News - September 11, 2026 - by Rachel Dahl

- Click for Full Interview

Nevada’s 2026 election may test more than candidates, parties and campaign messages.

It may also test whether the old political communication system still works.

That question surfaced during a recent Nevada Newsmakers conversation between host Sam Shad and Mary Lau, CEO of the Retail Association of Nevada, as a discussion about media coverage turned into a broader examination of how people now get information – and how difficult they have become for campaigns to reach.

Shad raised the issue while discussing coverage of Burning Man, arguing that traditional news organizations often emphasize conflict and tragedy while missing the broader story of the communities they cover.

Lau agreed, saying the line between reporting and opinion has become increasingly blurred.

“We stopped being reporters and started being opinion columnists,” she said, speaking broadly about what audiences now see from media organizations.

Their conversation quickly moved beyond criticism of traditional media.

Lau said she increasingly gets information from podcasts, citing programs ranging from Joe Rogan to the All-In Podcast. Shad said Nevada Newsmakers has seen the same shift firsthand, with its audio and video podcast audience becoming its fastest-growing segment over roughly the past seven years.

That matters politically because Nevada campaigns are spending millions of dollars trying to reach an electorate whose information habits are changing rapidly.

Later in the program, Shad pointed to the governor’s race between Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford and asked whether the campaign could become a test of traditional broadcast advertising against streaming and online media.

Lau said the problem may be bigger than choosing the right platform Voters can simply stop listening.

“So much of it becomes oversaturation,” she said. “After a while you’re not going to listen to it anymore.”

That creates a difficult environment for campaigns accustomed to defining opponents early, buying television advertising and repeatedly delivering carefully tested messages.

Nevada’s changing voter registration adds another complication.

Shad noted the increasingly important role of nonpartisan voters and questioned whether campaigns are still chasing a relatively small group of persuadable voters or dealing with a fundamentally different electorate.

Lau said the old assumptions about strict partisan voting no longer, necessarily, holds.

Republicans and Democrats remain closely matched, she said, while a large nonpartisan bloc includes both potential swing voters and people who may never vote at all.

The real campaign challenge, she said, is determining who is actually motivated to participate and what message will reach them.

And timing.

Lau argued that much of the money spent early in election cycles arrives before many voters are paying attention.

“The race doesn’t start until later,” she said, when voters begin focusing on candidates and deciding whose claims they believe.

The discussion points to a larger change underway in Nevada politics.

For decades, campaigns could depend heavily on television, newspapers, radio and direct mail to reach relatively predictable audiences. Today, voters may get information from a local newspaper, Facebook post, podcast, YouTube interview, streaming advertisement, candidate email or conversation shared directly by someone they trust — often all in the same day.

That fragmented system gives voters more choices, but it also makes it harder to know which information they trust, and which messages actually reach them.

It may also explain why campaign spending alone tells less of the story than it once did.

A candidate can buy more advertisements without necessarily buying more attention.

And as Nevada moves deeper into the 2026 campaign, attention may be one of the most valuable — and difficult to measure — commodities in politics.

The race will still be about candidates, policies and turnout, but increasingly, it is also about something more basic: Who is still listening?

- Click for Full Interview