Nevada AG Race Turns Into Clash After Blockchain City Plan Rejection

Nevada AG – Jeffrey Berns, whose blockchain “smart city” in Nevada was blocked, has donated millions to back Nicole Cannizzaro’s primary opponent in the attorney general race.

For five years, Nevada state Sen.. Nicole Cannizzaro stood in the way of a crypto tycoon’s plan to build a blockchain-based “smart city” near Reno.. Now the same tycoon. Jeffrey Berns. is pouring millions of dollars into Cannizzaro’s primary fight for Nevada attorney general. backing her opponent. state Treasurer Zach Conine.

The money is flowing at precisely the moment Nevada Democrats are gearing up for a June 9 primary in which both Conine and Cannizzaro sit on the same party ticket.. Their shared challenge. political strategists say. is how to mobilize an energized Democratic base while confronting the possibility that one wealthy donor is shaping the contest more than voters might expect.

Kenneth Miller. an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada. Las Vegas. said Berns’s spending is “meaningful money. especially at this early stage in the primary. ” and added that it is unclear whether the donations represent a one-time investment or the opening move of a longer effort.

Berns has donated at least $2.5 million since 2023 to a political action committee controlled by Conine.. Conine. the state treasurer running for attorney general against Cannizzaro. has received more than twice as much money through that conduit as he has collected in individual donations: $1.2 million to his personal campaign account over the same period.

That stream of support does not end with Conine. After receiving Berns’s money, Conine’s PAC donated more than $1.8 million to a newly created campaign committee called Safe and Strong Nevada PAC. The group launched a website and video advertisement attacking Cannizzaro.

“It is not typical for a campaign to be almost entirely propped up by one wealthy megadonor,” Miller said.

Neither candidate has made cryptocurrency a defining theme of their campaigns. Still, Berns’s role as the dominant source of funding for Conine’s campaign organizations has placed crypto influence at the center of the race, even if it is not being prominently advertised.

Miller said the scale of Berns’s giving reflects a broader pattern.. “All semblance of constraints on political donations have eroded away in the past couple decades. and the amount of money it takes to be impactful in a Nevada primary election is well within reach for a lot of wealthy individuals. ” he said.. He noted that while wealthy interests often route money through one or two super PACs nationwide. a primary race in which a single donor is the primary engine behind a rival’s momentum is less common.

Berns’s intervention carries a personal history.

Five years ago, Cannizzaro helped derail Berns’s vision for a “smart city” in the Reno desert.. Berns. a former California plaintiff’s lawyer who won large settlements against the banking industry. also built his fortune in cryptocurrency. including as an early investor in Ether. a leading competitor to bitcoin.

He backed the blockchain city idea through a company called Blockchains, which in 2018 purchased 67,000 acres of land in Storey County, in northern Nevada near the Tesla “Gigafactory,” for $170 million.

Though Storey County has relatively flexible development rules. Berns’s plan required something beyond what county authorities would allow: an entire city that would run on blockchain. operating independently from the county.. He framed the project as a way to “democratize democracy. ” telling the BBC he wanted to rethink how governance could work.

At first, Berns received high-level political support. Then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, endorsed the idea in his 2021 State of the State address.

But opponents argued the concept amounted to an end-run around democratic governance. They also raised concerns about more practical matters, including potential losses in tax revenue and disputes over water rights.

Legislative approval was needed for the project to move forward.. That effort was complicated when it came to light that Berns was being sued by his children’s nanny. who alleged that he tried to force her into a sexual tryst with him and his wife.. Berns said the plaintiff was a disgruntled former employee.. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, he settled the case the next year without admitting wrongdoing.

Even with Sisolak’s backing, the smart city proposal stalled during a study process. Cannizzaro, then Nevada’s first female Senate majority leader, became one of the key figures associated with killing the idea.

A lobbyist involved in the discussions confirmed Cannizzaro was instrumental in shelving it. In a statement, Cannizzaro’s campaign said she opposed the concept.

“Like nearly all of her legislative colleagues in both parties. Majority Leader Cannizzaro was extremely skeptical of the idea of letting private corporations run their own governments and siphon off millions of taxpayers’ dollars. ” said Peter Koltak. a campaign spokesperson.. “Ultimately. she informed the Governor’s staff and the bill’s supporters that there wouldn’t be legislative support for the concept.”

After the proposal was effectively shelved, Berns’s company pulled out of the study process, with staff saying there was no point in continuing to explore the idea.

In the years since, Berns has shifted his political focus to Nevada, offering money to politicians across party lines. He did not respond to a request for comment on why he is intervening in the attorney general race.

Campaign finance records show Berns has made donations that extend beyond the crypto industry’s usual national ambitions.. While many major crypto firms and venture capital groups have backed a national super PAC called Fairshake that has hundreds of millions to spend on federal elections. Berns has not donated to that effort. federal campaign finance records show.

Instead, his giving has been concentrated in Nevada. Records show he gave $5,000 to Republican Gov. Joseph Lombardo in 2024, and $250,000 to the Democratic Party of Washoe County in 2022. He also gave $5,000 to Cannizzaro in 2020 before the smart city proposal died in the legislature.

Despite the sharp personal and political disagreement at the center of the smart city episode. Miller said he does not expect the earlier project to have left a lasting mark on voters.. “In Las Vegas. not a month goes by without an artist’s rendering of a proposed resort. arena. or other project popping up. ” he said.. “Some of them happen, and many of them don’t.. I don’t expect that the smart city proposal left much of an impression on many Nevada voters.”

Still, the contrast between the historical collision and the current spending makes the race feel unusually direct.

Conine has not detailed how he would handle crypto policy at the same level that his opponent and critics have raised it.. But he has signaled friendliness to the industry.. During the smart city debate, Conine promoted allowing government entities to accept payments in stablecoin.. In 2024, he attended an event sponsored by a crypto industry trade group.

Cannizzaro, for her part, has not appeared to stake out major public positions on the crypto industry. Her campaign said that despite the spending by Berns, it will not deter her.

“Leader Cannizzaro has always defended Nevada from big corporations and wealthy special interests, and an unaccountable tech billionaire dumping his millions into this race is certainly not going to stop her,” Koltak said.

Conine and Berns did not respond to questions about the donations.

What happens next is likely to depend on whether voters treat Berns’s money as a referendum on the smart city defeat, on Conine’s political alignment, or simply as another example of how modern campaigns can be shaped by wealthy backers even when candidates avoid making the issue explicit.

Nevada AG race Jeffrey Berns Zach Conine Nicole Cannizzaro crypto political donations blockchain city