Senator Jacky Rosen highlights bipartisan qualifications amidst GOP’s effort to capture her position

When Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) launched her reelection campaign in April 2023, she sought in the video announcement to emphasize her bipartisan credentials.

“I know what Nevada families are going through,” Rosen said. “It’s why I first ran for Congress. And it’s why in the Senate, I’ve worked with both parties to solve problems. And always focused on making a difference in people’s lives.”

It’s clear why Rosen, 66, is placing such an emphasis on independent voters. It’s worked well in her fast-rising mid-life political career, which she pursued after time as a computer programmer and, among other things, volunteering as president of the Congregation Ner Tamid synagogue, a Reform Jewish congregation in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson. Rosen won an open House seat in 2016 and, after a single, two-year term, moved to the Senate in the 2018 elections by beating a Republican incumbent.

And Nevada has a famously independent and hard-to-pin-down electorate due to its frequent population churn. Swaths of people move to the Las Vegas area between elections, seeking lower housing costs, job opportunities, and desert sunshine, among other factors. Some stay in what’s still an often boom-and-bust economy based on the service industry, but large numbers of others leave, which forces candidates each election cycle, from statewide to local office, to scramble to identify and persuade likely voters.

A near-top Republican target

Senate Republicans are eyeing the Nevada seat as a key pickup opportunity in their quest to overturn Democrats’ 51-49 majority. Senate Republicans already have one state effectively in the bag, West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is retiring and is virtually certain to be replaced by a Republican in a state that turned out to be former President Donald Trump‘s second-best showing in 2020, when he beat President Joe Biden there 69% to 30%.

The top two Republican targets are Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT). Knocking them off, plus claiming West Virginia, would provide a healthy 52-48 majority. That’s where the Nevada seat comes in, with Senate Republicans eyeing a pickup opportunity in a state that’s being fiercely contested at the presidential level. In 2020, Biden only beat Trump in Nevada 50.05% to 47.67%. It’s a similar situation in Pennsylvania, where Republicans are bullish on nominee David McCormick’s chances of beating Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), in a kind of undercard race to the fierce presidential fight being waged in the Keystone State.

That explains why Rosen has not always voted in lockstep with her more liberal Democratic Senate colleagues. In May 2023, she was among a small group of Senate Democrats to join Republicans in passing a resolution, 56-43, to overturn a measure passed by the Council of the District of Columbia aimed at police accountability. It would have banned the use of chokeholds, required officers to use de-escalation tactics before the use of force, and provided public access to body camera records. Republicans had seized on the bill as a sign Democrats are “soft on crime” and not doing enough on the matter.

Rosen was also among a group of Senate Democrats who called on the Biden administration to freeze the $6 billion in assets to Iran after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel.

In her reelection bid, Rosen is leaving little up to chance. Her campaign recently placed a $14 million ad reservation in Nevada. It will run from late July through the November election in the Las Vegas and Reno markets.

Senate Republicans, though, scoff at these moves, arguing the eventual GOP nominee, either retired Army Capt. Sam Brown or wealthy dermatologist and Trump administration U.S. Ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter, is in a strong position to defeat Rosen.

The National Republican Senate Committee, the campaign arm of the chamber’s GOP lawmakers, is actively linking Rosen to Biden, whose middling approval numbers leave him in a near-dead heat with his vanquished 2020 Republican rival a bit under six months out from this year’s election.

“Jacky Rosen is stuck in the low forties in the polls because she has done absolutely nothing to separate herself from the national Democrat brand,” said Mike Berg, NRSC communications director.

“Voters don’t know anything about her other than that she is a rubber stamp for whatever Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer want,” Berg added, in reference to the Senate Democratic leader from New York, a popular Republican political punching bag.

In the June 11 Republican primary, Brown is the most prominent candidate. He was courted by NRSC Chairman Steve Daines (R-MT) to run for the seat. A 2006 West Point graduate who later earned a master’s degree at Southern Methodist University, Brown is an Afghanistan war veteran who sustained burns to 30% of his body due to an improvised explosive device injury in 2008.

A recent Emerson College-Hill poll showed Brown would have some ground to make up against Rosen as the Republican Senate nominee, with the incumbent ahead 45% to 37%.

