When Vice President Kamala Harris came to Las Vegas in early January for a rally with the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, she singled out her former Senate colleague Jacky Rosen.
Harris delivered the usual niceties that Democrats say about other Democrats — that Rosen is the same person regardless of whether she’s on camera, that she cares about working people, etc. But then Harris — who was still months away from being elevated to party standard bearer — said something else.
“Jacky is somebody who comes off as being very nice, and she is,” Harris said. “But she is cutthroat, too. She will not tolerate anything less than a fight when it is for the right reasons and for the right folks who are doing good work.”
Rosen, a former computer programmer and synagogue president from Henderson who served one term in the House before defeating Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) in 2018, is rarely a flamethrower or a peacock, more affable colleague than partisan grandstander.
Some senators’ currency is media attention; others are known for their erudite mastery of a policy niche; some operate on ruthless instinct. Rosen’s approach is all about friendliness — but, as Harris alluded to, kindness can be killer.
As a member of the exclusive club of 100, she has remained relatively under the radar. Unlike 15 percent of her colleagues, she’s never run for president or vice president. She’s not part of the third of her caucus to serve in a Democratic leadership role. And, as a first-term senator, she has a lot of seniority to accrue before any committee chairmanships are in reach.
Instead, her colleagues and partners in Nevada describe Rosen as a friendly but persistent advocate for Nevada — more focused on the state’s unique needs and industries rather than being a national thought leader.
On a few key issues — Israel, antisemitism, technology — she is a sought-out voice among her peers and the press. Because of her background in computer programming, she has an eye for cybersecurity and tech-related legislation. But she keeps much of her focus on her state, with a legislative portfolio focused on tourism, small businesses and veterans.
It’s that unobtrusive attitude that makes up the bulk of Republican criticism. Former President Donald Trump called Rosen a “lightweight” on the convention stage in July; her opponent Sam Brown refers to her as a “rubber stamp.” Relatively unheralded by national audiences, Nevada Republicans often grouse that she’s bland — but acknowledge she doesn’t provoke much personal antipathy.
Rosen’s resume is fairly standard for first-term senators, though she ranks highly compared to her peers on bipartisanship and effectiveness metrics. Her electoral performance in November will hinge in large part on the “yes” votes she took on trademark Democratic legislation, and whether each party can convince voters that those policies benefited them or not.
In interviews with more than 20 lobbyists, staffers, colleagues and Nevada politicos, those who know Rosen describe a senator who is well-prepared, results-oriented and almost disarming in her normalcy — multiple people described conversations with her as “refreshing” compared to her more buttoned-up colleagues.
Staff say she rarely makes it through the airport in Las Vegas or Reno without hugging someone she knows and inquiring about their family. She’s known to get in the weeds on federal projects in Nevada, from Lake Tahoe to local community centers. And those who have sat in private meetings with her say they’ve learned to come prepared — Rosen frequently asks where various local interest groups and communities stand on each issue, including conservative ones, and likes to build consensus.
Now running for re-election for the first time in a state known for tight races, Rosen is banking on voters rewarding her staid, neighborly approach to politics.
Despite a six-year term that’s encompassed a pandemic, an insurrection and some of the most consequential legislation in recent history, colleagues still describe her as the archetypal synagogue president — warm, welcoming and explicit about what she wants to achieve.
“I always tell people never mistake being nice for not being tough,” Rosen said in an interview in her Senate office, a space once occupied by Barack Obama. “You can be nice. You get things done. And when you have to be tough, you bring it out … trust me, I can be plenty tough. But you don’t have to be every moment.”
Senate reputation
When Rosen arrived in the Senate in 2019, her first goal was to do what any new hire does — network.
Rosen worked for decades as a computer programmer and systems analyst for the Summa Corporation and Southwest Gas, among other companies in Southern Nevada. She brings a programmer’s mindset to problem solving and a corporate workplace mentality to the Senate. She set up meetings with each of the chairs and ranking members on the committees she was assigned to, sharing her background and seeing where they might have mutual interests.
