Nevada
Here are the winners in Southern Nevada’s local government primaries – The Nevada Independent
Former Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) and Las Vegas City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman emerged victorious in a high-profile Las Vegas mayoral race primary that’s turning out to be more about politics than is reflected by the race’s nonpartisan label.
Las Vegas City Council incumbents Brian Knudsen and Olivia Diaz won their seats outright after Tuesday’s primary, but an open seat on the council has now become a contest between two former Assembly colleagues.
And another state lawmaker will vie for a seat on the Clark County Commission, the most powerful local government body in the state, against a well-funded Republican attorney who has run close races against powerful Democrats in the two past cycles.
Here’s a look at how Tuesday’s primaries turned out for Southern Nevada local government candidates, including in Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City.
Las Vegas Mayor
Las Vegas City Council
Clark County Commission
Other Southern Nevada local government races
Las Vegas Mayor
Berkley topped the field of 14 mayoral candidates running in Tuesday’s primary and will advance to a November runoff. As of Thursday afternoon, she had won 35 percent of the vote and garnered around 5,000 more votes than Seaman, who was 7,000 votes ahead of fellow City Councilman Cedric Crear.
The position of Las Vegas mayor is nonpartisan, meaning that candidates don’t list a party preference and all registered voters are allowed to vote in the primary. The top two vote-getters in the primary advance to the general election, unless one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, in which case that person is considered elected to the office.
If elected, Berkley would return to politics a dozen years after she lost a high-profile race to unseat Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) in 2012, which ended her 14-year congressional career. Seaman has represented Ward 2 on the city council since 2019.
Though the position is nonpartisan, the race between Seaman and Berkley is likely to have strong partisan undertones.
Seaman, a former Republican assemblywoman, openly appealed to Republican voters during the primary and said she plans to vote for former President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election. Berkley, a lifelong Democrat, said she will vote to re-elect President Joe Biden.
In a forum hosted by The Nevada Independent last month, Berkley and Seaman feuded over crime levels in the city, with Seaman saying crime — particularly property crime — is “out of control in the city.” The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, however, reported a 10 percent decrease in property crimes in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to a statewide crime database.
At a victory party Tuesday, Seaman said she would be a “law and order mayor” so that Las Vegas does not “end up like our neighboring cities because of far-left liberal policies.”
Las Vegas City Council
Two incumbent city council members easily won their re-election bids outright, while a third primary will head to a runoff after no candidate received a majority of the vote.
Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong (D-Las Vegas) and former Assemblyman C.H. Miller (D-North Las Vegas) will face off in the November election for Ward 5 after being the top two vote-getters on Tuesday, raking in 31 percent and 19 percent, respectively. The Ward 5 seat will be vacated by Crear, who had been in office since 2018.
Summers-Armstrong, who is in her first term as an assemblywoman, received endorsements from an assortment of veterans and law enforcement groups, as well as the Culinary Union and the Service Employees International Union’s Nevada chapter, which represents health care and public service workers.
Miller, meanwhile, had the backing of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), the Southern Nevada Building Trades Unions and other labor organizations.
In addition, Ward 3 Councilwoman Olivia Diaz will avoid a runoff after clearing the 50 percent threshold Tuesday.
Diaz’s re-election race was among the most high-profile city races, as she went up against Melissa Clary, who’s been active on historic preservation projects in the city, in a rematch of their 2019 race.
Diaz improved upon her 2019 performance when she won by less than 100 votes in the general election. As of Wednesday evening, Diaz led Clary by more than 1,000 votes and 20 percentage points.
PACs linked to Laborers Local 872, the union that represents Las Vegas construction workers, gave more than $50,000 to Clary’s campaign as of the end of March (slightly less than half of her total fundraising haul) after previously giving $100,000 to Diaz (out of around $600,000 raised in total) ahead of the 2019 election.
Diaz told The Nevada Independent earlier this year that she thinks the union’s change in support resulted from a vote she made in 2020 that went against the Laborers’ position.
The city council had voted 4-3 in 2020 to repeal a 2018 ordinance requiring developers to take additional steps to meet with residents before beginning redevelopment projects on golf courses and open spaces. Union members supported the repeal — arguing it was necessary to protect union jobs — but Diaz was one of the three members to oppose the repeal. Union officials did not return repeated interview requests from The Indy.
In Ward 1, Brian Knudsen, the mayor pro tem who has been in office since 2019, easily won re-election, winning more than 60 percent of the vote in a three-candidate field.
Clark County Commission
Primary season was sleepy for the Clark County Commission, considered the most powerful local government board in the state because of its oversight on business, infrastructure and certain funding allocations for a majority of Nevada’s population. But things are expected to heat up in the general election.
