State ethics complaint accuses Nevada AG of politicking in official X account

A complaint lodged against Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford this week accuses him of politicking on his elected office’s social media account, running afoul of the state’s ethics rules, according to the filing.

In question are more than 100 posts on the X account of the attorney general’s office, according to a Nevada Commission of Ethics complaint shared with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The posts included in the complaint highlight official business conducted by Ford. But they include a hyperlink to Ford’s personal X account, which he uses to campaign and has a donation link to his election effort on its biography section, the complaint noted.

Bernard Zadrowski filed the complaint. He’s a retired Clark County chief deputy district attorney and a one-time chairman of the county’s Republican Party, from 2008 to 2010.

Ford, a Democrat, is challenging Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo in 2026.

“I’m not trying to be partisan here,” Zadrowski told the Review-Journal. “The explicit reason was that the attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of the state.”

The complaint argues a pair of ethics rules that state an official must separate official and campaigning social media accounts, and to not use their position to gain advantage.

Ford’s attorney general’s office said it was aware of the complaint.

“Once our office was made aware of the concern, I immediately stopped tagging Attorney General Ford’s personal account,” office spokesperson John Sadler wrote to the Review-Journal.

Meanwhile, he pointed to an outreach account, @LombardoSNV, that documents events the governor attends in Southern Nevada. That account has published posts that tag both Lombardo’s official and personal accounts.

The accounts are managed independently, governor’s office spokesperson Elizabeth Ray wrote to the Review-Journal.

“The Lombardo Outreach X account is managed by the constituent services staff and is intended to highlight events attended by members of the Governor’s Office,” Ray said in a statement. “Two posts were mistakenly tagged with the campaign handle, and internal measures have been implemented to ensure this does not happen again.”

Zadrowski said he began noticing the posts from Ford’s office months ago and that it bothered him as a former prosecutor.

“People whose job it is to enforce the law should abide by the highest ethical standards,” he said. “He should know what the law is.”

Zadrowski said the rules are clear in official handbooks.

“Anybody who’s campaigning should know this, but most importantly, the chief prosecutor for the state of Nevada,” he said.

The eight-member ethics board examines alleged conflicts of interest of public officials as dictated by state law.

The commission told the Review-Journal that it could not confirm nor deny whether it received the complaint, which would be deemed confidential.

A review panel would determine if there’s “sufficient cause” to issue an opinion, which would then be published on the commission’s website. The Ford complaint hadn’t reached that stage Friday.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.