Nicole Cannizzaro

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Nicole Cannizzaro (Democratic Party) is a member of the Nevada State Senate, representing District 6. She assumed office on November 9, 2016. Her current term ends on November 8, 2028.

Cannizzaro was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Nevada Reno and with a J.D. from the University of Nevada Las Vegas Boyd School of Law.[1] After law school Cannizzaro worked as a civil litigator and began working for the office of the Clark County District Attorney in 2011.[1]

Cannizzaro first ran for office in 2016 when she won election to District 6 of the Nevada State Senate, defeating Victoria Seaman (R) 50.9%-49.1%. Democrats flipped both chambers of the Nevada Legislature in 2016. She won re-election in 2020 with 50.5% of the vote, and in 2024 with 50.7%. Talking about why she ran for office, Cannizzaro said, "As someone who benefitted [sic] from the community around me, I found myself engaged by the very issues that were so instrumental to my own experience; things like giving students a quality education, ensuring good paying jobs exist here and supporting working families."[1]

In March 2019, the state senate's Democratic Caucus unanimously voted to elect Cannizzaro as state Senate majority leader after the resignation of Kelvin Atkinson (D).[2] She became the first woman to hold the position.[3]

In December 2024, Cannizzaro pre-filed a bill for the 2025 legislative session that proposed a $500 million plan to restructure parts of the state's education system, including establishing universal pre-K for all 4 year-olds, eliminating redundant reporting requirements, and creating standards for administrator-to-teacher staffing ratios.[4][5] In June 2025, both chambers of the Legislature approved and Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) signed an amended version of the bill.[6]

According to the Nevada Current's April Corbin Girnus, "Cannizzaro’s Senate Bill 460 was amended to include components of Lombardo’s Assembly Bill 584, including his proposal to establish a statewide accountability system and a salary incentive program for educators and administrators. Components of Cannizzaro’s bill that made it past the amendment include revised evaluation procedures for educators and administrators and additional transparency and assessment requirements for schools receiving funding through the state’s quasi-voucher system, known as Opportunity Scholarships."[7]

During Cannizarro's time in the Legislature, Nevada had a divided government from 2016-2018, and Democrats held trifecta control from 2019-2022. After Joe Lombardo (R) was elected governor in 2022, the state returned to a divided government. Democrats maintained control of both chambers of the Legislature throughout Cannizzaro's tenure.[8]

In July 2025, Cannizzaro announced that she was running for Attorney General of Nevada in 2026.[9]

