LAS VEGAS — Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) is doing something that her fellow vulnerable Democratic senators are strategically avoiding.
She’s running a traditional, old-school Democratic campaign.
Rosen is seeking a second term by not only touting her bipartisan credentials in securing infrastructure investments but also using the presidential race and national issues like abortion as a way to boost Democratic turnout — a combination that Senate Democrats in other battleground states are shunning.
“A lot of this election is about a choice — not just for freedom … but the choice of what we invest in,” Rosen said in an interview here after campaigning with the left-leaning veterans group VoteVets Tuesday.
In Nevada, this strategy could work in Rosen’s favor as she faces off against Republican nominee Sam Brown. To win statewide, Democrats need to juice turnout in the metropolitan hubs of Las Vegas and Reno, especially among hospitality workers and unions. Democrats have a major advantage on that front because of the political machine set into motion by the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
This will be crucial for Rosen in what her campaign expects will be an extremely tight race. Two years ago, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) defeated Republican Adam Laxalt by fewer than 8,000 votes.
Schumer’s view: Rosen’s emphasis on what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refers to as “implementation” of landmark bills from the last Congress is a way for her to localize the race. It could also help insulate Rosen from criticisms about Nevada’s economy, which has been generally worse than the rest of the country post-Covid.
“We have broadband going in places in rural Nevada, in places all across Nevada, that we’ve never had before because of the bipartisan infrastructure law,” Rosen said. “And high-speed rail that’s going to connect Los Angeles to Las Vegas is going to bring billions of dollars in economic impact… Sam Brown would have voted against that.”
In many of the battleground states, including Nevada, the Senate GOP challenger is running behind former President Donald Trump. Democrats credit this to their efforts to remind voters about what incumbents brought home for their state.
Yet this week, Brown told us the federal spending Rosen supported “directly resulted in higher prices for everyday things.”
Brown also criticized the high-speed rail project as a “giveaway” to a “New York hedge fund billionaire peddling a train boondoggle with ticket prices so high that working-class families won’t be able to afford to use it.”
“[Rosen] may call this reckless spending an ‘investment,’ but everyday Nevadans know it’s just another corporate giveaway to a political donor,” Brown said.
A different kind of battleground: In one respect, Rosen is running her race a lot like Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — focusing on the local impact of Congress’ big-ticket legislation and insisting they have their own brand distinct from that of the national Democratic Party.
But unlike Montana and Ohio, where Trump will win handily, Nevada is actually a tight contest at the presidential level. And unlike Tester and Brown, Rosen is eager to talk about and campaign for the top of the Democratic ticket — and link it directly to the issue of which party controls the Senate.
Rosen did exactly that when talking about abortion, an issue Democrats believe will benefit their candidates up and down the ballot. And abortion will quite literally be on the ballot in Nevada — voters will choose whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. In this case, Rosen is nationalizing the issue.
“The only way to protect women from dying in emergency room parking lots or back-alley abortions is to protect our Senate Democratic majority,” Rosen said. “And that’s what we’re going to do in Nevada when I get reelected.”
