LAS VEGAS — Sen. Jacky Rosen, the freshman Nevada Democrat who grabbed a Senate seat Republicans held for nearly two decades, has won re-election.
Late-arriving mail ballots put her over the top Thursday against Republican wounded Afghanistan combat veteran Sam Brown in the swing state.
Rosen leads Brown 47.7% to 46.7%, with 95% of votes counted, Decision Desk HQ reports.
The GOP challenger maintained a lead through Wednesday evening, when an influx of mail ballots from Clark County — home to Las Vegas and 70% of the state’s voters — put Rosen over the line.
Brown is not conceding, however, with his campaign saying Thursday, “There are still tens of thousands of uncounted ballots in the race for U.S. Senate, and the candidates are separated by less than 1 percent. There are also thousands of ballots which need to be cured. Sam Brown is committed to ensuring every legally cast, valid vote is counted.”
As in 2022 with Nevada’s other senator, however, the Democrat won by a smaller margin than the deep-blue county’s profile would have suggested.
Rosen, who agreed to only one debate with Brown during the campaign and whose whistle-stops were tightly structured and controlled, voted 98% of the time with the Biden-Harris administration.
A former cocktail server on the Las Vegas Strip who was a member of Culinary Union Local 226 as she worked her way through college, Rosen retained strong union support and rallied more than once with labor during the campaign.
As is often the case in Silver State elections, Rosen appears to have benefited from a late “dump” of mail-in ballots following Election Day. Nevada’s Legislature enacted a law in 2020 to mail ballots to all voters, and thousands are sent through the mail or dropped off at polling places on Election Day. Those ballots, especially postal ones arriving after the polls close, have often changed one candidate’s lead to a loss.
Two years after Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto eked out her re-election bid by 8,800 votes in America’s closest Senate contest of 2022, Nevada again witnessed a senatorial slugfest.
Brown sought the GOP nomination in that race, but lost out to former state attorney general and Nevada political dynasty heir Adam Laxalt, who in turn lost the race to Cortez Masto by a hair’s breadth: an average of four ballots in every voting precinct statewide.
While Rosen led by as many as 10 points in polling over the summer, Brown’s campaign whittled down that gap to a dead heat by Election Day, GOP insiders said.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a political-action committee linked to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, reportedly made a $6.2 million advertising buy in the Silver State to boost early voting numbers and, in turn, the prospect of a GOP upset.
Throughout the campaign, Rosen and Brown duked it out over the economy, a key issue in Nevada. The state has higher unemployment than most, with recovery from pandemic-era hospitality-industry shutdowns lagging.
Inflation is another critical factor here, with families facing a hike in the cost of living that’s close to 21% since 2021.
Rosen touted what she called her bipartisan Senate record but never said which Republican ideas she adopted. Of the 40 bills she introduced in the upper chamber in 2023, only four were signed into law.
In her re-election bid, Rosen hammered Brown over a national abortion ban, something the Republican said he did not support and would not vote for.
Brown pummeled Rosen on the economy and also for using profanity when he confronted her about negative campaign ads.
Rosen’s campaign refused The Post’s repeated requests for an interview. Brown, in contrast, spoke with The Post several times at various campaign events.