The primary featured three county commission races, with Republican and Democratic primaries in the District C race determining which candidates will face off in November. Commissioner Ross Miller, a Democrat, is not seeking re-election.
Democrat Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod and Republican April Becker advanced to the general election for the District C seat. Bilbray-Axelrod — who received 72 percent of the vote against Hunter Cain in the primary — is a four-term assemblywoman who left her seat to run for a county commission position. Bilbray-Axelrod’s biggest donor at $10,000 was Plumbers & Pipefitters Local No. 525, a plumbing and service technician union.
Becker — an attorney who received 69 percent of the vote Tuesday night — ran an unsuccessful campaign against Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) in the 2022 general election for Congressional District 3. Becker received donations from three political action committees run by Tommy White, a leader for Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 872 for a total of $20,000. Becker had nearly $300,000 in hand at the end of the last campaign finance period.
Meanwhile, Ryan Hamilton won the District A Republican primary Tuesday and will face Democratic incumbent Michael Naft in the November election.
Among Naft’s top donors giving the maximum of $10,000 donations were the parent company of the Oakland Athletics, state Treasurer Zach Conine’s Let’s Get to Work Nevada PAC and MGM Resorts International. Hamilton’s largest donor at $5,205 was James Thomson, an adviser to the president of regional development at UNLV and former CEO of the RAND Corp., a policy consulting firm.
Two other seats on the commission are up in 2024, but did not require primary elections because not enough candidates filed. In District B, Democratic Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick is running for re-election against Libertarian candidate Jesse Welsh, while Democratic Commissioner William McCurdy II is running for re-election in District D against Republican candidate David Gomez in a heavily Democratic district.
Other Southern Nevada local government races
Henderson
Incumbents on the Henderson City Council, which governs the second most-populated city in Nevada behind Las Vegas, found success Tuesday, with council members Jim Seebock and Dan Stewart winning outright with more than 50 percent of the vote. Council races are nonpartisan, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election unless a candidate wins more than 50 percent of primary votes.
Meanwhile, Councilman Dan Shaw faced a more competitive race that will likely lead to a runoff with runner-up Monica “Doc” Larson. Shaw received 42 percent of the vote, 9 percentage points more than Larson.
North Las Vegas
Councilwoman Ruth Garcia Anderson will proceed to a general election runoff to retain her nonpartisan city council seat in Ward 2. Garcia Anderson will face Robert “Twixx” Taylor, who has owned various small businesses and is a health advocate, in November after the two each received about 39 percent of the vote.
Councilman Richard Cherchio did not face any opponents in the Ward 4 primary and will be elected to another term.
North Las Vegas residents also voted to pass both Questions 1 and 2 on the ballot, which will renew a property tax of less than 30 cents for every $100 in property valuation to fund police, parks, fire and other emergency and community services.
City leaders initially wanted the measures to be considered at a single-issue December special election, but the vote was postponed to coincide with the primary over concerns from state election officials that a December election arrangement would attract too low of participation.
Boulder City
Boulder City Councilwoman/Mayor Pro Tem Sherri Jorgensen won her seat in the primary.
Denise Ashurst, a retired veteran, will face incumbent Matt Fox for the second open seat on the Boulder City Council.
Mesquite
Mesquite is the fastest-growing city in Nevada, with a 10.5 percent population increase from 2020 to 2023. No incumbents won outright in two Mesquite City Council races.
Mayor Al Litman, who has been mayor since 2014, will face Jesse Whipple, who is on the city’s master plan committee, in the general election for mayor.
Seat 2 on the Mesquite City Council is also up for election, with Kevin Parrish and Ronald Shackelford advancing to the general election.
The United States and Israel launched targeted attacks on Iran on Saturday. The move brought new uncertainty into global energy markets, as northern Nevadans could be paying more at the pump in the coming weeks.
Following the strikes, oil prices increased. Brent crude, the international benchmark, jumped to roughly $73 a barrel, while the national benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, traded above $67.
Much of the concern centers around the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. which carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies.
Patrick de Haan, head of petroleum analysis with GasBuddy, a price tracking company, spoke on the current questions in the region.
“The known would reduce oil prices if there becomes clarity, but it’s the unknown that is stoking fears…. If there is some sort of clarity in the days ahead, whether from Iran, the United States, or Israel, on how long this would last. We’d be able to put potentially an end date for the potential impacts that we’re seeing,” said de Haan.
Experts say for every $5 to $10 increase in oil prices, drivers could pay 15 to 25 cents more per gallon.
According to Triple-A, the average price of a gallon of gas in Nevada on Sunday comes in at $3.70, which comes in above the national average of roughly $2.98.
