Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada won re-election to a second term, leaving a crucial U.S. Senate seat in Democratic hands.
Rosen defeated Republican Sam Brown, a former Army captain who was wounded in the war in Afghanistan.
Throughout her race, Rosen maintained a stronger lead in the polls than any of her fellow Democratic incumbents in swing states, although Brown narrowed her lead in recent weeks.
Still, Rosen’s victory spares Democrats a potentially embarrassing and costly defeat in the Battle Born State, where the vaunted political machine of the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid had given Democrats the upper hand for nearly two decades.
“Since I’ve been in Congress, I’ve been really focused on Nevada. I am a pragmatic problem solver,” Rosen told HuffPost in an interview in late September. “People in Nevada know that I am willing to invest in them, expand opportunities and am not afraid to hire, whether it is the post office or [President Joe Biden].”
Brown, a former candidate for the Texas state House and an unsuccessful candidate for Nevada’s 2022 Republican Senate nomination, sought to avoid criticism of his opposition to abortion rights by revealing in an interview with his wife Amy in February that she an abortion before they met. He also confirmed that he would not vote for a federal abortion ban that would violate Nevada’s protections for the procedure.
But Rosen used a fundraising advantage to define Brown as an extreme opponent of abortion rights before Brown had the resources to respond on television. “He’s trying to change his story to get elected, but MAGA extremist Sam Brown has been pushing for an abortion ban for years,” Rosen warned in July.
In the final two weeks of the race, as former President Donald Trump built momentum in Nevada and early voting patterns indicated strong Republican turnout, national GOP groups decided to pour millions of dollars into the race on Brown’s behalf.
A video spot by the Senate Leadership Fund, Republicans’ main super PAC in the Senate, portrayed Rosen as an opponent of Trump who supports “radical liberal policies” on inflation, immigration and transgender rights.
“A vote for Jacky Rosen is a vote against Donald Trump,” the ad began.
However, that message did not receive enough attention because of Rosen’s ability to point to high-profile moments when she broke with Biden, including by opposing rates for solar panels And regulations for mineral mining.
Rosen’s Ads often referred to the fact that Georgetown University’s Lugar Center arranged her one of the most bipartisan senators.
She also relentlessly emphasized her work to fight inflation by opposing a major supermarket merger and voting for a bill that would cap insulin costs for seniors at $35 a month.
“We cannot allow special interests to continue to defraud us,” she concluded one TV spotwhile standing in the produce section of a supermarket.
View the full results of the Nevada Senate elections here.
