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Our call — see the breakdown

How we research: the LiberalMind standard — every candidate gets the same deep pass — service and voting record, campaign positions, local news, questionnaires and voter guides, endorsements, public statements, filings — and both columns of the ledger print: the dirt and the credits, each at the same standard of proof. What held up is stated as fact; what did not is labeled unproven or left out. Race roster: Clark County Election Department, official Notice of General Election — grade: official. Pairings confirmed against the county's primary notice (District F's third candidate did not advance).

The race

Three elected seats on the Clark County School District's Board of Trustees are on the November 3 ballot — Districts D, F and G, four-year terms — and all three are held by incumbents seeking re-election in a district in genuine crisis. CCSD, the fifth-largest school district in America, entered this school year with more than 10,400 fewer students than the year before; the district has said the decline alone would cost it more than $100 million in state funding and force a $51.6 million fall budget cut, and Governor Lombardo signed an emergency order letting CCSD draw funding on last session's higher projected enrollment rather than this year's actual count. That averted immediate layoffs; it did not answer why families are leaving. Superintendent Jhone Ebert — appointed in 2025 after the board's long, damaging endgame with her predecessor — now runs the district under an eleven-member board (seven elected, four appointed). Every trustee race below is a referendum on whether the incumbents who steered through that period should keep their seats.

The candidates

District D — Brenda Zamora (incumbent). Credits: elected in November 2022, in office since January 2023. Her philosophy is on the record from her 2022 Opportunity 180 questionnaire: a trustee's job is creating "policies to further children's education, create safe working environments, and create community relationships," and public education should "provide equitable education for all families in Southern Nevada no matter their background and their socioeconomic status." One documented act of independence stands out in her file: she criticized her own board for rehiring Superintendent Jesus Jara after firing him, saying the district was "not holding him accountable" — that judgment reads well against everything that followed in the Jara saga. She is endorsed for re-election by the Education Support Employees Association, the district's support-staff union. Dirt: she governs a district whose enrollment and budget are in freefall, and the conservative Nevada News and Views' long profile of her race ("The Zamora Files") presses her on the board's gender-identity and instructional-materials policies — both adopted before her tenure (2018 and 2021 respectively), a chronology the critique itself concedes. No personal misconduct or scandal surfaced in the coverage worked.

District D — David Gomez. Credits: president of the nonprofit Nevada Peace Alliance, and the only challenger who filed against Zamora. He carries the endorsement of the Moms for Liberty Clark County chapter — the chapter whose two endorsed trustees joined this board in 2025 and whose book-removal campaigns against LGBTQ-related titles have defined the board's culture fights. Dirt: none found — and little affirmative file beyond the nonprofit presidency and the endorsement; no questionnaire answers or platform documents from his campaign were retrievable in the sources worked.

District F — Irene Bustamante Adams (incumbent). Credits: trustee since 2023, and the board's presiding officer through the current year — CCSD's own 2026 meeting agendas list her as the board's president (and, after the board's internal rotation, vice president), signing alongside Superintendent Ebert. She hired, with her colleagues, the district's first permanent woman superintendent and has presided over the Ebert era's stabilization effort. She is endorsed by the Latin Chamber of Commerce of Las Vegas — the region's principal Latino business organization, whose 2026 list leans heavily Republican elsewhere, making its support for her a cross-partisan signal. Dirt: the counter-signal is real and printed: the Education Support Employees Association, having endorsed both other incumbents, pointedly chose her challenger over her — the district's support staff declining to back their own board's president is a fact her campaign has to answer. No personal misconduct surfaced.

District F — Robert E. Hutchinson. Credits: he works inside the district as a facilities director — he knows CCSD's aging physical plant, its bond-funded construction program and its deferred maintenance from the inside, in a district where building condition is a first-order complaint — and he won the Education Support Employees Association's endorsement over the incumbent, which means the district's own support workers judged him the better trustee. Dirt: one structural tension, printed as a fact rather than an accusation: he is a district employee asking to sit on the board that employs his chain of command — the board hires the superintendent who directs the administrators who supervise him. Nevada law and district practice manage such conflicts rather than prohibit them, but voters should weigh the oversight geometry. He reached November through a three-way primary in which the third candidate, Laurence M. Neely — a Turning Point Action manager endorsed by Moms for Liberty — did not advance.

District G — Linda P. Cavazos (incumbent). Credits: the longest-serving trustee on the board — in office since 2017, through three superintendents — and endorsed for re-election by the Education Support Employees Association. Nine years on this board without a personal scandal surfacing in the coverage worked is itself a record in CCSD politics. Dirt: the honest debit is institutional, not personal: she is the senior member of a board whose recent history — the Jara firing-and-rehiring, the COVID-funds probe, the enrollment collapse — happened on her watch, and longevity cuts both ways. No individual adverse item was documented against her in the sources worked.

District G — Paul Casey. Credits: a substitute teacher in the district he seeks to govern — classroom-floor experience of the system — and the Moms for Liberty Clark County chapter's endorsed challenger. Dirt: none found; and no platform documents, questionnaire answers or campaign coverage beyond his occupation and endorsement were retrievable in the sources worked.

Pros and cons

Record gaps

The deep pass on this race worked: the Clark County Election Department's official general-election and primary notices (the pairings; Neely's primary candidacy); Nevada News and Views' District D profile (Zamora's 2022 questionnaire answers, the Jara criticism, the district's enrollment and budget figures, the Lombardo emergency order — a conservative outlet, used with its framing attributed); the Nevada Independent's endorsement reporting (Moms for Liberty's three picks; the Education Support Employees Association's choices, including Hutchinson over Bustamante Adams); CCSD's own 2026 board agendas (Bustamante Adams presiding; the board's membership); and the Latin Chamber of Commerce's 2026 endorsement list (Bustamante Adams). Named gaps: David Gomez and Paul Casey have no retrievable campaign platforms in anything worked — their files are an occupation, a nonprofit title and an endorsement line each; Hutchinson's case reaches us through the union endorsement and his job title rather than published positions. Those gaps are printed, not filled.

OUR CALL

District D: ENDORSE Brenda Zamora for re-election — she called out her own board's Jara failure before it was safe to, she holds the support staff's confidence, and her challenger offers an endorsement instead of a platform. District F: ENDORSE Irene Bustamante Adams for re-election — the board's presiding officer through the district's hardest two years, backed by the region's Latino business community in a list that otherwise leans the other way. Hutchinson is the credible challenger of this cycle and the union's preference for him is the strongest single fact against our call; we weigh the employee-on-the-board conflict and the value of continuity at the top of a stabilizing district heavier, and we print the counter-case here in full so District F voters can weigh it themselves. District G: ENDORSE Linda P. Cavazos for re-election — the board's longest-serving member, clean through three superintendents, with labor's endorsement; her challenger published no program to set against that record.

This article is part of our complete Election 2026 coverage — every race, researched the same way. Read the full breakdown on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

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.

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