Twice-Vetoed Bills Could Come Back in Nevada: Drug Prices, Senior Rents and Guns Ride on a Dead-Heat Governor's Race
Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed the same bills in 2023 and again in 2025 — a Medicare-level cap on drug prices, a senior rent cap, an under-21 semiautomatic-rifle ban. The Las Vegas Sun reports they could all return if Aaron Ford wins a governor's race polling at 42 percent apiece, when the Legislature meets on February 1.
Some Nevada bills have died twice and are waiting on one election. The Las Vegas Sun reports that a long list of measures Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed in both the 2023 and 2025 sessions could be revived if Attorney General Aaron Ford wins the governor's race: Assembly Bill 259's cap on prescription drug prices at Medicare levels, Assembly Bill 280's pilot limiting senior rent increases to 5 percent a year, the under-21 ban on semiautomatic rifles and shotguns he vetoed a second time, an in-vitro-fertilization rights bill, hospital nurse-ratio and medical-debt measures, paid family leave of 12 weeks at larger employers, and tenant protections. Lombardo issued a state-record 87 vetoes in 2025, according to the Sun — and at least eight other bills were rejected in both sessions.
The race that decides their fate is a tie in public. The Sun reported the RealClearPolling average at 42 percent for each candidate. Ford has said he would sign several of the vetoed measures within his first 30 days, including the drug-price cap, universal free school meals and limits on corporate homebuying — Senate Bill 391's cap of 100 investor purchases a year among them, a bill that fell one vote short of the two-thirds Senate majority it needed after the governor's office lobbied against it, according to the Sun's account. Lombardo argues his vetoes protected Nevadans from costly mandates, pledges no new taxes, and points to $2 billion in new funding during his term and $183 million for housing.
Even a Ford win would not enact any of it by itself. Each bill would have to be reintroduced, heard and passed again in the 120-day session that opens February 1 in Carson City, and revenue-raising measures need two-thirds of both chambers — a mark the Sun noted Democrats sit one seat short of, at 13 of 21 in the Senate and 27 of 42 in the Assembly, even if they keep their majorities. Some vetoed ideas have already shown the path: in 2025 Lombardo signed the fuel-tax indexing bill for Clark County and a heat-mitigation planning law after rejecting near-identical versions in 2023. Tuesday's vote decides who holds the pen; February decides what comes back.
