Jeff Carter for Nevada State Treasurer: Fight Waste & Fraud, Invest Tax Dollars Wisely

My Hat is In The Ring

After many conversations and careful thought, I am running for the Republican nomination for State Treasurer of Nevada. I am asking for your support monetarily, spiritually, and, if you are a resident of Nevada, actively. I am grateful to the people who took the time to speak with me. What they said helped me reach a decision.

Decisions like this take time, and I have been cogitating about it for a while. Like a normal business person, I did my diligence.

I don’t need to do this for the money. It will certainly cut into my time in places I love, like our cabins in Minnesota. I don’t need the publicity. I am doing it for the reasons below.

One thing I hope we can agree on: Career politicians are a pox upon the American experiment. I pledge not to be a career politician. I had my career. My primary opponent can’t say that. He has been running and losing for office since 2020.

I have spent decades delivering strong investment returns, creating hundreds of jobs, and helping transform international finance. Now I want to bring that same expertise to modernize the Treasurer's office and protect your hard-earned taxpayer dollars. As a private citizen—not a career politician—I will deliver transparency, accountability, and common sense, while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.

The Treasurer position is one where it is important to have someone with real-life experience. You can’t learn on the job. You are a steward of the public’s capital. You can’t be an opinion writer, but you have to be able to execute and actually do things.

In 2008, an incompetent Illinois treasurer lost 38% of my daughter’s 529 college money when we were invested in the safest risk-free securities. He missed that the firm running the 529 put a real estate wrapper on the risk-free investments, and the whole thing blew up.

This position is personal to me.

I have assembled a top-rate team. Chris Carr is running the show. I have a treasurer and a compliance officer. We have a top-rate web designer building a fantastic website. We are working with some of the top people in Nevada and the US.

In the meantime, here is my donation page.

Many subscribers to this blog have privately told me to run for something over the years. Many have done it in the comments. The timing is right. I am 63 and will be 64 by the time of the Republican primary. Early voting starts May 23.

As my acquaintance, WW2 Board member Jack Jacobs said, “If not now, when”? A large percentage of subscribers have pledged money to this site in case I ever turn on subscriptions. This blog will always be free, but I’d appreciate it if you donated to my campaign using the link above. If you want to donate in crypto, I will be enabling that as well. The last NV Treasurer’s race cost about $900,000. Yes, I am putting my own money in the race so I have skin in the game, just like I did when I was a professional market maker on the floor, and in our financial technology venture fund.

We have a budget, and we will follow it.

We left Illinois behind and searched the entire country. We lived in the cities we were interested in for a month or more. We chose Nevada. We bought and gut-remodeled a house, and we love it here. The people are great. The climate is fantastic. The outdoor life is amazing, and there is always plenty to do on the Strip.

One of the things friends told us when we fled the state of Illinois for the state of Nevada was not to sit on our hands. Get involved.

Nevada has hope and a bright future if we fight for it. It’s a severely gerrymandered Democratic state. The gerrymander is the primary reason the state legislature is Democrat-led. Hopefully, we continue to flip some seats in 2026. Get out and vote!

There is a lot we can do to make the state better, diversify the economy, and create opportunities no one has ever dreamed of.

The Treasurer’s seat is an open seat.

As people who left a dysfunctional state, we never want to live in one again. We experienced high taxes, oppressive regulations, less freedom, and a choking government. Politicians always said they were there to serve, but all they did was serve themselves.

It’s time to take a stand, dig our heels in the dirt, and stop them.

I am uniquely qualified to be a State Treasurer. Here is why you should support me.

• Undergraduate from the Gies College of Business at Illinois

• MBA from The University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business

• From 2009-2016, I was a member of the Board of Trustees at the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, LA.

• For 25 years, I was a professional trader and market maker in interest rate futures on the floor of the CME, where your word was your bond.

• I was elected by my peers to be on the CME Board, and we revolutionized worldwide finance, turning CME into the $90B behemoth it is today. ($CME)

• I co-founded HPA, one of the most active angel groups in the US, and kicked off the seed stage financing revolution in Chicago.

• My partner, Kenny Estes, and I invested internationally at the pre-seed and seed stage in B2B finance companies at West Loop Ventures that were revolutionizing the world of finance from 2016 to 2021. Our fund is currently over 3x return.

• I have invested in over 30 startups. Samples include NitrogenWealth.com, Contio.ai, Ycharts.com, Brilliant.org, SimpleMills.com, UICO.com, NuCurrent.com, and Bitnomial.com.

• I have mentored countless startups and have been a go-to person for honest advice. Startup people don’t care who you know or where you came from, but only care if you can execute.

