The responsibilities of the Board of Regents include overseeing the Nevada System of Higher Education’s more than $2 billion budget, setting tuition prices, and hiring a chancellor and school presidents. They oversee four community colleges, two universities, one research institute, and one state college.

Currently, the board consists of 13 elected nonpartisan regents serving six-year terms. However, state lawmakers passed a bill last year that will reduce the board to nine regents serving four-year terms starting 2028.

Voters in District 4, which includes part of east Las Vegas and the City of North Las Vegas, can choose between Aaron Bautista, a Clark County School District special education teacher, and Tonia Holmes-Sutton, chair of the Nevada State Public Charter School Authority.

Both candidates vying for the position said they are not sold on Nevada’s ballot Question 1, which would remove from the Nevada State Constitution provisions that establish the Board of Regents as the governing body of NSHE.

If approved, the ballot question would give the state Legislature the ability to review and change the governing organization of public universities.

Bautista said he believes removing the Board of Regents would give the legislature too much say over the direction of higher education.

“I’m not for it,” said Bautista. “In Florida, they removed the Board of Regents and what ended up happening is that the Republican legislature got rid of some of the African American Studies classes because the Board of Regents wasn’t there. It prevents academic freedom, depending on who’s in office.”

Holmes-Sutton told the Nevada Faculty Alliance in April this year that she was against the proposed constitutional amendment. However, in an interview with the Nevada Current last week, Holmes-Sutton said she is currently “still processing” her position.

“I’m still making a decision myself as to what my position will be, ” Holmes-Sutton said. “I definitely believe that it is of importance to continue to research and engage with colleagues around the intentions and also opportunities that exist as the Legislature seeks to reform the Board of Regions governance.”

Holmes-Sutton noted that she wasn’t certain about Question 1’s chances of passing this election, after a similar ballot measure was narrowly defeated in 2020.

Affodability & accessibility

Bautista, who teaches at the Ellen Stewart Special School, received a bachelor’s degree in public administration from Nevada State College, and a master’s degree in special education from Grand Canyon University. 

His campaign reported raising nearly $3,000 during the first six months of his campaign. In financial fillings, Bautista listed his party affiliation as the Democratic Party.

He’s been endorsed by a number of unions, including AFL-CIO, the Clark County Education Association, SEIU Nevada, Laborers Local 872, IBEW, and Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Service Technicians, Local 525. He was also endorsed by Hispanics in Politics and Make the Road Nevada Action.

Bautista said he would like to see NSHE address the state’s teacher shortage by establishing a state loan forgiveness program for educators working in the state, similar to programs offered in California and Alabama. 

“In Nevada, where we have this big shortage, we don’t have programs like that at all,” Bautisa said.

Both candidates said they plan to approach their regent duties with college affordability and accessibility in mind, and emphasized the importance of college readiness to prepare students for the pressures of higher education. 

Bautista advocated for reexamining enrollment requirements under the Nevada Promise Scholarship, which requires students to sign up for a minimum of 12 credits to qualify. Bautista said many students are too intimidated by the required course load to apply for the scholarship and give higher education a try.

Safety & equity

Holmes-Sutton advocated for expanding dual credit programs, which allow high school students to earn college credits while in high school. Not all students in Nevada have equal access to dual credit programs, especially rural students where less resources are available, she said.

Holmes-Sutton has a master’s and doctorate of education from UNLV.

In addition to chairing the state Charter School Board, she serves the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Board of Directors and the WestEd Board of Directors. She previously served on the Nevada State Board of Education.

She reported raising about $5,500 during the first six months of her campaign, and spending about $2,500. In financial fillings, Holmes-Sutton listed her party affiliation as nonpartisan.

Holmes-Sutton has received endorsements from a number of military-focused groups, including the Nevada Democratic Veterans and Military Families Caucus, and the Nevada Veterans Association. She also received endorsements from the Nevada Faculty Alliance and Ironworkers Local Union 416.

Both candidates said they would prioritize improving student safety and mental health services.

Holmes-Sutton recounted how she herself has faced gun violence at four distinct periods in her life. Her daughter also faced gun violence as a student at UNLV who was attending classes when the Dec. 6 shooting at UNLV took place.

“You cannot focus on learning and teaching if you are fearful for your safety,” Holmes-Sutton said. “Well being, safety, and mental health are intrinsically linked in such a way that we must attend to them in a comprehensive manner.”

Newly elected regents will have no shortage of issues to address, including dealing with the fallout of higher education budgets devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In December, the board voted to raise tuition and fees by 5% to help pay for 11% raises for NSHE professional employees. 

Bautista said he believes equity should be top of mind when considering the budget and how best to allocate resources.

“When it comes to spending I’d like to look at equity. What institutions are at a disadvantage? Resources need to be distributed so students and faculty are not at a disadvantage when going to a certain university,” Bautista said. “We have to look at the budget and where it’s being spent and where it could be spent better.”