“As a former programmer, a systems analyst, you just want to be sure that you’re covering all your bases, and you want to think logically about how you’re going to fit into the puzzle,” Rosen said.
Rosen is one of just 15 sitting senators who had no political experience when she first ran for federal office, and one of 24 who has a business background.
Margy Feldman, the Nevada chapter lead of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, counts Rosen as one of her first friends in Nevada. Feldman moved to Southern Nevada in 2016, and met Rosen at a fundraiser during her run for the House. Feldman said Rosen initially struck her as a stereotypical data analyst — a bit shy and soft-spoken. But now in the eighth year of her political career, she’s watched Rosen grow more comfortable while retaining her trademark friendliness.
“I’ve watched her almost be awkward in the beginning,” Feldman said. “And now she commands the room.”
Rosen’s Democratic colleagues raved about her intelligence and work ethic. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) called her one of the “smartest people in the United States Senate.” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Rosen’s longtime chairman on the Small Business Committee, described her as a diligent advocate.
“She’s extremely effective in getting her legislation moving forward,” Cardin said. “She’s very active. I can’t remember her ever missing a meeting.”
In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) praised Rosen’s leadership on infrastructure and Israel.
“When Jacky puts her mind to something — she gets it done,” Schumer said.
Her data background — and willingness to work bipartisanly — is appreciated by Republicans too.
“Her technical skills and her career [are] huge,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). “[There’s] a lot of AI discussion that we have and cybersecurity — those are all really topical issues. She’s known to be familiar with it.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), her 2018 Senate classmate, called Rosen a “good friend.” A moderating influence who has chosen to retire from the Senate, the former Republican presidential nominee holds his Democratic colleague in high esteem.
“I like Jacky Rosen,” he said. “She’s a terrific personality and someone who is easy to work with and is not afraid to work on a bipartisan basis.”
Stakeholders and lobbyists in Nevada had similar praise for Rosen, who is considered accessible and engaged. Known as a go-getter, lobbyists say she is not overly fastidious, willing to move quickly on floor action. .
Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve, a nonpartisan, called Rosen “easy to work with.” Schieve said Rosen called her to talk about the Washoe County lands bill and see how she might incorporate affordable housing into it, walking Schieve through its provisions.
“That’s not to say that her office and my office might [not] have a disagreement on some issues we might be working on, like the lands bill,” Schieve said. “But she will always call me and be like, ‘Hey, tell me more.’ She wants to learn and get educated about the things that do concern us.”
Former Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, now the president of UNR, said Rosen is assiduous in searching for federal funding opportunities for the university. He was her guest to the State of the Union this year — a messaging opportunity for an in-cycle Democrat to appear with a popular Republican ex-governor while he serves in a nonpartisan role, sure, but an experience Sandoval called “one of the great honors of [his] life.”
“I consider her a friend,” Sandoval said. “Sometimes she has to say no, and that’s part of what I appreciate about her. She’s always honest, and she does her homework every time she comes to campus.”
Rosen the policymaker
Rosen said she felt she had three significant experiences to bring to bear in the Senate, none of them expressly political in nature — her computer programming background, her time as a caretaker for elderly parents and in-laws and her experience as a synagogue president. On each, she identified a key Republican to partner with.
Her attitude is recognizable to those familiar with Jewish communities — navigating the synagogue and its internal politics (“Two Jews, three opinions” is a popular adage) can be a task as formidable as Congress. And while Rosen is in many respects the quintessential Jewish mom (staff say she vehemently insists the whole team has lunch together and ensures everyone eats when running to and from events in Nevada), the skills she honed as synagogue president also manifest as trying to identify areas of agreement rather than harping on differences.