Over at the Rainbow Market on Vassar Street, prices sat just below four dollars a gallon on Sunday. Reno resident Abran Reyes talked about gas prices potentially going up.
“Whether it’s to work, to maybe run errands, to do stuff that helps you, gas is essential…. That gas price really hits, especially in today’s economy, where gas prices are extraordinary…. I just hope everyone’s safe. I hope our soldiers and all of our troops can be okay,” said Reyes.
More than 10,000 people have enrolled in Nevada’s new public option health plans, which debuted last fall with the expectation that they would bring lower prices to the health insurance market.
Those preliminary numbers from the open enrollment period that ended in January are less than a third of what state officials had projected. Nevada is the third state so far to launch a public option plan, along with Colorado and Washington state. The idea is to offer lower-cost plans to consumers to expand health care access.
But researchers said plans like these are unlikely to fill the gaps left by sweeping federal changes, including the expiration of enhanced subsidies for plans bought on Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
The public option gained attention in the late 2000s when Congress considered but ultimately rejected creating a health plan funded and run by the government that would compete with private carriers in the market. The programs in Washington state, Colorado, and Nevada don’t go that far — they aren’t government-run but are private-public partnerships that compete with private insurance.
In recent years, states have considered creating public option plans to make health coverage more affordable and to reduce the number of uninsured people. Washington was the first state to launch a program, in 2021, and Colorado followed in 2023.
Washington and Colorado’s programs have run into challenges, including a lack of participation from clinicians, hospitals, and other care providers, as well as insurers’ inability to meet rate reduction benchmarks or lower premiums compared with other plans offered on the market.
Nevada law requires that the carriers of the public option plans — Battle Born State Plans, named after a state motto — lower premium costs compared with a benchmark “silver” plan in the marketplace by 15% over the next four years.
But that amount might not make much difference to consumers with rising premium payments from the loss of the ACA’s enhanced tax credits, said Keith Mueller, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute.
“That’s not a lot of money,” Mueller said.
Three of the eight insurers on the state’s exchange, Nevada Health Link, offered the state plans during the open enrollment period.
Insurance companies plan to meet the lower premium cost requirement in Nevada by cutting broker fees and commissions, which prompted opposition from insurance brokers in the state. In response, Nevada marketplace officials told state lawmakers in January that they will give a flat-fee reimbursement to brokers.
The public option has faced opposition among state leaders. In 2024, a state judge dismissed a lawsuit, brought by a Nevada state senator and a group that advocates for lower taxes, that challenged the public option law as unconstitutional. They have appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Federal Policy Impacts
Recent federal changes create more obstacles.
Nevada is consistently among the states with the largest populations of people who do not have health insurance coverage. Last year, nearly 95,000 people in the state received the enhanced ACA tax credits, averaging $465 in savings per month, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
But the enhanced tax credits expired at the end of the year, and it appears unlikely that lawmakers will bring them back. Nationwide ACA enrollment has decreased by more than 1 million people so far this year, down from record-high enrollment of 24 million last year.
About 4 million people are expected to lose health coverage from the expiration of the tax credits, according to the Congressional Budget Office. An additional 3 million are projected to lose coverage because of other policy changes affecting the marketplace.
Justin Giovannelli, an associate research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said the changes to the ACA in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last summer, will make it more difficult for people to keep their coverage. These changes include more frequent enrollment paperwork to verify income and other personal information, a shortened enrollment window, and an end to automatic reenrollment.
In Nevada, the changes would amount to an estimated 100,000 people losing coverage, according to KFF.
“All of that makes getting coverage on Nevada Health Link harder and more expensive than it would be otherwise,” Giovannelli said.
State officials projected ahead of open enrollment that about 35,000 people would purchase the public option plans. Of the 104,000 people who had purchased a plan on the state marketplace as of mid-January, 10,762 had enrolled in one of the public option plans, according to Nevada Health Link.
Katie Charleson, communications officer for the state health exchange, said the original enrollment estimate was based on market conditions before the recent increases in customers’ premium costs. She said that the public option plans gave people facing higher costs more choices.
“We expect enrollment in Battle Born State Plans to grow over time as awareness increases and as Nevadans continue seeking quality coverage options that help reduce costs,” Charleson said.
According to KFF, nationally the enhanced subsidies saved enrollees an average of $705 annually in 2024, and enrollees would save an estimated $1,016 in premium payments on average in 2026 if the subsidies were still in place. Without the subsidies, people enrolled in the ACA marketplace could be seeing their premium costs more than double.
Insights From Washington and Colorado
Washington and Colorado are not planning to alter their programs due to the expiration of the tax credits, according to government officials in those states.
