said in the past he feels data centers are not taking a huge draw on our resources.
Lombardo did recently, however, sign an executive order to create stronger guardrails on new data centers.
Claim 3: Donations
Ford later says in the ad, "Now Joe Lombardo has taken millions of dollars from data centers.”
Verdict: Misleading
The Lombardo-supported political action committee, Better Nevada, has received $2 million in donations from people connected with data centers.
That includes Jessica Roy, wife of Rob Roy, who is the Founder of Switch.
Switch has major campuses at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and Las Vegas.
She donated $1 million.
Another $1 million was donated by Benjamin Horowitz and his wife, Felicia. Benjamin Horowitz is an AI investor and supports AI and data centers.
Claim 4:
The two ads are very similar, but in “Build”, Ford claims Lombardo “handed them (data centers) over 200 million of your tax dollars."
Verdict: Misleading
From 2023 to 2024, under Lombardo’s tenure, about $233 million was awarded in tax breaks to data centers.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development is the one that gives them out.
The tax break program was adopted from a 2015 bill that Ford co-sponsored.
During this time, GOED had no choice but to award the tax breaks, as long as the data center met a specific set of requirements.
That’s since changed after a new law went into effect last year, giving the GOED board more flexibility.
