The Once and Future Sisolak

A Cautionary Tale of Political Resurrection

Written by a weary Nevadan, armed with a pen, a memory, and a deep mistrust of any man who says, “I’m just thinking about it.”

Now it came to pass in the year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty-six — or thereabouts, for memory is a slippery fellow and politics even slipperier — that a certain Steve Sisolak, late of the Governor’s Mansion and early of ambition, was seen peering out from behind the curtain of retirement like a groundhog sniffing the wind for relevance.

Now, Mr. Sisolak had once been the High Sheriff of All Nevada–Governor, they called it, but the job bore more resemblance to a carnival barker than any lawman I ever knew–and folks remembered him for it, though not always fondly. His tenure was filled with enough confusion, proclamations, and policy U-turns to make a jackrabbit dizzy. But no matter — in politics, memory is short, egos are long, and Mr. Sisolak, it seems, had both in abundance.

He was defeated once, mind you, and by no great landslide. Sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Republican of the RINO sort — meaning he can’t tell an elephant from a jackass — beat him in 2022 by just enough votes to hush the grumbling but not enough to crush Sisolak’s spirit. Some said Sisolak wept, some said he laughed, but all agreed he kept talking.

And talk he did.

“I ain’t sayin’ I’m runnin’,” he told the city paper, which says he was fixin’ to run. “But I ain’t not runnin’ either,” which is how a politician tells you he’s waitin’ for a pollster to let him know whether folks have forgiven or merely forgotten.

He said others — unnamed and likely imaginary — had “encouraged” him to try again. I don’t doubt it. The sort of men who whisper encouragement to ex-governors are the same who carry ropes to a hanging and swear they’re only there to help the man down.

Mr. Sisolak isn’t alone in this sudden re-blossoming of civic yearning. Aaron Ford, the Attorney General and a man with the bearing of someone who never quite finished a thought before saying it aloud, was also said to be eyeing the race. Mr. Sisolak, ever the gentleman, desired him well — though the tone was akin to wishing your neighbor a safe voyage on a leaky boat.

Of course, the other side of the fence had something to say, too. John Burke of the Better Nevada PAC, whose job is to say unpleasant things with a smile, declared that Sisolak and Ford represented nothing but “failed policies and corruption.”

Meanwhile, the date looms: Tuesday, June 9th, 2026 — the day Nevadans must once again decide whether to return to the buffet of familiar disappointments or try something entirely new, like staying home.

If you ask me–and no one did–I’d say that watching Sisolak run again is like watching a man try to reheat old coffee and convince you it’s fresh. He might dress it up, add cream and sugar, maybe even pour it into a fancy cup, but it’s still yesterday’s brew–bitter, lukewarm, and with a faint aftertaste.

But who knows? Stranger things have happened in Nevada, where fortunes are lost overnight, ghosts roam the desert, and men like Sisolak rise from the political grave not once but as often as their pollster permits.

And so the tale goes on, the wheel turns, and the voters — God bless their weary souls — must decide whether to saddle up Old Sisolak again or leave him where he ought to stay–in the footnotes of a history no one’s eager to reread.