For a third straight election cycle, a Democratic assemblywoman in the southern Las Vegas Valley is locked in a tight contest.
Assemblywoman Elaine Marzola (D-Las Vegas) has won each of her past two elections by less than 5 percentage points against far-right conservatives. This year, she is squaring off against April Arndt, a former officer with the Henderson Police Department who easily beat Marzola’s 2022 opponent in the June primary.
The race for Assembly District 21 is among the handful of seats crucial to whether Democrats retain their two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature’s lower chamber. They currently occupy exactly two-thirds of the 42 seats, leaving little room for error if they want the ability to override vetoes issued by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo. To do so, they must also net one more seat in the state Senate.
The district’s composition has changed in recent years. At the time of Marzola’s past two victories, Democrats made up the largest share of registered voters in the district. But this year, nonpartisans are the largest group in the district, with the Democratic share shrinking by 8 percentage points in the past four years and the GOP share falling slightly amid redistricting and automatic voter registration.
As we have in the other most important legislative races this cycle, The Indy reached out to both candidates to learn more about their policy positions and campaign strategy. Arndt agreed to a phone interview, while Marzola did not after multiple requests, citing a lack of availability because of her work and campaign.
After retiring from the Henderson Police Department, Arndt said she began talking to community members about a career in politics. She added that while she was a police officer and detective, she saw families affected by abuse and small businesses left at the mercy of regulations — and that she thinks politics is a way to help solve those issues.
“I just have this deep, empathetic connection to real issues facing our community,” Arndt said. “When you’re truly connected in those issues and you can be a strong voice for the people, I think that is when you say, ‘OK, I can do this.’”
Marzola is a Brazilian immigrant who has been a personal injury lawyer since 2011. In the 2023 legislative session, she served as the chair of the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee and vice chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
In recent weeks, Republican and Democratic groups have launched misleading attack ads against both candidates.
Better Nevada PAC, a group tied to Lombardo, sent out a mailer accusing Marzola of spending $127 million on new government offices in Las Vegas for herself and other colleagues, as well as $30 million for an additional 117 new staff members.
This refers to the Capital Improvement Program budget bill passed by lawmakers last year. It misleads voters by implying that Marzola was responsible for the passage of the bill, when in reality, it was a priority for Lombardo, who called a special session to pass the bill after it failed to receive enough support in the regular session. Four Republican legislators also supported the bill.
The Democratic New Day Nevada PAC released an ad that said “for too long, politicians like April Arndt have been ghosting their constituents in favor of money from wealthy corporate donors.” However, Arndt has never held elected office and therefore has not represented constituents.
Click below to learn more about both candidates’ policy positions.
Education
A policy likely to resurface during next year’s legislative session is Opportunity Scholarships, a program championed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats that offers businesses tax credits in exchange for donations that subsidize the cost of attending private schools in Nevada for certain low- and middle-income students.
Arndt, a mother of three, said she wants these scholarships to be expanded. Her children have attended public, private and charter schools in Southern Nevada, and she has found that not every student is suited for the public school system.
“They just learn differently. They thrive in different environments,” Arndt said. “We need to find a fit — whatever excites them, motivates them, gets them on a path to success to be contributing members of society.”
Meanwhile, Marzola, a first-generation college graduate, does not address Opportunity Scholarships on her campaign website, which instead touts her support of SB503, the landmark education funding bill passed last year that provided a 26 percent increase in per-pupil funding in public schools. No Republicans supported the bill.
Arndt credited Lombardo with signing SB503, calling it “the first step to getting up to par” with nationwide averages of per-pupil funding.
Other education areas that Arndt said she wants to see addressed include improving transportation systems for charter schools and retaining teachers, which she said has become more difficult based on teacher safety concerns and low pay.
“It’s hard to find a teacher that says, ‘I love my environment, I love going to work every day,’” Arndt said. “They are tasked with more responsibility, they’re the most educated professionals, but not equally compensated among professionals for their education levels.”
The Legislature has made an effort to increase teacher pay. In 2023, all lawmakers except one Republican voted to support legislation that set up a $250 million pot of state matching funds for teacher and support staff salaries.
Criminal justice
As a former police officer, Arndt said that her interest in politics stemmed from the passage of a 2019 criminal justice reform package that she said made the law too lenient.
The legislation, AB236, was designed to curb a ballooning prison population and included provisions such as raising the threshold to warrant a felony theft charge from $650 to $1,200 worth of stolen goods. Statewide and Clark County data show property crime rates have remained relatively stable in the years since the legislation passed, with some increases in 2022 and 2023.
Arndt, who was a member of a retail theft task force, said those thresholds should be lowered.
“The people that work in retail theft are organized. They understand what the limits are,” Arndt said. “Thresholds are a deterrent.”
