Joe Lombardo vetoed multiple bills meant to lower housing costs for Nevada renters. Months later, he put a former corporate landlord lobbyist in charge of his own office.
Gov. Joe Lombardo appointed Ryan Cherry as his chief of staff after Cherry had worked as a registered lobbyist during the 2023 legislative session for four companies, including National Apartment Management LLC, an out-of-state corporate landlord, according to the Nevada Legislature’s lobbyist registry.
The appointment came after Lombardo vetoed multiple pieces of legislation during the same legislative session aimed at lowering housing costs and strengthening tenant protections for Nevada renters — bills that would have directly affected the kind of corporate landlord clients Cherry had represented as a lobbyist.
The Nevada Housing Justice Alliance, a coalition that includes Battle Born Progress, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Make the Road Nevada and For Our Future of Nevada, publicly criticized the appointment, noting Cherry’s prior registered lobbying work for an apartment management company.
Nevada’s lobbyist registration requirements disclose which clients a registered lobbyist represents during a given legislative session, but they do not restrict a former lobbyist’s eligibility to serve in the governor’s own office immediately afterward.
Cherry succeeded Ben Kieckhefer, Lombardo’s first chief of staff, who served from 2022 to 2024 before being appointed to the Nevada Gaming Commission. Kieckhefer previously served as a Nevada state senator before joining Lombardo’s administration.
Nevada law places no cooling-off period on a sitting governor’s chief of staff appointments, unlike the state’s narrower lobbying registration restrictions that apply specifically to legislators returning to lobby the Legislature itself.
The housing bills Cherry’s former clients opposed are now vetoed law. The man who lobbied against them spent the following years running the governor’s own office. Nothing about that sequence required anyone to disclose the connection beyond what was already sitting in a public lobbyist registry.
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