Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak (D) ended his reelection bid Friday after stating he did not see a pathway to victory as thousands of outstanding ballots were still being counted.
He congratulated Republican Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and wished him well on his coming term in a statement he released Friday evening.
CNN broke the news during its ongoing election coverage and network anchors Dana Bash and Abby Phillip both agreed Sisolak’s lengthy Covid mandates likely hurt him with voters. The governor did not lift mask mandates until February of this year – 23 months into the pandemic.
“This sort of bucks the trend of what we have seen in the governors’ races since election day, which is Democrats have done well,” Bash said. “This is not one. This is an incumbent Democrat who has actually been defeated in a state that was hit incredibly hard by Covid because, of course, Las Vegas in particular is so tourist and tourism-focused.”
Phillip said:
Right, and one of the challenges going into this, as we’ve been discussing when it comes to the Senate race, is that the unions, which are a huge part of how Democrats get out the vote. It’s a huge part of their constituency. A lot of those workers were hit hard in ways that are hard to define with the numbers. The jobs came back, but not the ones that they had before. And so there was a lot of unsatisfaction with how that went in Nevada.
Sisolak is the first incumbent governor or senator to lose a bid for reelection since the polls closed Tuesday.
“Obviously that is not the outcome I want, but I believe in our election system, in democracy and honoring the will of Nevada voters,” Sisolak said in a statement. “So whether you voted for me or Sheriff Lombardo, it is important that we now come together to continue moving the state forward. That is why I reached out to the Sheriff to wish him success.”
Watch above, via CNN.
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