Other states that had recently considered creating public options have backtracked. Minnesota officials put off approving a public option in 2024, citing funding concerns. Proposals to create public options in Maine and New Mexico also sputtered.
Washington initially saw meager enrollment in its Cascade Select public option plans; only 1% of state marketplace enrollees chose a public option plan in 2021. But that changed after lawmakers required hospitals to contract with at least one public option plan by 2023. Last year the state reported that 94,000 customers enrolled, accounting for 30% of all customers on the state marketplace. The public option plans were the lowest-premium silver plans in 31 of Washington’s 39 counties in 2024.
A 2025 study found that since Colorado implemented its public option, called the Colorado Option, coverage through the ACA marketplace has become more affordable for enrollees who received subsidies but more expensive for enrollees who did not.
Colorado requires all insurers offering coverage through its marketplace to include a public option that follows state guidelines. The state set premium reduction targets of 5% a year for three years beginning in 2023. Starting this year, premium costs are not allowed to outpace medical inflation.
Though the insurers offering the public option did not meet the premium reduction targets, enrollment in the Colorado Option has increased every year it has been available. Last year, the state saw record enrollment in its marketplace, with 47% of customers purchasing a public option plan.
Giovannelli said states are continuing to try to make health insurance more affordable and accessible, even if federal changes reduce the impact of those efforts.
“States are reacting and trying to continue to do right by their residents,” Giovannelli said, “but you can’t plug all those gaps.”
Are you struggling to afford your health insurance? Have you decided to forgo coverage? Click here to contact KFF Health News and share your story.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Southern Nevada has a proud history of competing — and winning — through boldness and reinvention. We have developed a world-class tourism economy, built globally recognized brands and demonstrated our ability to rebound from significant disruptions. In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, however, we must intentionally design the next chapter of our economic story. Communities worldwide are continuously enhancing their sophistication, and we must keep pace.
Since joining the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance in late August of last year, I have consistently heard from community partners that we must diversify and enhance Southern Nevada’s economy. Our goal is to build upon and complement the strengths we already possess.
To achieve this, the alliance, as Southern Nevada’s regional economic development organization and designated Regional Development Agency, is embarking on a comprehensive strategic planning process. This initiative will guide our economic development priorities both in the near and long term, ensuring that we focus on areas that will yield the most positive impact.
The alliance has a history of reinvention, having been established in 1958 as the Southern Nevada Industrial Foundation, later becoming the Nevada Development Authority, and since 2011, operating under its current name in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
Economic development extends beyond merely attracting companies. It encompasses the ability of local families to access high-wage careers, the opportunity for young people to build their futures at home and the resilience of our economy to withstand disruptions.
Over the past decade, Southern Nevada has made significant strides toward economic diversification, with investment outcomes in 2025 surpassing those of 2024. However, our work is far from complete. While tourism will always be a foundational strength and source of pride for our region, over-reliance on any single sector poses risks. A diversified economy enhances stability, and stability creates opportunities. We are united in our desire for more accessible housing, expanded health care and education, and greater upward mobility for our residents.
This strategic planning effort aims to ensure that the alliance and its partners concentrate on the right initiatives in the right manner. It will validate the region’s target industries and subsectors, narrowing our focus on areas where Southern Nevada has genuine competitive advantages and long-term potential. The planning process will include community interviews, focus groups and surveys to ensure our final strategy reflects the real opportunities and challenges facing Southern Nevada. We will establish flagship goals and a prioritized strategy matrix to direct our attention and resources toward meaningful outcomes.
A crucial aspect of this process involves clarifying roles within the broader economic ecosystem. Economic development is a team sport — when organizations replicate efforts, operate in silos or compete for recognition, the region loses valuable time and credibility, allowing opportunities to slip away. I have witnessed this behavior in various markets, serving as a red flag for prospective companies.
We have already made strides in building partnerships, exemplified by a Memorandum of Understanding signed in November 2025 with the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada to jointly support economic development education and advocacy for community leaders statewide.
Our strategic work will also include a organizational assessment of the alliance, evaluating our mission, resource deployment and engagement model. Economic impact requires operational excellence and measurable execution. Most importantly, this plan — which we anticipate completing by late April — will feature a three-year road map with clear timelines, recommended actions and meaningful metrics to transparently track our progress. A longtime mentor of mine often said, “What gets watched gets measured, and what gets measured gets done.”
Las Vegas has always taken the initiative to shape its own future. This strategic plan presents an opportunity for us to do what we do best: come together, think bigger, act smarter and create something lasting. Together, we can build a purposeful and resilient economic future for Southern Nevada.
Danielle Casey is president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance.
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