On STEM issues, she found Capito to be interested — the two co-founded the Women in STEM caucus, and Rosen’s first bill to be signed into law, by President Donald Trump in 2020, was the Capito co-sponsored Building Blocks of STEM Act. President Joe Biden has since signed two more of her bipartisan technology-related bills — the Mobile Health Care Act, to improve mobile health care delivery in underserved areas, and the Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act, to identify where poor maternal health outcomes and a lack of broadband service intersect.
In a body known for its aging members — and corresponding lack of understanding of the internet — Rosen stands out. Lobbyists described her knowledge of computer science as being far beyond their understanding; one recalled a startup founder client who had given Rosen back-end access to their mapping software so she could explore it herself by the end of their meeting.
Her legislative approach is often based in the problem-solving nature of computer programming. Many of her bills aim to make government more efficient or responsive, expanding the reach of various grant programs or compelling the government to collect more data. Rosen speaks about this strategy in the parlance of her former career.
“We do [have] a lot of grants and programs, but they’re no good if people can’t find them [or] can’t get to them,” Rosen said. “We have to streamline and modernize. We can get rid of some of the redundancy.”
On palliative care, she co-founded the Comprehensive Care Caucus with Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). And for Jewish issues and on Israel, she and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) have shepherded a host of bills into law, including successfully elevating the global envoy on antisemitism post to an ambassadorship and expanding and reauthorizing Holocaust education initiatives. In an interview, Lankford called Rosen a “great partner” on those issues.
Her bipartisan attitude is borne out of practicality — Rosen noted that more than 90 percent of the bills she introduces have a GOP co-sponsor because that increases chances of passage — but also because in becoming friendly with Republicans, she’s better able to identify commonalities between states, from nursing shortages to wildfires to lack of broadband.
“I’m not going to not work with you because we might disagree on immigration or choice,” Rosen said. “I got veterans to take care of. I got broadband to put up in Northern Nevada or underserved areas. I got 4,000 nurses short in Nevada.”
Part of the Democratic majority
Set to be part of the majority for the first time in her career, the 117th Congress began with a day that fundamentally changed Rosen — Jan. 6, 2021.
Rosen recalled her young staffers fielding calls from their parents, and feeling a sense of personal responsibility for their safety, telling them to break through emergency exit doors and run to Union Station to save themselves.
Did it bother her then, to turn around and work with some of the very same Republicans who had threatened the peaceful transfer of power? The day — and the subsequent failed impeachment — served to further deteriorate relations between the parties. For a senator who had made bipartisan relationships her calling card, Rosen said she learned to compartmentalize.
“I just knew that we had to continue to do our job,” she said. “That’s what people are counting on me for, and I wasn’t going to let that alter the way that I work with folks.”
From 2021 to 2023, she was the body’s busiest Democratic senator — serving on six committees — and was tapped to be part of the bipartisan working group that hashed out what became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, writing the sections on airports and broadband. The final product incorporated numerous ideas of hers, including a program to fund middle-mile broadband connectivity.
In the years since the law’s 2021 passage, Rosen has been active in trying to get Nevada an outsized share of federal funding. She joked that she had Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on speed dial to discuss the proposed Brightline West high-speed rail project to link Southern California and Southern Nevada.
“[When] she called, she was nice about it, but very persistent in making sure that we knew why she considered this to be important and what it would mean for Nevada,” Buttigieg said, noting that she’s equally forceful when advocating for smaller-scale projects such as Interstate 15 improvements.
Brightline ultimately received $3 billion in public funding — the lion’s share of the grant program and most of the $3.75 billion it applied for.
“Would we have gotten Brightline if it wasn’t for Senator Rosen?” asked Rob Benner, the secretary-treasurer of the Building and Construction Trades Council for Northern Nevada. “That’s a serious question.”
That willingness to work the phones extends beyond Cabinet secretaries. One lobbyist said Rosen is accessible and responsive — if she’s not personally present at a meeting, it’s because she’s at committee rather than hobnobbing at the Capitol Hill Club.
