Less than three weeks after the woman who regulated the industry left her job, a group representing marijuana dispensaries is hosting a fundraiser for her Assembly campaign.

The event for former Taxation Department Director Deonne Contine, set at a Las Vegas restaurant on Feb. 28, was promoted by the Nevada Dispensary Association trade group. The host committee includes owners and CEOs of some of the most prominent marijuana businesses in the state, including The Source, Essence and Oasis Cannabis.

“The Nevada Dispensary Association has a history of supporting candidates from both political parties and a wide variety of backgrounds. Members of the Association support those candidates they feel would serve Nevada’s citizens well,” Riana Durrett, executive director of the NDA, told The Nevada Independent. “Mrs. Contine has an impressive record of service to Nevada and our organization is proud to support her candidacy.”

Contine’s final day as taxation director was Feb. 9. Until then, she oversaw the agency that collects taxes from the dispensaries and can impose fines, revoke their licenses and approve applications for coveted new licenses.

She led the effort to set up regulations for recreational marijuana — a project finalized last month — and has been praised by national observers for getting sales going six months ahead of deadline while other states have struggled to stay on track.

She’s now a candidate for a Reno Assembly seat being vacated by fellow Democrat Amber Joiner, and has the endorsement of the Nevada Assembly Democratic Caucus.

In an interview with The Nevada Independent, Contine pushed back against any suggestion that her work as a marijuana regulator aimed to build goodwill among potential donors ahead of her campaign.

“I think that my record as a regulator speaks for itself. We had hundreds of public meetings about the regulations,” she said on Monday. “I try to balance the needs of the industry but ... that’s always been secondary to the public health and safety.”

She said she only considered running after Joiner announced in late November that she wouldn’t seek re-election, told only a few people that she was jumping in ahead of her formal announcement and never solicited any campaign contributions until after she had left the agency.

“It’s a little insulting to me to think that my integrity as a regulator would be questioned like that and most people who have worked with me, I think, would speak to that,” she added.

Contine noted that she needed to get started on fundraising because the Democratic primary is in June, and the heavily Democratic district has already attracted several candidates.

Nevada lawmakers passed a bill in 2015 requiring a “cooling-off period” for lawmakers who leave office before they can start lobbying their former colleagues. It prohibits them from being a paid lobbyist from the date they leave office until the adjournment of the next regular session, but it says nothing about situations like Contine’s, in which a former regulator leaves to join the private sector and run for office.

Contine is taking a job in Reno with the law firm Kaempfer Crowell, which has worked with marijuana industry clients to file license applications and comply with regulations and whose roster includes Carson City Mayor Robert Crowell as a retired partner. She plans to work on issues including regulatory compliance and tax compliance, but said she would avoid working with clients on audits that were active before the taxation department while she was at the helm.

Contine said she’ll also follow the advice of counsel to avoid conflicts between her day job at the firm and bills that come before the part-time Legislature if she’s elected.