Nevada

Regent challenges Democratic incumbent in State Senate District 4 • Nevada Current

Published

2 years ago

May 16, 2024

Regent challenges Democratic incumbent in State Senate District 4 • Nevada Current

Democratic state Sen. Dina Neal is facing a challenge from a higher education regent in a primary race where the outcome will determine who represents the district for the next four years.

SD4 is a heavily Democratic district encompassing part of North Las Vegas. No Republicans filed for the seat, which means the winner of the upcoming primary election will automatically win the general election.

Neal was first elected to the Nevada State Senate seat in 2020 after representing the same area in the Nevada State Assembly for 10 years. To secure a second term in the upper chamber, Neal must survive a challenge by Laura Perkins, a first-term regent for the Nevada System of Higher Education. Perkins insists she was motivated to run by a desire to influence policy beyond what the Board of Regents is capable of, and not by dissatisfaction with Neal, who has butted heads with some members of North Las Vegas City Council and been publicly accused of misusing her influence.

‘It was just time,” Perkins said of her decision to run, “The time is right.”

Neal declined to be interviewed and did not respond to written questions submitted by the Current.

Perkins says her experience on the Board of Regents has prepared her for the Legislature.

“It’s like you have eight cities,” she said of the institutions overseen by the board. “I learned about finance, budget, human resources, investments, Title-9… You have to be a jack of all trades when you’re a regent.”

Perkins previously ran for mayor of North Las Vegas in 2022, coming in last in a crowded primary field of seven candidates. Pamela Goynes-Brown, who won that race and became the city’s first Black woman mayor, has endorsed Perkins in the state senate race. North Las Vegas City Councilman Isaac Barron also endorsed her.

“Perkins is an ethical, honest and fierce advocate for our entire community, not just her select friends,” said Goynes-Brown in a statement released by the campaign.

“I know she will restore moral and ethical representation to Nevada Senate District 4,” said Barron in a statement.

Goynes-Brown and Barron’s comments allude to public allegations made by the former head of the publicly-funded grant program NV Grow that Neal attempted to pressure him into awarding her friend money for his small business. Neal, who in 2015 passed the legislation that created the NV Grow program, has denied any wrongdoing and characterized the accusations as being part of a smear campaign by the City of North Las Vegas in retaliation over her work with Windsor Park, a long-blighted neighborhood where the homes are sinking into the ground.

Neal sponsored a bill during the last legislative session that secured $20 million from North Las Vegas and $10 million from the state to make the remaining homeowners in Windsor Park whole by relocating them to new properties. The city opposed the bill.

Perkins, when asked, did not directly address the criticisms of Neal being lobbied by her endorsers, saying that she “wants to run for the seat, not challenge her.” But she did call the endorsements “very motivating and encouraging.”

Perkins said that, if elected, her focus will be on education and economic development. She said she’d also like to find a way to help middle class families who are struggling with being caretakers for their elderly family members, a situation she experienced in the final years of her mom’s life.

Neal chairs the Senate Revenue and Economic Development Committee. Many of the bills she sponsored have dealt with tax policy. She has led efforts to modernize Nevada’s sales tax, which currently applies to tangible items and not their digital counterparts, and proposed a method for adjusting property tax without touching the beloved cap. She was also an outspoken critic of Tesla receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in tax abatements without approval from lawmakers.

Neal’s campaign had nearly $27,000 cash on hand as of March 31, according to her campaign finance reports. Her top contributors include Citizens for Justice Trust and Cox Communications, which gave $5,000 and $2,500, respectively.

Perkins had raised approximately $2,000 as of March 31, according to her campaign finance reports. Half of that — $1,000 — came from the real estate development company American Nevada Holdings.

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Nevada

Court OK’s counting late-arriving mail ballots in Nevada, 29 other states

Published

3 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Press Room

Court OK’s counting late-arriving mail ballots in Nevada, 29 other states

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Nevada’s laws allowing the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive up to four days after Election Day — so long as they are postmarked by that date — is constitutional under a Monday ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 ruling, justices upheld a challenge to a Mississippi law that’s similar to Nevada’s statute. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court’s three liberal members, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson, to uphold the law.

Conservatives Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The ruling affects 30 states, all of which allow some ballots received after Election Day to be counted. That includes Nevada, which allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received and counted up to four days later, and ballots without a postmark to be received and counted up to three days later.

Plaintiffs in the case — including the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party — had contended that federal laws referring to “elections” mean both the casting and counting of ballots, which they said must occur on Election Day.

“The federal election-day statutes do not preempt Mississippi’s law because the defining element of an ‘election’ has always been the electorate’s choice of candidate,” the case summary reads. “And a related federal statute — the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act — confirms that while federal law dictates when ballots must be cast, state law governs when they must be received.”

In Nevada, critics have contended that late-arriving ballots erode confidence in elections, because they delay learning final election results for days and, in some close races, can change the outcome.

Gov. Joe Lombardo has called the weeklong wait for final, unofficial results “a national embarrassment.”

Plaintiffs in the case made similar arguments, but were turned away by the court: “Finally, plaintiffs policy arguments about election integrity and voter confidence are properly addressed to legislatures, not courts,” the case summary reads.

Several attempts to require ballots to be received by Election Day have been introduced in Nevada’s Legislature, but none have been successful in the Democratically controlled body.

Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar has argued that the overwhelming majority of ballots are in and counted by Election Day, and only the closest races may be changed by late-arriving ballots. He’s advocated for more resources for county clerks and voter registrars to be able to count mail ballots more quickly.

Under the ruling, nothing will change for Nevada voters going to the polls in four months to vote in the November election. But officials still encourage voters to send in their mail ballots early, or to put them in drop boxes at voting centers during early voting or on Election Day.

Supreme Court upholds late-arriving mail ballots in Mississippi

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Nevada

One dead, four hospitalized after head-on crash on I-15 in Clark County

Published

13 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Press Room

One dead, four hospitalized after head-on crash on I-15 in Clark County

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada Highway Patrol responded to a two-vehicle crash on Interstate 15 near mile marker 94 Sunday evening.

The crash was reported at 6:43 p.m. on June 28.

MORE ON FOX5: Driver sustains life-threatening injuries in Las Vegas multi-vehicle crash

A passenger sedan and a pickup truck were involved in the crash. One vehicle was traveling southbound, lost control, crossed through the median, and struck the other vehicle head-on in the northbound travel lane.

One adult male died at the scene. Two people were transported by ground ambulance, and two others were transported by life flight to a local hospital.