Democratic state Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod and Republican April Becker are competing for an open seat on the Clark County Commission.
The race for a seat on Clark County Commission, arguably the most powerful elected board in the state, pits Republican April Becker against Democrat Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod. The seat is being vacated by Commissioner Ross Miller, who chose not to run for re-election.
Becker, an attorney who represents her family’s development companies, earned her undergraduate degree from UNLV and her law degree from the Boyd School of Law.
This is her third attempt at elected office.
In 2020, she lost a race by 631 votes to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro.
“They cheated – 100%. They cheated,” Becker said of the 2020 election in a 2022 interview with The Globe, alleging she watched “the ballot harvesting–which was allowable during Covid due to the Governor’s emergency powers. But, I think people have been cheating in elections for a long time.”
Becker filed a lawsuit asking the court to nullify the election, but Judge Joe Hardy ruled Becker failed to name Cannizzaro as a defendant, and noted that contests of elections must be filed with the Senate.
“Radical SOCIALISTS have taken over Washington,” Becker wrote on Facebook in 2021.
Around the same time, at least three companies listed on her 2024 Nevada financial disclosure received Payroll Protection Program loans from the federal government – Becker Gaming, Inc ($60,090), Becker Enterprises, LLC ($243,600), and Weddington Management LLC ($148,609). All of the loans have been forgiven.
In 2022, Becker lost a race for the U.S. House of Representatives against Rep. Susie Lee, a Democrat, by a ten-point margin.
For her county commission race, Becker raised $329,000 in 2023, $254,000 in the first half of this year, and had $273,000 on hand as of July 15.
A dozen political action committees (PACS) registered at the same address as Laborers Union 872, contributed a total of $60,000. Becker also received just under $60,000 from a dozen entities located at 50 Jones Blvd, a location owned by one of the 17 corporations Becker lists on her financial disclosure as a source of household income.
Her financial disclosure lists 75 properties in Nevada, Arizona, and California in which she or a member of her household holds an interest.
Becker did not respond to requests for an interview and her website is bereft of issues. The only indication of her positions comes from interviews and statements during her previous campaigns.
Bilbray-Axelrod, the daughter of former Rep. James Bilbray, who represented Southern Nevada in Congress from 1987 to 1995, is a four-term state assemblywoman first elected in 2016. She raised $153,000 as of July 15 and had $43,476 on hand.
Among the measures she sponsored was Assembly Bill 175, which allows each local government in Southern Nevada to appoint one member to the Clark County School Board of Trustees. The bill was intended to stem the board’s dysfunction.
Becker told The Globe in 2022 that she supports splitting up the Clark County School District, noting “Nevada is near dead last” in education rankings by state. “Money is not the answer. Money is not helping or solving the problem.”
Housing and transit
The shortage of affordable housing in Southern Nevada is among the most critical issues facing local governments.
Bilbray-Axelrod says she supports presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ proposal to provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 in downpayment assistance.
“I think it would help,” she said during a recent interview. “We just need to make sure that there’s affordable housing for it to be a meaningful down payment and buy a starter home, because right now that’s not on the market.”
The median price of a home in Clark County in September was $479,900, just below the record set earlier this year.
The future of housing in Southern Nevada, Bilbray-Axelrod says, is in infill and vertical construction, which she says will provide increased shade. “I think we can use modern day engineering to really work in our favor.”
Bilbray-Axelrod’s website says she “prioritizes neighborhood protection by ensuring independence from unchecked developer interests.”
“Developers really have to know the impact on the neighborhood, and be transparent,” she told the Current, noting her opponent “is a developer.”
In a Twitter post earlier this year, Becker said she supports Gov. Joe Lombardo’s effort to free up federal land for development, calling it a “crucial step” for Clark County’s future.
Bilbray-Axelrod says residents she’s talked with while campaigning prioritize safe neighborhoods and transit. “They want their commute times down.”
Transit in Southern Nevada, she says, is likely to focus on micro-transit – shared transportation services that employ vans, shuttles, or mini-buses, to provide on-demand rides – rather than a mass transit system.
“We have a real issue, especially on the east side, where going from Henderson to North Las Vegas is virtually impossible with transit,” she said. “We need to do a better job.”
On the topic of the F1 race, Bilbray-Axelrod said Clark County, which has been sued by several restaurants, including Battista’s Hole in the Wall and Ferraro’s Ristorante, over road and traffic disruptions to their businesses allegedly caused by the race, should settle rather than engage in protracted and expensive litigation.
“This was supposed to benefit the community,” she said. “If I were on the commission, I would recommend that these restaurants should be made whole.”
The presence of the unhoused on the Las Vegas Strip could be “solved with financial backing from the Resort Corridor, she said. “We could get people who are unhoused into housing, for the most part,” she says, adding the out-of-corridor court orders issued to homeless individuals “isn’t solving the problem. It’s kicking the can down the road. Police don’t want to be moving people and dealing with people with mental health issues and trying to figure out what’s causing them to be unhoused.”
She supports the state’s pledge for state money to be matched by Las Vegas resorts to “meet the unhoused where they are, probably satellite campuses,” rather than a central location as anticipated by the Legislature.
‘Pit bulls and Chihuahuas’
Bilbray-Axelrod says she is interested in revisiting the county’s animal regulations with an eye toward addressing the valley’s overpopulation crisis. The Animal Foundation, the government-funded shelter, is filled “to the brim,” she says. “It’s pit bulls and Chihuahuas.”
She says the County is not doing enough to track down illegal breeders who openly advertise on Craigslist and social media. “We could do a much better job.”
At a meeting in August, Commissioner Michael Naft suggested the county consider capping the number of breeding licenses it issues. Bilbray-Axelrod also said she’s inclined to support increasing the $500 fine assessed against illegal breeders, an amount tolerated by breeders as the cost of doing business.
She says the Animal Foundation’s failure to achieve no-kill status “is a worldwide thing. When a disease starts in a shelter, it’s very difficult to keep things from spreading.”
Bilbray-Axelrod has a variety of endorsements from unions – including the Clark County Education Association, SEIU, and the AFL-CIO of Nevada – and special interest groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), Hispanics in Politics, and veterans organizations.
Becker is endorsed by the Latin Chamber of Commerce, according to social media, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which wrote in its endorsement that the Commission “is in dire need of ideological diversity.” The County Commission has long been dominated by Democrats.
Early voting begins on Oct. 19 and Election Day is November 5.