Jacky Rosen defeats Sam Brown in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race

U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., won her re-election against Republican challenger Sam Brown, with the Associated Press calling the race at 9:15 p.m. Friday.

“Thank you, Nevada! I’m honored and grateful to continue serving as your United States Senator,” Rosen said in a post on X Friday night.

The senator received 47.8 percent of votes to Republican challenger Sam Brown’s 46.4 percent, with 96 percent of the votes counted.

The race was called with Rosen leading Brown by over 20,500 votes Friday night.

A Rosen win is an important hold for Democrats in a now-Republican dominated Senate, and it ensures both Nevada senators are in the D column and puts them in a position to defend and rebuild toward a Democratic majority in the future.

While Brown took the lead after results came through from Election Day, Rosen closed that gap and pulled ahead as more mail ballots came through, with her lead growing larger on Thursday night.

On Saturday morning, Brown thanked Nevada in a statement.

“Serving as your nominee has been the honor of a lifetime, and though the outcome is not what we hoped, I am deeply moved by the trust, dedication, and hope you’ve shown throughout this journey,” he said. “Together, we set a new standard for what it means to stand for Nevada, united in a vision of strength, truth, resilience, and unwavering belief in a brighter future.”

Counting the votes

Before the AP called the race, the Brown campaign said in a statement Thursday afternoon that there were still tens of thousands of uncounted ballots in the race for U.S. Senate, separating the candidates by less than 1 percentage point.

“There are thousands of ballots which need to be cured,” the campaign said in the statement. “Sam Brown is committed to ensuring every legally cast, valid vote is counted.”

Rosen also stressed the need to ensure all the votes be counted to determine who won.

“We are not letting up now. Not now,” Rosen told supporters at the Aria after midnight. “We’re going to win this race.”

Rosen encouraged supporters to knock on doors and make calls to help voters cure their signatures. Clark County reported nearly 23,000 ballots needed curing as of Thursday afternoon.

“These votes deserve to be counted,” she said.

Similar nail-biter

The closeness of the race is no surprise, with Nevada’s last Senate race in 2022 also a nail-biter. It wasn’t called until four days later, and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won her re-election by less than 0.1 percentage points.

Polls consistently showed the Nevada junior senator leading her GOP opponent throughout the election cycle, though it was unclear what impact the presidential race would have on other races on the ballot.

Claims of fraud rise

With the close election possibly coming down to a few thousand votes yet to be counted, conspiracy theories about unfounded claims of fraud began to take shape.

Robert Beadles, a conspiracy theorist and election-fraud crusader, took to X and claimed Washoe County officials were trying to “steal the Senate race” from Brown.

“We have eyes 24/7 on it. You won’t believe what they’ve been doing,” he wrote on X.

Former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval and former Democratic Nevada Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, co-chairs of Democracy Defense Project Nevada, rejected those claims of voter fraud in Washoe.

“Baseless accusations of fraudulent elections propelled by election deniers in Washoe County are unfounded and counterproductive,” Sandoval said in a statement. “While I fully support diverse viewpoints and open political discourse, the unsubstantiated suggestion that the Washoe County Registrar’s employees and volunteers are operating in bad faith is contemptible and does not reflect who we are as Nevadans. ”

Sandoval said Nevada’s vote-counting process might be slower than people would like, “but we can all have confidence our election systems are accurate, transparent, and geared to make every legal ballot count.”

RNC Committeewoman Sigal Chattah also disavowed the claims on X.

“Nobody is stealing NV’s US Senate race when GOP has gained control of the Senate and produced a trifecta,” she said on X. “I will not be entertaining meritless conspiracy theories.”

About the candidates

Rosen, a Henderson resident, was first elected to the Senate in 2018 and previously served as a representative of Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District. She comes from a background in computer programming, and she sits on several senate committees, including armed services, homeland security and governmental affairs. She also serves as the co-founder and co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism and the Abraham Accords caucus.

Brown, a Purple Heart veteran, has gripped Nevadans’ attention with his story of surviving an explosion while on duty in Afghanistan.

He previously ran for office in Texas and then ran for the Nevada’s other Senate seat in 2022 but didn’t make it past the primary.

The Reno resident, who moved to Nevada in 2018, worked at an Amazon fulfillment center and founded a business that provides emergency pharmaceutical drugs to veterans.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.