Nevada AG Aaron Ford Heads to Santa Monica For Campaign Fundraiser with Kamala Harris

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford is taking his governor’s race back to the California coast. Social posts circulating Tuesday said former Vice President Kamala Harris will host a fundraiser for Ford in Santa Monica on October 5 as he tries to unseat Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo in a state Donald Trump carried and where Democrats’ once-comfortable registration lead has all but disappeared.

Harris has already endorsed Ford after he won the June Democratic primary: “Nevadans deserve a governor who will fight every day to lower costs and protect their fundamental freedoms. They have that leader in Aaron Ford, and I have been so proud to support his campaign. Congratulations on your primary victory. On to November.” 

Ford’s campaign has also used Harris video pitches calling the contest a “tied race” and a “critical pickup opportunity.”

The Santa Monica stop is not Ford’s first handshake with California’s progressive leaders. In July he stood with Gov. Gavin Newsom in Las Vegas at a Nevada Democratic Party field event as Newsom endorsed him and called the race one of the country’s key gubernatorial contests. A Lombardo-aligned PAC later plastered the valley with signs pairing the two men’s faces. 

Ford now goes to Santa Monica to raise money in the state Newsom runs—the same state with the nation’s highest income-tax rates and among the highest costs of living for housing, gas, and everyday bills. That is an awkward backdrop for a candidate whose closing argument is affordability.

Californians have already voted with moving trucks. As the California Globe has reported, residents have left California in large numbers for Nevada because of taxes and the cost of living, with Nevada ranking No. 1 per capita among states drawing California transplants. The Globe has also documented wealth leaving California for Nevada as Sacramento piled on new tax threats targeting billionaires, millionaires, and the working class. Nevada has no state income tax compared to California’s top rate of 13.3 %. Those arrivals are now part of the electorate Ford has to win.

 California Globe has documented that Ford’s path to the governor’s mansion runs through ActBlue pages and airports, not living rooms in Reno or Elko. In September alone the campaign listed New Orleans, New York, Dallas, and Charleston events with national Democrats. Early voting in Nevada begins October 17.

The Globe previously reported that Ford spent about 137 days outside Nevada in 2024—France, Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, Mexico, Cape Cod, Chicago, the Kentucky Derby, Martha’s Vineyard—while launching his bid. State records and later reporting put his airfare, hotels, and sponsored conference travel well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over his tenure as attorney general. 

With his Santa Monica stop, Ford is once again tapping the same progressive donor network that backed Harris’s 2024 campaign in a swing state that no longer looks like the Nevada Democrats used to take for granted. 

A decade ago Democrats led Republicans by more than 80,000 registered voters—nearly 89,000 in 2016 by some tallies. By 2025 Republicans briefly pulled ahead. Mid-2026 Secretary of State snapshots showed the parties separated by only 672 active registrants, with nonpartisans the largest bloc in the state. 

That is the map Ford is trying to flip from Santa Monica. Harris remains a polarizing figure in a state that rejected her national ticket. Newsom remains the face of California’s tax-and-spend model. 

Neither campaign had posted a detailed public invitation or donor-tier list for the October 5 event as of Tuesday evening. Ford’s official campaign site highlights cost-of-living town halls and attacks on Lombardo, not Westside fundraisers. Harris’s public comments stay on the “lower costs and fundamental freedoms” line. Early voting begins October 17.

Mail ballots go out the week of October 5, but Ford will be in Santa Monica that day asking California Democrats to write checks for a Nevada race that will be decided by voters who no longer give his party an 80,000-vote head start—and who already know what California-style costs look like from the other side of the state line.