‘I was supposed to fail’: Ex-aide says GOP official ousted her for younger MAGA hire

A former senior adviser to Republican Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony said she was pushed out of her job in December after working with Anthony for more than a decade, replaced with a younger employee with a sizable social media following and a background with a conservative activist group.

Sally Christensen, who had worked for Anthony since he was a Las Vegas city councilman, said her official termination had been simmering for months. In June 2025, she was notified she had 30 days to become proficient in running social media for Anthony’s office — never defined as part of the senior adviser job — and to begin representing him at local events.

She was also put in charge of setting up a podcast studio for Anthony, something that she said she planned to pay for out of pocket because it “was easier than getting fired.”

Then, while working remotely in December, Christensen found she was officially fired after she could no longer log into her work computer. Although she was given a heads up in October she would likely be let go, she continued working and didn’t see a formal notice of her termination until a week after the computer incident.

“I think it was predetermined before I ever took on all these roles. I was supposed to fail, because every time we turned around, there was something added to the list,” Christensen said about the termination. “I had to write an article for a travel magazine. … I designed a conference room.”

Rudy Pamintuan, the chief of staff for the lieutenant governor, told The Indy that “our office has no comment over HR issues, which is handled by the State's HR Department.”

Shortly after, Christensen was replaced by Amy Wood, a prominent anti-vax activist and former regional manager for Turning Point Action USA, a major conservative political action group founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Her appointment comes as Anthony — who has firmly embraced socially conservative causes — seeks a re-election bid in 2026 against Democrat Sandra Jauregui (D-Las Vegas), former majority leader of the Nevada Assembly.

The role of the lieutenant governor’s office is rather limited — mainly focused on heading Nevada’s Commission on Tourism — but Anthony has stretched that, tapping into hot-button social issues, such as police brutality and transgender students in sports. In a past interview with The Indy, he said he treats the role of lieutenant governor as “a full-time job” rather than a part-time position. The office only has five staffers, according to its website.

Anthony has faced scrutiny for using state resources to advance his personal agendas. This summer, the Nevada Commission on Ethics conducted a preliminary review of Anthony's alleged use of state resources for a task force aimed at keeping transgender athletes out of women’s sports. The commission proposed a deferral agreement that included ethics training; Anthony declined.

A former nurse, Wood has a short but notable career in politics. Up until May 2025, she oversaw volunteer and voter registration efforts for Turning Point Action in Arizona and Nevada, registering thousands of people, according to her LinkedIn. She also serves on the board of the Nevada Republican Club and president of the Battle Born Women, one of the largest Republican women’s clubs in Southern Nevada, according to their websites.

Although it’s not unusual for elected officials to hire people with backgrounds in campaigns, the work of offices such as Anthony’s must focus on serving all Nevadans rather than advancing electoral goals per state law.

“It’s just an interesting hire. That’s why it seems like the hire is more motivated toward helping him politically,” Christensen said.

Wood did not respond to a request for comment.

Christensen, who is 69, told The Indy that she was shocked when she heard about Wood’s appointment. Before she was terminated, Christensen was told that the office was seeking someone who had a degree in communications or at least three years’ experience as a communications director.

On top of fulfilling public records requests and the additional duties before her termination, she was in charge of constituent services, writing talking points for Anthony, and handling the office’s budget, she said.

“I felt like there was some age discrimination with me. I think that they were just trying to overwhelm me and to get me to quit,” Christensen told The Indy in an interview.

Worried that her age discrimination might be a factor, Christensen has been looking into fighting the termination, reaching out to the Senior Law Project, which provides free legal aid to individuals 60 and older. Although the group said it was unable to help her with the request, it referred her to other attorneys who she is waiting to hear back from.

Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine’s office faced similar allegations of age discrimination from an ex-employee in a recent lawsuit. As a staffer for an elected official, Christensen said she was likely considered “unclassified,” meaning she could be terminated at any time without cause. However, the lawyers for Conine’s ex-employee contended that once an age discrimination case has been established, there must be a legitimate reason for the firing.

Conine settled in the lawsuit this September following years of litigation.

Christensen said she just recently received her final paycheck from Anthony’s office and compensation for her unused PTO, and only after pinging the office multiple times.

“I guess it just floors me that I put so much into the lieutenant governor and to the office for them to just cut me off with no regard for where I would land or what would happen,” Christensen said.

“Put heart and soul into the office”

Christensen first joined Anthony as a special assistant when he was a city councilman. She was fresh off working for a presidential campaign in 2016 and said she was hired “pretty much on the spot.”

She described her early days working with Anthony as “close and personal,” but says that since he has become lieutenant governor, their relationship has become more distant. She said “it was lucky” if Anthony came into the office once a week and she felt that often, she had to “fill in” other duties for the small staff. Throughout her time with him, she had never been written up or been reprimanded for her work until they piled on the additional duties late last year.

She redesigned his office and represented him at ribbon-cutting ceremonies, saying she poured her “heart and soul” into the job.

“Every place I go to, I try to leave it better than I found it,” she said.

Christensen said she is worried about the administration of public records now that she is gone. The website has yet to reflect that Amy Wood is now senior adviser, meaning that emails are still going to Christensen’s old account. Christensen said she was often discouraged from working on the public records requests, told by the lieutenant governor it was “not a priority.”

“I was trying to do all this stuff, but I had these requests, so I insisted on doing them,” Christensen said. “And he was like, ‘you need to not be doing these. This is not a priority … it should be, like, the last thing on my list.”

The lieutenant governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment regarding the fulfillment of public records.

Before Anthony, Christensen had stints working for a former Nevada governor and on the campaign for former state Sen. Ann O'Connell. She also worked on a political action committee for the 2016 presidential campaign of Republican candidate Carly Fiorina.

Wood’s career

Wood has thousands of followers on X and Instagram, where she posts videos dealing with fitness and nutritional supplements. Her most prominent political work is her advocacy against vaccine mandates.

In a brief phone call, Wood told The Nevada Independent that she was not available for a conversation and to contact her over email. She did not respond to subsequent emails.

Before moving to Nevada, Wood was a nurse in Southern California. It was there, during the COVID-19 pandemic, that she became more politically outspoken, refusing a mandate that required health care personnel to vaccinate against COVID-19, she said in an interview with the conservative podcast Patriots Only. Shortly after, she left for Nevada.

“I didn’t have a single senior patient die during the initial start of COVID,” Wood said on the podcast. “We were treating them with things that months later, we were told no longer worked. So for me, that was a very big red flag.”

In the interview with Patriots Only, Wood said she was appointed as Nevada’s first Turning Point representative shortly after moving to the state, and would later be promoted to a representative for Arizona, where the organization is headquartered. In her work with the organization, she said she helped flip Nevada Assembly District 35 red to elect Assm. Rebecca Edgeworth (R-Las Vegas) in 2024 and several conservative candidates in local school board races.

She also helped lead efforts to create various coalitions for the group, including a faith-based group and a Latino community arm.

This story was published in partnership with Creative Commons. Read the original story here.