Still, Brown is looking forward to the general election, challenging Rosen’s bipartisan credentials in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

“Jacky Rosen has championed 98% of Joe Biden’s disastrous policies prioritizing the wants of Washington over the needs of Nevadans,” Brown said. “As a result, housing, grocery, and energy prices are out of control; our border is a war zone with crime and fentanyl flooding our streets; and the education system is excluding parental involvement while simultaneously failing our children.”

Gunter, meanwhile, has the ability to self-fund a campaign against Rosen — if he can get that far. He and Brown are among 12 GOP candidates seeking the nomination, a field that includes former Assemblyman Jim Marchant, a 2020 election denier and the 2022 GOP nominee for secretary of state.

Gunter has sought to tie Brown to retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and claim the mantle as the top MAGA Republican in the primary.

“Dr. Jeff Gunter is the quintessential MAGA candidate, committed to President Trump’s transformative policies and prepared to invest substantially to secure victory in Nevada,” Gunter spokeswoman Erica Knight said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “With robust grassroots support demonstrated at the recent Nevada GOP convention, Dr. Gunter is uniquely positioned to unseat Senator Jacky Rosen and champion conservative values in the Senate.”

Trump has not endorsed a candidate in the race, most likely due to his ties with Gunter and the NRSC’s backing of Brown.

Rosen support back home

With the fall race coming more into focus, Rosen’s campaign continues to emphasize what it calls her ability to work across the aisle on behalf of her constituents.

“Jacky Rosen has been ranked one of the most bipartisan and effective Senators in the nation because of her proven record of political independence and her work across party lines to deliver for Nevada,” Rosen spokeswoman Johanna Warshaw said. “While extreme MAGA Republicans are busy tearing each other down in a divisive and expensive primary, Senator Rosen is focused on communicating directly to voters about the work she’s doing to fight for Nevadans.”

Vince Saavedra, executive secretary-treasurer of the Southern Nevada Building Trades Unions, also touted Rosen’s bipartisanship in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“She is not an extremist, which we love,” Saavedra said. “Whether it’s far left or far right, she could work across the aisle easily, and that’s why she’s going to have the building trades support.”

Rosen voted with Biden nearly 93% of the time during the 117^th Congress, according to analysis from FiveThirtyEight. In the 118th Congress, she has voted with the president nearly 99% of the time.

In 2023, Rosen was the third-ranked Democratic senator to break ranks with her party, according to CQ Roll Call and the Lugar Center at Georgetown listed her as one of the top 10 bipartisan lawmakers in the Senate in 2022.

The Trump campaign and the GOP are seeking to make the 2024 race focused on inflation increasing the cost of groceries and gas and a rising immigration crisis at the southern border.

In Nevada, the consumer price index for all urban consumers was 3.45% in April, up from 3.1% the previous month but down from 6.5% one year prior. The “Core” CPI Inflation was 3.9% in April, 4.0% the previous month, and down from 5.7% a year prior.

In contrast to the GOP, Rosen and the Biden campaign are seeking to make the election focus on abortion, which has proven to be a potent turnout matter for Democrats.

Organizers in Nevada are working to get an amendment that enshrines abortion rights into the state constitution on the ballot. Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the group leading the effort, said it had amassed 110,000 signatures, more than the 102,362 required to be on the ballot, in April.

“I think it will have a big impact because this is a family issue,” said Susie Martinez, executive secretary-treasurer of the Nevada state AFL-CIO.

“It’s ridiculous that your politician should have anything to do with you and your doctor,” Martinez continued. “It’s just these extremes have just gotten out of hand, and that’s why every time anything comes up with (abortion), it’s a losing battle for the Republicans because women are not going to put up with that, they come out to vote for that.”

Brown and his wife Amy spoke with NBC News in February about the abortion she received before they married, with Brown embracing Nevada law allowing abortion up to 24 weeks and supporting individual states setting abortion standards.

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The NRSC, however, is confident both Trump and Brown can win back the Silver State from Democrats.

“Polls in Nevada have consistently shown President Trump leading Joe Biden in Nevada, and Sam Brown is already neck and neck with Jacky Rosen despite having less name identification,” Berg said. “That is why Cook Political Report recently shifted the race from ‘Lean Democrat’ to ‘Toss-Up.’”