The legislation also adopted a new designation that possession of 100 grams of certain illegal drugs would trigger a low-level trafficking charge, punishable by two to 20 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $100,000.
In 2023, a bipartisan group of lawmakers (including Marzola) passed SB35, which lowered the threshold to trigger a fentanyl trafficking charge to possession of 28 grams, punishable by one to 10 years imprisonment. The legislation was a middle ground between the 2019 law and a Lombardo proposal that would have raised penalties for fentanyl possession in any quantity.
Arndt said she would support a lower threshold and condemned Democrats for the 28-gram threshold they pushed for.
“We definitely have to make crime, criminal,” Arndt said.
Marzola was not in office at the time of the criminal justice reform package. Her website does not mention criminal justice, but it does laud her support of the state’s budget that included pay raises for state law enforcement and firefighters.
Elections
Nevadans will vote on a ballot question this year about whether to require voter ID. Arndt called the question “common sense” and said she helped gather 8,000 signatures for the petition to qualify the question for the ballot.
It is unclear how Marzola will vote on it, but Democrats are largely against the measure, saying it is unnecessary and could disenfranchise voters who do not have ID.
Another contentious election topic is so-called “ballot harvesting,” which is the process of collecting and submitting ballots on behalf of others that Nevada permanently legalized in 2021. Republicans falsely claimed in 2020 that this practice led to massive voter fraud, but they have since moderated their positions because of its legality.
Arndt said she would vote to criminalize ballot harvesting and that every measure should be taken to rebuild trust in elections. If it cannot be made illegal again, she would support requiring ballot collectors to register with election officials.
Asked whether she believed the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, Arndt did not directly answer and said “it is what it is, and we move forward.”
“I don’t spend any time thinking about that. I think it’s a waste of energy,” Arndt said.
Housing
A proposal with bipartisan agreement in Nevada is freeing up federally owned land in the state for affordable housing development.
While the issue is likely to be addressed at the federal level, Arndt said “it’s economics 101, supply and demand.”
“Releasing that land from the federal government will allow them to build, it will allow them to create inventory,” she said. “There’s no one solution for everything, but that’s the best start.”
A controversial housing policy in Nevada is the state’s summary eviction process, which requires the tenant to make the first legal filing in an eviction case, not the landlord, as is common practice in almost all other states.
Marzola and other Democrats voted for legislation to amend the process by requiring a landlord to make the first legal filing in an eviction case. But Lombardo vetoed it, arguing it would “impose additional and unnecessary delays and costs” to the eviction process.
Arndt agreed with Lombardo’s veto and does not think that amending the eviction process “would dramatically help those tenants.”
Health care
About 15 years ago, Arndt was undergoing training to be a crisis intervention officer, which included visiting mental health facilities across Clark County, where she heard the same thing repeatedly.
“There just weren’t resources,” Arndt said. “There weren’t enough doctors, there weren’t enough facilities, the facilities that they did have didn’t quite meet everybody’s needs.”
She also noted that youth mental health has gotten progressively worse because of cellphones and the continued effects of pandemic-era school closures.
She said the top priority for mental health is developing a strategy to recruit and retain providers, but she did not go into specifics on what that may look like beyond increasing capacity in medical residency programs.
Marzola has sponsored legislation related to health care providers. She was a primary sponsor of AB283, which became law and seeks to incentivize doula services in rural areas.
Meanwhile, Marzola’s website mentions her support of lowering prescription drug costs, an apparent reference to her support of AB250, the bill vetoed by Lombardo to allow the state to adopt drug prices negotiated by Medicare.
Arndt said she was unsure if the proposal in AB250 was the right strategy to address high drug prices.
Reproductive rights
Marzola was one of 10 primary sponsors for the bill to establish a constitutional right to reproductive freedom in the state. It passed along party lines and is expected to be voted on again next year.
Voters will also decide on a ballot question to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. It is largely being opposed by Republicans, who say it is unnecessary and a ploy to increase Democratic turnout. Arndt did not say how she would vote on it, but that she would support the will of the people.
Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) is also planning to introduce legislation next year to protect in vitro fertilization in the state, which Arndt said she would support.
Gun control
Lombardo vetoed a trio of gun control bills last year that would have placed restrictions on gun ownership for people convicted of a hate crime, raised the legal age to purchase certain firearms to 21 and criminalized bringing a gun within 100 feet of an election site.
Marzola supported all of those bills, while Arndt said she would not support overturning Lombardo’s vetoes.
Lottery
For a second straight legislative session, lawmakers will vote on a constitutional amendment to repeal the state’s ban on lotteries.
Marzola supported the legislation to allow a lottery (AJR5) last session, while Arndt said she is opposed to the lottery.
