The Senate Race That Dems Are Afraid Voters Won’t Notice

Nevada Democrats aren’t just concerned that Sen. Jacky Rosen could lose re-election; they’re concerned that voters may not even pay attention in the first place.

On virtually every front, Senate Democrats are on defense in 2024. Sen. Jon Tester is vying for re-election in a steadily red Montana. The same can be said for Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Or Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia, who hasn’t even agreed to run for re-election yet but is almost certainly the only hope for Democrats in that state. Democrats also have to navigate the situation in Arizona, where Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is running for re-election in a three-way race with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) where a Republican could ultimately prevail.

And then there’s Nevada—a state that has, at times, flown under the political radar—and Rosen.

“I can tell you we’re ready for the fight. I’m ready to be in it to win it and we’re going to make sure that people pay attention and they understand what Nevada means to the rest of the nation,” Rosen told The Daily Beast last week.

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Rosen, a moderate Democrat who’s built a reputation for focusing on Nevada-specific issues, is starting out her 2024 bid by touting that work—in addition to reproductive-rights access, which has proven to be a looming issue for her state.

A senator’s first re-election is often the hardest—and the test of whether their first-term performance was enough for voters to stay in their corner.

In 2022, Nevada delivered Democrats the Senate majority. After days of counting, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto eked out a win by less than a point against Republican Adam Laxalt, a candidate with huge name recognition in the state but a MAGA-bound record that put him in a tougher spot with moderates.

In a competitive year like 2024, there’s bound to be a scarcity of resources for Democrats. Donors will be splitting their attention—and dollars—with the presidential race, too. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chaired by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), is no different. And they’re ecstatic about Rosen—an incumbent—hopping back in.

At the moment, how those multitudes of competitive races for Democrats will be prioritized isn’t clear yet. But Peters has said candidates like Rosen would come first.

“My No. 1 goal is just to bring incumbents back. So it’s pretty straightforward. So we’re gonna prioritize all those races right now, making sure we’re putting the structure in place that we need” Peters said, as Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), stepped in an elevator with him.

“And making sure our wonderful candidates like Senator Baldwin have everything they need, because she is going to win in Wisconsin,” he said.

While incumbents generally take priority over pickup opportunities, there’s an underlying element to that this year. Democrats have no outright pickup opportunities. Florida, Texas and maybe Missouri are perhaps their best shots, but they’re longshots at best.

In the battle for re-election, however, to get the help she needs, Rosen has to break past the noise, and the more buzzed-about races in red states like Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio. And she has to prove that she can win, while also showing that any assumption that she’s safe is a shaky one.

“There is a narrative out there that, you know, Democrats have consistently won Nevada for several cycles in a row,” said Melissa Morales, executive director of Somos Votantes, a group that works toward Latino voter turnout.

To a degree, that narrative has legs. Cortez Masto is on her second term. Rosen’s in office after flipping the seat in 2018. The state legislature is Democrat-controlled.

But last year, the gubernatorial seat swung from Democrat to Republican. And Democratic wins have been narrow. Cortez Masto won by only 8,000 votes—less than a percentage point—and Rosen only won her Senate election with 50.4 percent of the vote in 2018, a big year for Democratic gains.

“None of us are taking this for granted. Everyone I talked to knows this is going to be a very competitive race,” Morales said. “So we need to throw as much as we can into it.”

This time around, Republican operatives are, apparently, wising up to some of their 2022 shortcomings. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is openly putting their thumb on the scale in primaries. And Republican operatives say they’ve learned from past mistakes; Trump-endorsed candidates don’t perform all that well in general elections.

Neither do TV personalities, or former professional athletes, or far-right wackos.

In most of the GOP’s Senate pickup opportunities, they’re looking for more moderate candidates with resources to fund their own campaign.

In Nevada, that seems to be Republican Sam Brown: a purple-heart recipient and small-business owner who lost to Laxalt in the 2022 primaries. Brown did not respond to an interview request from The Daily Beast.

There are a handful of other Republican names floating out there, including attorney April Becker and state Senate minority leader Heidi Seevers Gansert—among others.

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“Nevada is trending red and is a top pick-up opportunity for Republicans. Jacky Rosen should be worried since she’s a generic Democrat who most Nevadans couldn’t pick out of a lineup,” said NRSC spokeswoman Maggie Abboud.

Asked about the potential of a more moderate Republican making it through the Nevada primary, Rosen’s tone changed. She said there wasn’t one of her Republican colleagues who “wouldn't vote for a nationwide abortion ban today.”

“And whoever they want to run, that person is going to fall in lockstep,” she said.

“So they may try to find a moderate candidate, but mark my words that person will not be able to be a moderate in the Senate,” the senator added.

Organizers on the ground are gearing up for the year-and-a-half ahead. Rosen said she’s been staffing up, prepared to work in coordination with the rest of the Democratic slate next year. And she’s got her talking points prepared, quickly pointing to a series of policy accomplishments while on the Hill, like her work on broadband, airport funding, and infrastructure investments.

“It’s definitely a state that you can’t take for granted… We’re telling the party that they got to get in here and they gotta stay consistent and to invest,” said William McCurdy, former chair of the Nevada Democrats Party.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to remove an incorrect line about who won the Nevada primary in 2016.

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