In the 50-50 Senate of the 117th Congress, Rosen also provided a critical vote on two bills that received no Republican support — the 2021 American Rescue Plan, the pandemic-era economic stimulus that included personal checks to Americans and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the Democratic smorgasbord that allowed Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs and made historic investments in clean energy.
Opponents (and liberals) say that for all of her bipartisan bona fides and relationships with Republicans, those votes demonstrate that she’s a Democrat when it counts. And Republican strategists believe those votes are the terrain in which they might defeat her — not because they were party-line, but because they authorized trillions in new spending. Brown, her GOP opponent, has attacked her frequently on the economy, arguing that Democratic spending drove inflation. (Economists point to pandemic-era shifts in the structure of the global economy; Democrats blame corporate greed.)
A Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, cautioned that voters don’t often care about individual bills senators voted on — and that the path to defeating her is in tying her to the Biden economy broadly. They said this is especially true because it can be difficult to put a hit on Rosen, though they added that attacks on her 2017 stock reporting violations were “good” but not “lethal.” Republicans have also sought to highlight her personal wealth and campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry.
“She’s pretty vanilla,” the strategist said. “She saw [Sen. Catherine Cortez] Masto (D-NV) and said, ‘I can be more boring than her.’”
Regardless, Rosen argues that each vote is taken in the interest of Nevada.
“[The IRA] was a really great bill,” she said. “I was very proud to work on that and continue to deliver for Nevada.”
The class of 2018
In a freshman class littered with firebrands, Rosen stands out by virtue of her low national profile. That’s somewhat by design.
Of the eight senators in the class of 2018, two — Romney and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) — have chosen to retire rather than face parties they no longer feel at home in. Several who flipped previously blue seats have become right-wing renegades.
As one of just two Democrats in the 2018 class, Rosen’s career is best compared to Sinema’s — and has played out stylistically in direct contrast to the Arizonan, whose public tussling with her liberal peers throughout the early part of Biden’s presidency made her the scorn of her own party and ultimately ended her political career.
When Rosen contradicts party leaders, by contrast, it’s often on Nevada-specific issues, or with fellow vulnerable Democrats. Rosen didn’t speculate on how her and Sinema’s paths have diverged — “I’ll let everybody else debate about that,” she said — but emphasized that her focus has always been on Nevada. When she stands up to her party, she said, it’s because of some conflict with a Nevada-based constituency, rather than shifting ideology.
“Everybody sent me here to represent Nevada,” Rosen said. “So I have no problem standing up where I need to when it comes to miners, border security, police, some of those things.”
Unlike her moderate peers in the class, Rosen is seeking another term. Romney thinks that’s because she’s a Democrat at the end of the day.
“I’m old, Kyrsten Sinema is an independent, and Jacky is a solid Democrat,” Romney said of his freshman classmates. “She’s the one holding the fort in Nevada for her party.”
For her part, Rosen said she knows that if re-elected, in a landscape without Sinema, Romney or Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who is also retiring, her voice will carry more weight in the Democratic caucus. She sees that as an opportunity to foster bipartisanship rather than a desire to be a holdout.
“I’m going to try to see where I can bring folks from both sides together to fill that role, as I’ve been doing — and maybe take a more prominent role in doing that,” she said.
Biden was unable to enact the entirety of his proposed Build Back Better agenda because Manchin and Sinema found certain provisions unworkable. If Democrats have a trifecta after the election, Harris is likely to take a run at some of the policies that were left on the cutting room floor — universal preschool and paid leave, investments in child and home care and expanding Medicare’s coverage areas, among others.
But if re-elected, don’t expect Rosen to become the next Manchin or Sinema by default. She believes more investment in ‘soft infrastructure’ is needed.
“We put all this money in infrastructure, but we need to build a workforce,” Rosen said. “Workforce needs child care. So these things are all interconnected.
“Some of those things were left on the table,” she continued. “I hope that we can continue to do those, and the relationships I’ve built as being bipartisan, independent and effective will get me through the next six years to do that.”
