Do we like Aaron Ford?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean run on the harm test and a decent public-service record, held back by an ethics complaint and a dodgy ad that's still unresolved.
Ford's story is a good one. He has said he grew up in poverty and sometimes went to school hungry, in a family that leaned on food stamps, Medicaid and public schools. He became a maths teacher, then a lawyer, then a state senator, then Nevada's attorney general from 2019.
The stoush that has dogged him is about ethics, not hate. A Nevada Commission on Ethics review panel voted in February 2026 to send complaints about him to a full hearing, with allegations of conflicts of interest and ethical lapses while attorney general. Ford called it politically motivated as the statewide races heated up. The page we read doesn't say how it ended, so treat it as alleged and unresolved.
On the harm test, the record we could open is good. The Human Rights Campaign said he pushed for a statewide ban on conversion therapy for minors. It also said he joined other attorneys general in opposing Arkansas's limits on gender-affirming care for young people and defended trans Nevadans' privacy. We found no harmful words of his own, and no troubling company he keeps. The gaps are that we couldn't open his state senate voting record, and the HRC page is from 2022, so it isn't current.
The recent chapter is a big one. He won the Democratic primary in June and then took the governor's race. His pitch was affordability, student loan debt, and reining in AI data centres with a pause on new tax breaks for them. He told his Democratic watch party that the campaign didn't happen by accident.
On the good stuff, as attorney general he secured millions of dollars in opioid settlements and sued Roblox and a student loan servicer. He says his platform is about strengthening the working class, which fits the backstory. It's a fair record of public service rather than saintliness.
So would we back him? Yes, easily on the harm test, with a small asterisk on the good-person side because the ethics complaint is still on the books. If it ends in a finding, that changes things. Until then, he's a decent bloke with a pending question mark.