In sprawling Washoe County, the area stretching from Lake Tahoe to the Oregon border that is widely considered the most politically competitive in Nevada, a surge of enthusiasm in recent weeks has given Democrats hope that Senator Jacky Rosen, one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, can pull off a re-election victory.
“The energy is incredible right now,” Carissa Snedeker, the chairwoman of the Washoe County Democrats, said in a recent interview.
Farther south, in rural Douglas County, nestled in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada in the state’s southwestern corner, even Republicans and independents have come to the local Democratic office looking for volunteer opportunities and information on how to donate to Ms. Rosen.
“As long as I’ve been involved with politics here in Douglas County, this is the most enthusiastic, the most excited people have been,” Lori McKimmey, the chairwoman of the Douglas County Democratic Party, said before a recent meet-and-greet with the senator. “That being said, though, it’s going to be very close.”
Ms. Rosen, a first-term senator in a hotly contested state, is skipping her party’s convention in Chicago this week to focus on her race against her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, a former Army captain and staunch conservative, which is expected to be one of the most competitive and costly in the nation. But even as she keeps her distance from the top of the ticket, her allies say she has benefited from renewed enthusiasm among Democrats after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.
Ms. Rosen was on hand this month for Ms. Harris’s raucous rally in Las Vegas — the last in a weeklong series of swing state stops after the vice president announced Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate. The rally turned out to be one of the largest political events in the state’s modern history, drawing a crowd of more than 12,000 supporters, according to officials with the Harris campaign.
Local Democratic leaders say that since Ms. Harris became the nominee, they have seen a rush of foot traffic into their offices and fielded a surge of inquiries about how to volunteer, where to donate and how to get involved.
Still, Ms. Rosen is taking nothing for granted in Nevada, where races are often decided by razor-thin margins and incumbency offers less of an advantage given the transient population. Her fellow Nevada Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, eked out a victory two years ago against her Republican challenger by fewer than 8,000 votes.
“The fun thing about being a Democrat in Nevada is that we always operate from a mentality that we’re behind,” said Molly Forgey, a local Democratic strategist. “We always have our foot on the gas.”
On a recent afternoon in Gardnerville, a quaint town just over the mountains from Lake Tahoe and about an hour south of Reno, Ms. Rosen urged about 50 Democratic supporters at a meet-and-greet at the local cultural center not to become complacent.
“Get your running shoes on, because we can’t leave any stone unturned,” Ms. Rosen said. “We’re going to knock the doors. We’re going to tell our friends. We’re going to make sure that every eligible voter knows what’s at stake, and that they get out and vote.”
She added, “There’s nothing more important this time, and I am counting on all of you.”
In her first bid for re-election, Ms. Rosen is emphasizing her ability to work with Republicans to deliver for the state, a direct appeal to the roughly one-third of Nevadans who are not registered with either party. Mr. Brown is working to soften his right-wing edges to woo the same group, moderating his stances on issues like abortion, Social Security and Medicare.
Several recent signs suggest that Ms. Rosen has the edge in the race. The senator has consistently led Republicans and Mr. Brown in public polls this year, and she outpaced him by double digits in two surveys released last week. The Cook Political Report recently moved her race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” in a reversal of its assessment in April that the seat was up for grabs.
Ms. Rosen’s campaign has significantly outspent Mr. Brown’s on advertising while maintaining a sizable cash advantage. And newfound enthusiasm for the presidential race bodes well for down-ballot Democrats like Ms. Rosen, whose campaign hopes to capitalize on a surge in volunteers and voter engagement.
Still, political operatives on both sides agree that the race will inevitably tighten as Election Day approaches. Republicans are hungry to retake control of the Senate, currently divided 51-49 in Democrats’ favor, and they see in Ms. Rosen a vulnerable incumbent and a prime opportunity. In an effort to close the spending gap and bolster Mr. Brown in the polls, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has purchased $13.2 million in ad reservations for Aug. 13 through Election Day.
“You either run unopposed, or you run scared,” said Daniele Monroe-Moreno, the chairwoman of the state’s Democratic Party. “So we’re coming at this election cycle as running scared, because we take nothing for granted.”
Ms. Rosen, who has never attended a Democratic National Convention, is instead attending a health care round table, meeting with local labor groups and speaking with members of the Latino community this week, according to her campaign.
“It’s important that I’m home,” she said in an interview. “That’s the best place I can be.”
Ms. Rosen first ventured into politics in 2016, after she was recruited to run for Congress by Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who died in 2021. As an outsider with no political experience, Ms. Rosen narrowly defeated her Republican opponent and represented Nevada’s Third District, south of Las Vegas. Two years later, she became the only Democrat to defeat a Republican incumbent in the 2018 midterm cycle that was otherwise deemed a “blue wave” after the election of President Donald J. Trump.
To win re-election in November, Ms. Rosen will have to woo the sizable segment of nonpartisans. Nevada’s voter rolls swelled after January 2020, when the state first rolled out an automatic voter registration system. When residents complete certain Department of Motor Vehicles transactions, such as driver’s license applications and renewals, they are by default registered to vote as nonpartisans unless they opt out.
In part to appeal to those voters, Ms. Rosen has worked hard to present herself as nonpartisan as well. She emphasizes her close relationship with elected officials and community leaders across Nevada.
“I know the mayors in our cities all across Nevada. I know our county commissioners,” she said. “We work with everyone. If you ask around, everybody has my cellphone number.”
At an event last week in downtown Reno, Ms. Rosen joined Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and other elected officials to break ground on a bridge construction project that was funded in large part by money from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which she helped write and negotiate.
“I worked across the aisle with Republicans and Democrats to make it happen,” Ms. Rosen said. “And so far, more than $3.5 billion have been announced for more than 250 projects right here in Nevada.”
An undeniable advantage for Ms. Rosen is her prolific fund-raising and spending on advertisements. Her campaign has poured more than $22.5 million into ad reservations between April 2 and Election Day, according to data from AdImpact.
Several of those try to paint Mr. Brown as an anti-abortion extremist and political transplant who is out of step with voters in the state. During his unsuccessful 2014 campaign for a seat in the Texas Legislature, Mr. Brown supported a 20-week abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest. He has since walked back his position and released multiple campaign ads that say he would vote against a national abortion ban.
Democrats have also seized on previous comments Mr. Brown made in which he expressed admiration for Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, for rolling out an agenda that called for phasing out all federal programs — including Medicare and Social Security — in five years. Under withering criticism from his own party, Mr. Scott revised the plan the following year to protect the entitlement programs, and Mr. Brown recently said he would “fight to protect and safeguard” them.
In their ads, Republicans have tried to tie Ms. Rosen to the same issues that they have used to attack the Biden administration: inflation, high consumer prices and border security failures. Two recent ads try to mislead viewers by claiming that Ms. Rosen’s vote for the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 gave Covid stimulus checks to “illegal aliens.” In fact, the measure allowed such payments only to American citizens or permanent legal residents.
“Jacky Rosen is in the race of her life because she’s a Biden-Harris rubber stamp,” Maggie Abboud, a spokeswoman for Republicans’ Senate campaign arm, said in a statement. “Sam Brown is a true political outsider who knows what it means to put his country first. The contrast couldn’t be more clear.”