‘Agree where you can and fight where you must‘
While Republicans — as Romney suggested — may think of Rosen as a tried and true Democrat, their willingness to partner with her on legislation — even in an election year, when requests to co-sponsor bills typically dry up by the spring — suggests they see her efforts to cross the aisle as genuine and worthwhile. Since May, 10 Republican senators have co-sponsored her bills, typically on national security-focused legislation.
By comparison, vulnerable Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Bob Casey (D-PA) have attracted just six and five Senate Republicans, respectively, to join their non-resolution bills in that same time period. Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) have found one Republican each willing to sign onto their legislation.
The same is true when looking at Republican senators allowing in-cycle Democrats to co-sponsor their bills. Since May, Rosen has been added as a co-sponsor on 13 Republican bills. In that same period, Casey co-sponsored seven Republican bills; Brown five; and Tester and Baldwin just three.
Colleagues and Rosen herself have said her record of bipartisanship is based on true relationships. Rosen is friendly with colleagues, peppering her fellow senators in the elevator with questions about their families and lives back home rather than policy disagreements — which she says she saves for the floor.
Some Republican senators acknowledged the two had worked together, (“We’re both tourism states,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)) but didn’t offer much else. Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), Rosen’s ranking member on the tourism subcommittee, said the quiet part out loud when he wouldn’t say anything positive about his colleague — but didn’t bash her either.
“It’s election season,” Budd said. “Let’s say nice things afterwards.”
That commitment to bipartisanship means Rosen has relationships with people who actively campaign against her. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) went to Las Vegas in early September to stump for Brown; days later, she and Rosen were partnering on Arab-Israeli military cooperation.
Of course, it’s not always kumbaya. Rosen gets deeply frustrated at Republican opposition to abortion or expanding the child tax credit. Prickly about Nevada in particular, she publicly snapped at Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) over his comments on a proposed bump stock ban, the weapon used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting (“Shame on him for disrespecting the dead.”), and hammered Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over his proposed — and ultimately dropped — plan to relocate mail processing in Reno to Sacramento. (“It’s Nevada, sir. Please say it correctly.”)
Rosen’s internal motto is “Agree where you can and fight where you must” — and she says maintaining those relationships allows her to do both.
“She’s not afraid to talk to any of them about it, and they will listen because she is friendly,” Cortez Masto said. “She is not somebody that’s targeted or offensive or coming after them.”
‘Nevada first’
Cortez Masto and Rosen are among the closest-working pairs of senators from one state in the chamber; the two first met when Cortez Masto was attorney general and reached out to faith leaders to discuss human trafficking.
Cortez Masto said while she had no inclination at the time that Rosen would end up in politics, she’s not surprised her now-friend made it to the Senate.
Cortez Masto is known, in Nevada circles, to have more of an in with Democratic leadership; Rosen brings the relationships with Republicans. They’ve nicknamed each other “The Prosecutor” (Cortez Masto) and “The Closer” (Rosen), working in tandem to build a case and find the votes for it.
“People know, particularly amongst my colleagues … it’s Nevada first,” Cortez Masto said. “That’s where her focus is.”
Nevada, as a small state, has a long history of senators who have made pursuing federal dollars their calling card over being national thought leaders. Even Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), who rose to the rank of Senate Majority Leader after beginning his career with a slogan of “independent like Nevada,” took great pains to send hundreds of millions to Nevada and look out for its industries, even as he became one of the chamber’s most impactful partisan operators.
As the Senate becomes more of a partisan cesspool and Nevada’s political culture becomes more cutthroat than cozy — arguably both relics of Reid — the line Rosen is attempting to thread between her state-centric approach and the divisive nature of partisan politics is narrow. She’s banking that voters will still reward her approach, even as Brown uses her voting record to tie her to Biden and Harris.
“I think that the respect and friendship that I’ve earned amongst my peers, both on my own side — [the] Democratic side — and the Republican side, really put me in a position to continue to get things done,” Rosen said. “I always try to find those spaces to do that.”