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Campaign websiteCannizzaro's campaign website stated the following:IssuesPUBLIC SAFETYNicole is the only candidate for Attorney General with public safety and law enforcement experience. As a prosecutor, she won awards for her work to fight for justice for crime victims and for busting a major identity theft ring operating in Las Vegas. As our next Attorney General, she’ll support law enforcement’s efforts to tackle drug and human trafficking, prevent gun violence and get untraceable ghost guns off the streets, protect kids online, and crack down on fraud and scammers targeting Nevadans.As a state senator, Nicole passed laws to tackle AI generated child pornography, made it harder for domestic abusers to get guns, protected seniors with tougher laws on identity theft, and gave law enforcement better tools to fight high-level drug trafficking. She fought to protect law enforcement funding at the state and local level, and she helped prevent layoffs of up to 25% of the Las Vegas Metro Police’s sworn officers.PROTECTING REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTSAs Attorney General, Nicole will use every tool at her disposal to protect Nevadans’ reproductive rights, including abortion rights, birth control, and the right to IVF. If the federal government or other states try to infringe on Nevadans’ rights, she will take them to court. And she’ll protect women and doctors from prosecution or harassment for seeking or providing legal reproductive health care.​In the Legislature, Nicole had a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood. She led the fight to pass a state constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. She’s passed bills to expand access to birth control and to remove outdated criminal penalties for abortion from Nevada law. She even passed a law protecting women and doctors in Nevada from other states’ attempts to prosecute them for seeking or providing reproductive health care. And she stood up to Governor Lombardo when he sided with far-right extremists who want to ban IVF.TAKING ON BIG CORPORATIONS AND PROTECTING CONSUMERSNicole will be an Attorney General who fights for ordinary Nevadans, not the wealthy and big corporations. She’ll go after the corporations and corporate investors who want to rip Nevadans off and raise the cost of everything, from groceries, to housing, and prescription drugs. She will protect Nevadans’ right to organize and ensure that our wage and benefits laws are enforced. She will take on wage theft and worker misclassification because Nevadans should be paid what they earned. And she’ll target fraudsters and cyberscammers who try to steal from Nevadans, especially our seniors.  As a state senator, Nicole has passed laws to protect consumers from being overcharged by utility companies, cracked down on landlords who charge unfair or hidden fees, funded construction of more housing people can afford, created jobs that pay enough to live on, and voted to cap prices for high-cost prescription drugs.FIGHTING FEDERAL OVERREACHNicole won’t stand for a federal government that tramples on Nevada and Nevadans’ rights. She’ll fight back if Trump or Congress try to take away Nevadans’ access to health care, gut federal funding for K-12 and higher education, ignore the promises made to our veterans, or turn Nevada into a nuclear waste dumping ground.  She’s been leading the fight in the Nevada Legislature to expose how Trump’s plan to cut taxes for billionaires and corporations would hurt ordinary Nevadans by kicking hundreds of thousands off their health care, cutting food aid for low income women and children, and costing our state budget billions in Medicaid and K-12 education funding.CLEAN ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTNicole will work to protect Nevada’s clean energy economy and our state’s beautiful natural environment. She’ll take on corporate polluters and protect access to public lands for all to enjoy. She knows that states like Nevada will see disproportionate impacts from a changing climate, and she’ll protect Nevadans from bad actors who seek to take advantage of extreme heat, fires, or other climate related issues.  Nicole has been a champion for protecting public lands and growing our state’s clean energy economy. She’s passed laws that have led to new solar energy development that created thousands of good paying jobs. And she’s opposed plans to sell off our public lands for private development with no benefits for ordinary Nevadans.CIVIL AND VOTING RIGHTSMany of our civil and fundamental rights are under attack, and Nicole will fight back to defend those rights as Attorney General. She will stand up for ordinary Nevadans who are subject to illegal discrimination, and she will vigorously defend the integrity of our elections and every eligible Nevadans’ right to vote. It doesn’t matter whether threats to Nevadans’ civil and voting rights come from in state or from Washington, she’ll be ready to go to court to protect Nevadans from having their rights infringed. DATA CENTERSAs a former prosecutor, Nicole believes that nobody is above the law. She will force Big Tech and data center companies to play by the same rules as everyone else. In the legislature, Nicole held corporations accountable, forcing utility companies to pay back customers they overcharged and voting to ban corporate price fixing. She’s already called for Nevada to implement stronger protections around data center development, and as Attorney General, Nicole will force Big Tech to play by the same rules as everyone else. As AI data centers look to expand across the state, she'll fight for the following: Require data center operators to cover the cost of the new and ongoing power and water infrastructure their facilities requireBan data centers by law from passing their utility costs onto individual Nevadans and other businesses Ban the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, local governments, and other agencies from using non-disclosure agreements and secret deals that hide the impact of data centers on tax revenue, utility loads, and water resourcesRequire counties and local governments to give communities a voice in the siting and approval of new data centers Require companies driving this demand construct their facilities with union labor and project labor agreementsEmpower the Bureau of Consumer Protection with additional resources to stand up for ratepayers before the Public Utilities Commission​AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, exacerbate the urban heat island effect, and generate noise pollution that disrupts local communities. Nicole will make sure this new demand doesn't threaten the water we all depend on or increase utility costs for Nevada families by: Requiring the Department of Environmental Protection to conduct more thorough environmental reviews for each and every proposed project, including their impacts on local air qualityRequiring data centers to transparently, accurately, and publicly report their power and water consumptionMandating data centers account for Nevada’s arid climate by using innovative solutions that aren't water intensive, such as closed-loop systemsEnsuring data centers that power their facilities with “behind the meter” energy sources are subject to oversight by the Public Utilities Commission and Bureau of Consumer Protection monitoring— Nicole Cannizzaro's campaign website (September 13, 2026)Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.

Campaign ads

His Type - 30 - Nicole Cannizzaro campaign ad, released April 28, 2026

Battle Born, Battle Tested - Nicole Cannizzaro campaign ad, released March 2, 2026

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Nicole Cannizzaro did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

Nicole Cannizzaro did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2020 Candidate Connection survey.

Obama endorsement

During the 2016 election cycle Cannizzaro was one of the candidates endorsed by President Barack Obama

Full list of Obama's 2016 endorsements

Cannizzaro's campaign website highlighted the following issues:[23]

Economy and Working Families: Building our economy requires us to support our local and small businesses. We need to support Nevadans who are willing to take a risk and start a new business.

Education: It is no secret that the Clark County School District underperforms compared to other districts across the nation, and there is no single solution that will solve every problem within our public schools.

Higher Education: Ensuring access to quality higher education is imperative to the success of our students and our state. I will support efforts to tackle the issue of student debt by providing Nevadans with more options to refinance loans, and will focus on efforts to keep our universities, colleges, and community colleges affordable.

Job Training: I will support legislation to expand training programs and apprenticeships for Nevada’s students.

Energy and Environment: Nevada has abundant renewable natural resources, and we should capitalize on them as a means of reducing our greenhouse emissions and spurring new economic growth. Nevada has the opportunity to be a national clean energy leader and even has the potential to export clean energy to other states.[24]