Reno’s Mayoral Race: If Social Media Strategy Were Governance, We’d Be in Trouble

Mike’s Reno Repot - November 21, 2025.

Mike’s Reno Report nailed it: Kate Marshall posting a New York Times article about Iowa City’s fare-free bus program isn’t policy — it’s aesthetic politics, the political equivalent of putting a plant in the background of your Zoom call to appear grounded and responsible.

A repost is cheap. Leadership isn’t.

But before anyone mistakes her curated feed for a campaign with substance…
What exactly are the other mayoral hopefuls doing?

Because judging from their public presence, we’re not evaluating leaders — we’re reviewing a set of Reno-themed reality TV contestants.

Kathleen Taylor: DJ of the J Resort speaker saga. Taylor’s big calling card?
Engineering the great J Resort noise shuffle — flipping the speakers from east to west in the hope it would buy neighborhood votes and keep her council seat.

Instead, she merely redistributed the misery — a perfect symbol of governance-by-optics.

Leonard: The Heir to the Reese Legacy (Bless his heart) …

Leonard emerges from the political family tree of Councilmember Devon Reese — the man who avoided holding a NAB meeting in his own ward for months because, well… the public dreaded him more than construction traffic.

Reese used his social media to attack Leonard after a police report was filed with a ‘friend’ of Reese’s suggesting they should whomp Leonard, very mayoral. That’s not a legacy; that’s a warning label.

Eddie Lorton is giving us time travel on his social media. Fifth run. Fifth.

His social media is a collection of posts from elections he already lost — a scrapbook of grievances, nostalgia, and “remember when I almost won?” energy.

If his campaign goes back any further, he’ll be posting about the Reno Arch being built.

Meanwhile, in the real world of governance … Duncan Golf Managerment just showed that if you’re friends with the right people at city hall you can get what you want.

While Reno’s mayoral candidates were busy recycling posts, recycling grudges, and recycling speaker positions, Duncan Golf Management walked into the Reno Planning Commission and actually achieved something over all those privileged homeowners in Lakeridge. Wasn’t that the same thing former City Councilmember Oscar Delgado said in 2021 when the residents of Lakeridge lost to the developers at the former Lakeridge Tennis Club, you know, they were privileged so they deserved to lose.

Since when did success disqualify someone from having an opinion about their own neighborhood? People can work their whole lives to afford a home, pay taxes, contribute to the community… and suddenly they’re told their concerns don’t count because they’re too successful.

That’s not equity.
That’s not fairness.
That’s just lazy thinking dressed up as progressive rhetoric, and the way the City of Reno sashays around allowing developers to get their way, you know the same folks, developers who are privileged. Everyone deserves a voice — not just the voices the City of Reno Government deems acceptable.

While Duncan Golf was securing Reno Planning Commission approvals, Reno’s mayoral candidates were busy:

• curating vibes

• replaying old battles

• avoiding the public

• or posting themselves into irrelevance

Maybe the mayoral hopefuls should take a field trip to a planning commission meeting to observe citizens being shafted.

The real punchline: Pat Cashell may jump in.

If Pat Cashell enters the race?
Eddie Lorton will disappear from the mayoral conversation faster than you can say “fifth time still not the charm.”

The rest will have to start explaining what they’ll do for Reno besides posting, posing, and proposing speaker rotations.

Reno’s residents deserve more. More than branding, more than recycled Facebook posts, more than nostalgia campaigns, more than inherited unpopularity, and definitely more than noise-direction politics.

Reno needs leaders who can actually get something done while listening to the residents.