Rosen vs. Brown: A look at the Nevada race that could shake up the Senate

All eyes are on Nevada’s Senate race — which could determine the balance of power in Congress — where Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is fighting to keep her seat from Republican Sam Brown.

The race is one of seven Senate races the Cook Political Report considers competitive, though the nonpartisan political analysis newsletter thinks Rosen has the advantage. Polls show the Nevada junior senator ahead of her GOP opponent, but in a state like Nevada where polling is difficult due to fluctuations in the state’s electorate, the seat could go either way.

If 2022’s Senate race is any indication (Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won her reelection by less than 0.1 percentage points) voters can expect a tight race between Rosen and Brown.

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.

Rosen was named one of the senators who breaks from their party ranks the most often, and she has framed herself as a bipartisan senator who is willing to cross the aisle. Her opponent, however, has rebutted that Rosen still votes with her party about 93 percent of the time.

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 in Nevada for the Senate 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.

He has prioritized the economy in his fight against the sitting junior senator, calling her a rubber stamp for the Biden-Harris administration that exacerbated rising costs. Democrats, on the other hand, have picked apart Brown’s positions on abortion and Yucca Mountain.

On the biggest issue: the economy

Multiple polls show Nevadans care most about the economy, and both Rosen and Brown have plans to address rising costs and the lack of affordable housing.

Rosen is working to prevent price gouging in the housing market and crack down on investors driving housing costs up, according to the Review-Journal’s voter guide. She helped introduce bills to cut taxes for first-time home buyers who need down payment assistance, and she has worked to expand housing development through public lands legislation. She has also called on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, and she is working to cap insulin costs for all Americans, according to the voter guide.

Brown wants to stop what he calls reckless spending in Washington that caused prices to skyrocket, and he wants to lower taxes on food, gas, medicine and energy, according to the voter guide. He also wants to create better energy and monetary policies that lower costs for production and transportation of goods. To help with housing, Brown pledges to enact legislation to release federal lands in Nevada for housing on a “regular and reliable timetable,” as well as cut regulations that slow down housing development projects.

Candidates Chris Cunningham, a libertarian, and Janine Hansen, an independent candidate, are also running for the seat. For information about them, visit the Review-Journal’s voter guide.

An earlier version of this story misstated a year that Sam Brown ran for office.

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