• In 2017, I was a US delegate to the first-ever i7/G7 meeting in Torino, Italy. It was a groundbreaking event. It was the first time the G7 examined the future of work, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and other cutting-edge topics. My peers on our delegation were tops in their fields.

• I was an economic and market commentator on Fox Business, CNBC, Bloomberg, and other financial channels from the late 1990s to 2010. I was an in-studio guest host on CNBC Asia and Fox Business. Rick Santelli is a friend. Jimmy Iourio, Jack Bouroudjian, and Yra Harris are good friends.

• I have lectured at multiple major universities on finance and early-stage startups.

• I have helped countless other angel groups get started.

• I have written editorials for business publications like Crain’s, Epoch Times, Chicago Tribune, and others. (Writing about stuff is easy; getting your hands dirty is hard).

I understand free markets, free enterprise capitalism, and the guts and glue of the financial system. I was an active participant, trading and investing in it for my entire career. I got my hands dirty. I know the hurt of losing money, and I know what it is to make it.

Friends of mine were busy too, and we all thought, “How bad can it get?” Pretty bad. Democratic Socialists occupy the governor's and mayor's offices, along with Chicago City Council seats, legislative seats, and County Board seats.

It turns out that states like Illinois are like the people Ernest Hemingway described when they went bankrupt. Gradually, then suddenly. I don’t want Nevada to run down the same path, and when you look at the data, the trend is not your friend.

No doubt, the Democrats will disagree, but their policies are the ones bankrupting cities and states across the US. In many blue states, we are discovering outright fraud. In Nevada, they are running a bunch of Democratic Socialists up and down the ticket.

The Nevada Republican Party has some great candidates, and the three incumbents, Governor Joe Lombardo, Lt Gov Stavros Anthony, and Controller Andy Matthews, have done great jobs the last four years and will do even more in the next four. Adriana Guzmán Fralick is running for Attorney General. She’s outstanding!

One of my goals is for all Nevadans to get the same opportunities the wealthy have. I have been creating financial opportunities for people my entire life.

Unlike career politicians who don’t understand the role, I will be a trusted steward of the state’s money.

The role of Nevada State Treasurer is a narrowly defined constitutional office focused on serving as the state’s chief financial officer. Primary responsibilities include managing and investing state funds safely and responsibly to maximize returns for taxpayers, handling cash flow and debt issuance, overseeing unclaimed property, administering and expanding college savings programs like the Nevada 529 plans, and ensuring efficient disbursement of approved state payments. The Treasurer chairs certain boards related to finance and investments, but does not set policy on education, health care, or social programs.

If there is anyone in this race who knows how to get a return on investment along with incorporating risk versus reward analysis, it’s me.

But I think we can do more, a lot more.

We can push financial empowerment and opportunity in Nevada. Financial empowerment encompasses so much more than literacy. It is educating people on how to assess risk regarding their decisions. It’s teaching them how to create opportunities for themselves.

We can give people ways to access government benefits that have already been allocated in the budget so they can get help if they need it.

As Treasurer, I can introduce five bills, and the first one I will introduce is that the State Treasurer has to have some real, tangible financial experience. They should have some certification, like a CPA, a Series 7, a CFA, an MBA, or something financial on their resume. Being a state treasurer is not a learn as you go job. It’s not a place for people without experience.

We can modernize the Treasurer’s office to speed up payments and drop fees for taxpayers. We can figure out ways to distribute money so it isn’t used fraudulently and can’t be bartered.

Nevada needs to court corporations to redomicile in the state. I know the right people to begin that task. Because of court decisions in Delaware, companies are beginning to analyze states to recharter in. Nevada can be their destination state. That would provide a predictable cash flow to the state in perpetuity.

We can ensure the Nevada Treasurer’s office isn’t beholden to investing in ESG or DEI projects, allowing it to focus solely on generating the best ROI. But frankly, the ESG/DEI stuff is table stakes, and every Republican is saying that. Few know how to invest that way.

We can also utilize cutting-edge technology to cut costs and make the Treasurer’s office more responsive to citizens. That same tech might scale to other offices.

Back in 2015, I was at venture capital firm Founder Fund’s office chatting with Trae Stephens about politics. We agreed that the worst thing for both parties is career politicians.

My potential Democratic opponent is a career politician. He said he left the private sector to have a career in politics.

My primary opponent has been a perpetual candidate, losing both times. He runs for a different office every time because he needs the job. I don’t need the job.

If you agree with me that career politicians are a boil on the skin of the Republic, vote for me, no matter what party you identify with. The State Treasurer’s office should be the most non-partisan office out there.

Thanks for being with me on this journey, and I welcome your support. Come along with me on this ride. Follow me on X here, or join 250k+ followers on LinkedIn here, or Facebook.

We formally declare in March when the filing period begins. We will win this thing. Let’s go get ‘em.