Former Clark County Family Court Judge Paul Gaudet is running to reclaim the Department N seat he lost to Kerri Maxey two years ago, and this time he says he is using his middle name, Michel, on the ballot because he wants voters to think he is a woman. Gaudet has never been elected to office. He took the family court bench in March 2023 after Governor Joe Lombardo appointed him to fill a vacancy, and lost the seat to Maxey by more than seven percentage points in the November 2024 special election.
As reported by Nevada Current, Gaudet claims women have a double-digit percentage advantage over men in judicial races and says using Michel on the ballot is an attempt to level the playing field. Nevada Current reported it found no research supporting Gaudet's assertion about a double-digit female advantage. The outlet did note that UNLV political science researcher Rebecca Gill found in 2019 that women held an edge over male incumbents in judicial races. Under Nevada Revised Statute 293.2565, judicial candidates may list a given name, familiar contraction, or nickname of up to ten letters in quotation marks on the ballot, so long as it does not convey political or social affiliations or deceive voters, according to the Nevada Legislature.
A Rematch Two Years in the Making
Gaudet and Maxey were both selected as finalists for the open family court seat in 2023, the same process that led to Gaudet's appointment. The seat had become vacant after the death of Judge Mathew Harter, who served more than 14 years on the family court bench after first winning election in 2008 and had run unopposed for retention in 2020, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Maxey went on to defeat Gaudet outright in the November 2024 special election that followed his brief appointment.
Before taking the bench, Maxey worked as a public defender and previously served as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. Gaudet, for his part, contends Maxey lacks his breadth of domestic and family law experience and says he has valuable knowledge and service to offer the community as a family court judge.
Appellate Record Becomes a Flashpoint
Nevada Current reports Gaudet was reversed several times on appeal during his judicial tenure, despite what he describes as extensive experience in family law. In one case, the outlet reports Gaudet failed to hold an evidentiary hearing on domestic violence allegations and issued temporary custody orders without considering the children's best interest; the Court of Appeals ruled that substantiated domestic violence allegations must be considered in custody determinations. In another matter, Gaudet granted custody of one child to the father and the other children to the mother, and the father in that case was not under a court order to pay support but remitted $500 in child support along with one box of diapers and two boxes of baby wipes to the mother, according to the same outlet.
An appellate court also overturned Gaudet's termination of a father's parental rights in a separate case, with the Court of Appeals finding Gaudet committed a manifest abuse of discretion in a child custody matter. Gaudet says he stands by his decisions and those of the appellate courts, and has said national statistics on reversal rates are daunting. Maxey, for her part, says her own appealed cases have not yet been adjudicated and that she is not against appeals as a matter of principle.
Campaign Money and Endorsements Diverge Sharply
The financial and institutional gap between the two candidates is stark. Gaudet is running a low-profile campaign, is raising no campaign money, and has no campaign website, per Nevada Current's reporting. He has drawn a endorsement from the Third Branch Political Action Committee, a non-partisan group that says it supports and elects fair, competent, and diligent judges through candidate questionnaires and panel interviews conducted by members representing diverse political affiliations, according to the Third Branch PAC. Gaudet also received a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board endorsement in a 2014 campaign for a different family court seat, when the board highlighted his more than 20 years of civil and family law practice.
Maxey, by contrast, had raised $70,000 as of July, with $41,500 remaining on hand, and is backed by more than two dozen law enforcement, labor, and community organizations, including Culinary Local 226, the Service Employees International Union, the National Organization for Women, Laborers Union 720, and Hispanics in Politics, per the same Nevada Current report. In the Review-Journal's 2025 “Judging the Judges” performance survey, Maxey earned a 78% attorney retention score, while her appellate error rate was recorded as zero because the Las Vegas Review-Journal noted the Nevada Supreme Court had not yet issued rulings on any appeals from her courtroom.
A System Stretched Thin
Maxey has said family court lacks the resources to move cases more rapidly, and that litigants often wait months just to obtain a divorce. She works every day, including weekends, and has proposed mediation for property division as one way to alleviate caseloads, noting the court already uses family mediation for custody matters. She has said family court needs about ten additional judges to keep pace with demand.
Research by UNLV associate professor Rebecca Gill has found that family court judges nationwide consistently receive lower and more polarizing attorney retention scores than their civil or criminal court counterparts, since emotional family disputes rarely leave both litigants satisfied. That dynamic is playing out across Clark County this cycle: all 58 District Court and Family Court seats in the Eighth Judicial District Court are on the November 2026 ballot, a scope of turnover that has already produced its own controversies, including a Nevada Supreme Court ruling in August that knocked a Family Court Department Z challenger off the ballot over an email filing error.
