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Endorses Herndon
The race
Nevada Supreme Court Seat D is on the November 3, 2026 ballot, and in the general election it is uncontested: Justice Douglas W. Herndon, renominated through the primary, is the sole candidate. There is no opponent to profile and we do not manufacture one.
Douglas W. Herndon — Incumbent justice and the court's current chief justice. Herndon's formation is prosecutorial: after a final-semester trial advocacy course redirected his career, he worked fourteen years in the Clark County District Attorney's Office (1990–2005), the last nine as the Chief Deputy District Attorney running the Special Victims Unit — prosecuting child-abuse homicides and physical and sexual abuse cases. Republican Governor Kenny Guinn appointed him to the Eighth Judicial District Court in January 2005; voters retained and re-elected him in 2006, 2008, and 2014 across fifteen district-court years, where he was chief judge of the Criminal Division and led the Homicide Case Team. He was elected to the Supreme Court in 2020 and began a two-year term as chief justice on January 6, 2025, stating his aims as civility in the profession, access to justice, fairness, and efficiency. Education: Texas A&M (1986), Washington and Lee law (1990).
Credits: A documented law-and-order career at every level — special-victims prosecutor, homicide-team chief judge, supreme court justice, chief justice — and every promotion in it is sourced: a Republican governor's appointment, three district-court elections, a statewide supreme court election, and his colleagues' elevation to chief. Debits: A prosecutor's formation is half the adversarial system, and no signature supreme court opinion was retrieved in this pass to grade his appellate method; the endorsement rests on appointment path, electoral record, and service formation, disclosed as such.
OUR CALL
Our call: endorse Douglas W. Herndon. In an uncontested race we endorse only on an affirmatively aligned verified record, and Herndon's qualifies: appointed to the bench by a Republican governor, formed by nine years running a special-victims prosecution unit — the work of protecting the people our doctrine says the law exists to protect — repeatedly returned by voters, and now leading the court as chief justice with no activism in the sources searched. The record aligns; the seat is his without opposition on November 3.
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Sources
- Nevada Appellate Courts — "Herndon Named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court" (January 6, 2025) — Herndon's two-year chief-justice term; supreme court service since his 2020 election; fifteen years as an Eighth Judicial District judge, chief judge of the Criminal Division and Homicide Case Team — https://nvcourts.gov/supreme/news/herndon_named_chief_justice_of_the_supreme_court,_bulla_appointed_chief_judge_of_the_court_of_appeals
- Nevada Appellate Courts — 2021 release on Herndon's swearing-in — appointed to Department 3 by Governor Kenny Guinn in January 2005; retained 2006, re-elected 2008 and 2014; fourteen years in the Clark County DA's office, nine as Chief Deputy in charge of the Special Victims Unit; Texas A&M and Washington and Lee law — https://docslib.org/download/11680119/hardesty-begins-term-as-chief-justice-herndon-joins-the-nevada-supreme-court
- State Bar of Nevada — Nevada Lawyer profile (June 2021) — the trial advocacy course that redirected his career; DA appellate clerkship; special-victims focus on child-abuse homicide and abuse cases — https://nvbar.org/wp-content/uploads/NevadaLawyer_June2021_Justice-Doug-Herndon.pdf
- 2026 United States judicial elections — Nevada Seat D: Herndon (first elected 2020) renominated, sole candidate for November 3, 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_judicial_elections
Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.
AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.