Fiercely contested Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo is throwing a book at his Democratic opponent, Gov. Steve Sisolak, on the issue of education.

Lombardo, who has run head-to-head with Sisolak in the polls in recent weeks, has lashed out at his incumbent on the issue, criticizing him for school safety, curricular claims and school closures during the pandemic, criticizing “parental rights.” ” claimed.

This is a page taken from Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s playbook. He turned a blue state into a red state in a closely monitored gubernatorial election in the final weeks of the campaign by leaning heavily on education and parental rights. It brought further attention to the Republican Party’s attempts to make the movement strong.

Youngkin, who was a first-time candidate, along with Lombardo, sounded the alarm against critical racial theories, fused with voter discontent over school closures due to the pandemic, and ran for governor 10 percentage points ahead of President Joe Biden. won the election. Conservative pressure to attack a wave of curriculum change. This approach was part of a strategy to revitalize his base without alienating moderates. You stole the victory from former Governor McAuliffe.

A year later, Lombardo, the sheriff of the state’s most populous county, is about to do the same – he’s brought in Youngkin to help him.

“I want to be seen as an education governor,” Lombardo said Thursday at the first of two campaign events focused primarily on education.

“He holds the title of Governor of Education,” Lombardo said, nodding to Youngkin, who attended both events and spoke about his own approach to the issue during the campaign. I’m going to take it away,” Lombardo said.

After Lombardo won the primary, he outlined that he would craft his general election message around three “table issues”: economy, crime and education. are increasingly emphasizing and intensifying their attacks on Sisolak. Rise in violence in the state’s public schools, controversial decisions to change funding for popular reading programs, pandemic-induced school closures, and Lombardo’s allegations of a “social reform curriculum” Yes, the phrase Lombardo and his campaign said was, “Teach children what to think, not how to think.”

The term sounds a lot like a critique of critical race theory, and Republican candidates like Youngkin, despite the limited evidence for it, want teachers across the United States to put it into their lesson plans. It claims to contain such content.

Republicans across the country have spotlighted critical racial theories in recent years, with indicted topics like racism and white privilege being misleadingly taught in children’s classrooms. This strategy, presented by Youngkin, could lead the Republicans to victory by defeating independents. Yes, it sparked the “parental rights” movement in many states, and Youngkin and now Lombardo endorse this movement.

“In Virginia, Governor Youngkin has raised the voices of parents. Nevada needs a governor like that,” said one such national group on Thursday’s Lombardo campaign event. Power2Parent president Erin Phillips said, “The Phillips children attend public schools in Clark County.

education makes a difference

Lombardo’s recent focus on education, which has so far focused primarily on the economy and crime using advertising and campaign events, is a very close race, according to polls. can make a big difference to

“The key to this [approach] It’s that education isn’t a monolith,” said Kristin Davison, a Republican strategist who helped craft the education message and strategy during Youngkin’s campaign. There are CRT voters, school choice voters, and school safety voters. Bringing all these concerns and parents together, like Youngkin did with the “Parents Matters” movement, gives these voters whatever your problem is, we can all sit at the table together. . And that’s what we want Nevada voters to get. “

Real Clear Politics’ latest poll average shows Lombardo leading Sisolak by 1.4 percentage points. Biden two years before him in Nevada, where he won by 2.4 percentage points (just under 33,600 votes), and his political report, a nonpartisan Cook, rated the race a “toss up.” Sisolak won his first term in 2018 by about four percentage points over his Adam Laxalt, who is currently running for U.S. Senate. A survey conducted last month by the Nevada Independent/OH Predictive Insights found that, after the economy, education was the issue that Nevada voters were most concerned about. This is a fact that Davison and others have said means that Lombardo’s shift in focus is the right move at the right time.

Mike Noble of OH Predictive Insights said: He’s playing the same card trying to address the issues that most affect Nevada voters. “

“And in the gubernatorial general election, it makes a lot of sense for Republicans to do that, and it helps get the independent demographic,” Noble added. About one in three voters in Nevada is registered as a nonpartisan.

The Sisolak campaign told NBC News that Lombardo’s recent emphasis on education was designed and timed to distract from a series of failed and contradictory statements about his views on abortion policy. Lombardo’s previous criticism of Sisolak for the increase in crime in the state did not resonate with voters, as Lombardo himself is one of the state’s top law enforcement officers.

“This is another failed attempt to shift the narrative away from Joe Lombardo’s extreme anti-abortion agenda and the rising crime under his watch,” said a spokesman for the Sisolak campaign. Reeves Oyster said in a statement to NBC News.

Concerns about safety and quality

However, in reality, school quality and safety is a big issue in Nevada.

Las Vegas-area schools have been ranked the second worst in the United States in 2021 by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Separately, according to a Washington Post analysis in May, reports of harassment, intimidation, and sexual assault incidents to police from within the Clark County School District in the previous school year were lower than in the 2018-2019 school year. also increased by 46%.

Lombardo has proposed repealing the “restorative justice” law enacted by Democrats in 2019. Some educators in the state say they are making it difficult to expel or discipline violent students.

He also proposed dismantling the sprawling Clark County district and reviving the statewide “Read by Three” program. This establishes a reading education system that ensures every child can read by her third grade.

Sisolak’s campaign says funding for the program was cut in 2020 due to the pandemic, but has been restored in the 2022 budget. However, the pre-existing requirement to retain children if their reading and writing skills are not grade-level by grade three has been removed. Sisolak’s campaign said the governor would give the teacher her first pay raise in more than a decade and that he would be responsible for investing $200 million to repair the learning losses incurred during the pandemic.

The Sisolak campaign has defended the governor’s decision to close schools during the pandemic. While noting that Lombardo has not disclosed a specific example of a “social reform curriculum,” the spokesperson said it “protected lives and livelihoods,” adding that it “sent children to classrooms as soon as it was safe.” It is used by state public school teachers.

Yonkin gaining national recognition

Youngkin has a lot to gain by promoting his own Virginia strategy in Nevada. The first-term governor, who launched a political action committee earlier this year, has been mentioned as a future presidential candidate, and if his decision to export his own strategy to gubernatorial elections in other battleground states succeeds. , his growing popularity and reputation among Republican voters.

Thursday’s education-themed rally was Youngkin’s first rally with a candidate in this election cycle, but he’s already joined Republican gubernatorial candidates in Georgia, Kansas, and New Mexico in the coming weeks. More events are likely to be added, Davison said, explaining that the Nevada landscape is particularly fertile ground for testing Youngkin’s message.

“Joe [Lombardo] Uniquely on the same page as Yonkin,” she said. “He makes education a big part of his platform.

“We know that Nevada voters really care about it and that it’s going to make a difference,” she said.