Medicaid and SNAP cuts could hurt Lombardo’s reelection in Nevada

A cut to Medicaid or SNAP in Nevada would hit household budgets fast and leave Gov. Joe Lombardo exposed in a state where safety-net coverage is already a defining political issue. Roughly 1.7 million Nevadans were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in February 2026, while about 495,800 received SNAP benefits in fiscal 2025, making federal assistance a central part of the state’s economic security.

That matters because Nevada has already shown how quickly health coverage can move voters. The uninsured rate for nonelderly Nevadans fell from 23.5% in 2013 to 12.7% in 2016, a gain of about 246,000 people with insurance, driven largely by Medicaid expansion. Even now, state uninsured rates remain a live issue, and any rollback of coverage would land in a battleground that has become unusually sensitive to medical bills, premiums and food costs.

Lombardo has tried to get ahead of the issue. In a January 2025 letter, he urged Congress not to slash Medicaid funding and warned that cuts to the safety-net program could have “serious consequences” in a state heavily dependent on federal health insurance support. He said federal Medicaid dollars had helped Nevada expand school health services, lower the uninsured rate and make progress on behavioral health care, and he singled out rolling back expanded Medicaid, imposing a per-capita federal cap and reducing matching funds tied to hospital provider fees as especially harmful.

At the same time, Lombardo is trying to reassure voters that he can protect benefits while remaining aligned with Donald Trump, whose endorsement he has in a tight reelection race against Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford. Lombardo told Nevadans in January 2025 that Medicaid, SNAP and other benefits were safe from Trump’s executive orders, a message that may be harder to sustain if congressional cuts or administrative changes start to show up in family budgets.

Ford has made that pressure point central to his campaign. His “Affordable Nevada” agenda calls for capping prescription drugs at the Medicare-negotiated price and canceling medical debt for tens of thousands of Nevadans. Ford has said medical debt pushes people to skip or delay care, and he has pointed to Somos Votantes, which canceled $133.8 million in medical debt for more than 128,000 people in Clark and Washoe counties last November, as a model. His proposal would also cap interest on medical debt at 3% and bar hospitals from reporting that debt to credit agencies.

Lombardo’s health-care bill, SB 495, would have created an Office of Mental Health, sped up provider credentialing and revised prior authorization and Medicaid-related rules, but it failed to advance on June 3, 2025. In a state where government coverage reaches so many households, the political risk is clear: when health care and food assistance feel less secure, Nevada voters may treat affordability as a ballot issue, not a talking point.