Holmes-Sutton said balancing funding needs and college affordability is one of the most significant responsibilities of the board, and requires expertise and research.

“We can examine how other states have addressed some of the challenges that they experience around funding. We can learn by way of research and experience from others to be able to inform the decisions that we make,” Holmes-Sutton said. “It’s important to engage in a way that is transparent and that seeks the expertise and experience of others in making the decisions that are best for our community.”

At a Sunday rally in Las Vegas, Vice President Kamala Harris accused former President Donald Trump of fanning “flames of fear” around immigration, warned of the dangers of a Trump second term, and urged people to make a voting plan ahead of the election.

Harris’ campaign stop at the World Market Center in downtown Las Vegas came roughly two weeks after Trump held a rally at the same location.

Trump used his speech at the World Market Center to stoke fears about immigrants, adding to a laundry list of anti-immigrant remarks, which include spreading lies about the Haitian community in Ohio.

“He continues to fan the flames of fear and division,” Harris said on Sunday. 

Voters have ranked immigration as a top issue in this election. Recent polling by UnidosUS, which surveyed Latinos in Nevada and other battleground states, showed immigration reform and border security among top priorities, with voters favoring policies that provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Harris said tackling the complexities of immigration is serious and “you know Donald Trump won’t solve it.”

Trump has also promised mass deportation if elected to a second term. 

“When he was president, he did nothing to fix our immigration system,” she said.

Harris also pointed to earlier this year when Congress was working on a bipartisan deal around immigration, which among other things would have given President Joe Biden the authority to shut down any asylum requests.

She said Trump “tanked the bill” because he thought it would hurt his campaign. The bill died after Trump came out against it.

“We must have comprehensive immigration reform, strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship,” Harris said.

Harris said there are hard-working immigrants who have “been here for years, including our Dreamers,” referring to immigrants who arrived in the United States with their families when they were children.

This was Harris’ second visit to Nevada since replacing Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate and the first since her debate with Trump earlier this month.

The rally came a few days from the anniversary of the 2017 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

“What happened on 1 October proves that smart gun safety is just common sense,” she said. 

Harris used the event to connect Trump to Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a 900-page proposal that sets forth a sweeping conservative agenda if Trump is elected.

“It is a detailed and dangerous blueprint for what he will do if elected again as president,” Harris said. 

She also pushed back against his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump attempted to repeal the law during his presidency. He has not provided any details on what health care policy he would put in its place.

During the debate with Harris, he told moderators he had “concepts of a plan.”

“We can laugh at many things but the consequences of this are quite serious,” Harris said Sunday.

Since her August rally, Harris has rolled out more economic proposals around addressing the housing crisis, which include building 300,000 units nationwide.

On Sunday she also talked about what she deemed “an opportunity economy” that calls for $25,000 in down payment assistance for homebuyers and small businesses, a $50,000 tax break, and $6,000 for new parents during the first year of their child’s life.

The Harris campaign said 7,500 people attended, compared to the estimated 6,000 the Trump campaign said attended during his visit Sept. 13.

Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday night as the state, with six electoral college votes, becomes increasingly important in a presidential race that polls show is barely moving to favor either candidate.

Both the vice-president and Donald Trump have been making frequent trips to Nevada, but Harris’s swing takes place two days after she visited the US-Mexico border, a vulnerable issue for Democrats that Harris is looking to defuse.

On Friday, Harris walked alongside a towering, rust-colored border wall fitted with barbed wire in Douglas, Arizona, and met with federal authorities to discuss illegal border crossing and fentanyl smuggling.

At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday, the former president attempted to blame Harris for the opioid epidemic. “She even wants to legalize fentanyl,” he said.

Six out of 10 Americans rate immigration as “very important”, according to the Pew Research Center, and other polling suggests voters trust Trump can handle the issue more effectively than Harris can.

In contrast, fewer than half of voters (40%) said abortion, the key Republican vulnerability, was a very important issue to their vote.

In a speech in San Francisco on Saturday, Harris said the “race is as close as it could possibly be” and described it “a margin-of-error race”. The Democrat candidate added that she felt she was running as the underdog.

Democrats have also begun testing a new strategy to appeal to younger voters, including visitors to Las Vegas with its long-crafted reputation for inebriation, with posts about what it calls “Trump’s tequila tax” that its says could come as a result of proposed import tariffs.

Harris’s campaign swing through Las Vegas comes as both candidates have said they plan to end taxes on tips. Trump presented his proposal in the city in June; Harris used her own rally in August to make the same pledge.

The issue resonates in Las Vegas, where there are approximately 60,000 hospitality workers. Nevada’s Culinary Union has endorsed Harris.

Ted Pappageorge, the culinary union’s secretary-treasurer, told the Associated Press that the union favored Harris’s proposal because she pledged to tackle what his union calls “sub-minimum wage”.

“That shows us she’s serious,” Pappageorge said.

Trump was at the same Las Vegas venue that Harris is speaking at earlier this month. In that address, he called his opponent the “would-be the president of invasion”.