LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Danielle Ford, an independent candidate for governor of Nevada, discussed her campaign platform in an interview ahead of Election Day, including education policy, affordability, voter ID and data centers.
Ford said she believes now is the right time for an independent candidate to break through in the governor’s race, which she said recent polling showed at 42-42.
“One of the things I’ve been learning through this process as a nonpartisan candidate is that the polls seem to be a little manipulated,” Ford said. “In fact, I was being left out of the polls for the first six months. Recently, some of the polling data is looking a lot more promising.”
Ford said she considered Nevada voters’ approval of a ballot initiative, “Yes on 3,” which she said passed both houses of the Legislature and passed by voters in 2022 before narrowly failing in 2024. Ford said both parties funded an information campaign about the initiative.
“I kind of think that Nevadans have been telling us that we want something else than just the two-party system,” Ford said.
Ford said she has mostly voted for independent candidates but has also voted for both Republican and Democratic candidates and has changed her voter affiliation multiple times.
“Elections are publicly funded, yet only the two parties can participate,” Ford said. “So nonpartisans are paying for the primaries, but they’re not able to run and be in them, nor are they allowed to vote in anything besides the boards and the nonpartisan seats.”
On education
Ford, who serves on the Nevada State Board of Education, said she does not support a policy known as “read by grade three,” which would hold back students who are not reading by third grade. She said the policy is set to go into effect next year unless it is stopped.
“Why would you hold a kid back if they are struggling with reading, but they’re excelling in math or science, you know, or art? It’s not going to get the result we’re looking for,” Ford said.
Ford said schools have shifted toward standardized testing and away from being “learning institutions,” and that the system relies on outside companies and contracts.
“We are not doing the things that we should be,” Ford said. “We could be working with local tutors. We could be giving some money to parents to be able to help their kids at home.”
Ford said she would reallocate funding spent on standardized testing and curriculum contracts toward community-based resources, and said two standardized tests are required by law to keep receiving Title I funds, but she said other assessments are not necessary.
On affordability
Ford said she believes problems like education, affordability and health care are interconnected rather than isolated. She proposed addressing school attendance by exploring alternative transportation options, including private transportation or parent-led transportation programs with background checks.
“If we were to say, you know, help our kids go to school, get to school, could that be helping parents with gas money to get to school?” Ford said.
On voter ID
Ford said that, as governor, she would follow whatever voter ID law is implemented. Personally, she said she does not believe current voter ID proposals are “done correctly yet.”
“If we had enough actual data that this was a problem that was actually influencing elections, I think that that’s something to explore,” Ford said. “However, we need to support people with all the things to be able to get that ID.”
Ford said she was robbed about a year ago and had her documents stolen, giving her experience with the process of replacing identification documents. She said obtaining replacement documents costs around $100 across four different agencies and requires time and transportation that not everyone has.
On data centers
Ford said data centers already exist in Nevada and are not inherently harmful, citing her past work doing events at Switch in 2015. She said her concern is the scale of proposed development and a lack of information about what the data centers are being built for.
“It’s not that data centers are bad. It’s that we don’t know what they’re being built for,” Ford said.
Ford said she wants to pause data center expansion to allow time for legislation, including whistleblower protections for data center employees and requirements that information gathered by data centers be shared with the government.
“We can’t just trust that their internal engineers or scientists are giving us the correct information,” Ford said. “And there needs to be consequences if any of that information is meddled with.”
Ford said her opponents in the race support data center expansion, with one proposing a pause on tax abatements and the other proposing taxing data centers and directing the revenue to education.
Closing message
Ford said she was born in Las Vegas and attended eight different Clark County School District schools. She said she currently serves on the Nevada State Board of Education in a statewide seat and has been an elected official for about eight years.
“I have a very deep understanding of the issues of the community, which of course is all of Nevada as well,” Ford said. “We cannot keep letting these corporations determine what life is going to be like for us anymore. And we have to let the community solve these problems.”
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