Earlier today I wrote about the tough map Democrats are facing in the Senate. One of the places where Democrats hope to unseat a Republican incumbent is in Nevada where Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen is challenging incumbent Sen. Dean Heller. One of the qualifications Rosen has repeatedly cited as part of her campaign for the seat is that she built a small business as a computer programmer which her campaign claims she ran between 1993 and 2002. But Monday, when everyone was focused on President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported that there is little documentation from any source to back up Rosen’s claims about her business:

A Reno Gazette Journal review of public records found no evidence that Rosen held a state or local business license for the software consulting shop she’s referenced in interviews with C-SPAN, NBC Reno and other media outlets. Rosen — a Chicago native and political newcomer looking to flip one of the country’s most coveted U.S. Senate seats — ran the unnamed, one-woman operation between 1993 and 2002, according to her campaign. The business served two main clients, Southwest Gas, Rosen’s former employer, and Radiology Specialists, the Las Vegas-based physician group where Rosen’s husband was a partner. Southwest Gas confirmed Rosen worked for the company as a programmer from April 1990 to January 1991. A spokeswoman said she could not prove that the first-term congresswoman consulted for Southwest because the company does not keep “non-pipeline” contracts beyond seven years. Radiology Specialists, Rosen’s other main consulting client, could not be reached… Rosen did not personally respond to the RGJ’s questions and did not provide documentation of her past consulting work. Her campaign said that work included an update to Southwest Gas’ customer service support software and a new billing system for Radiology Specialists.

State officials told the Gazette-Journal that Rosen wouldn’t have needed a state license because her business never had any employees. But she would still have needed a local license in Henderson, Nevada. The city doesn’t keep files beyond a year, so there’s no proof to show if Rosen ever had the required license (her campaign claims she did). The companies also don’t seem to have any records demonstrating Rosen did the contract work she claims to have done.

Even if you assume for the sake of argument that Rosen did work for the two companies in question, it hardly seems as if the work she described above would keep her fully occupied for nine years. It sounds more of a part-time side-gig than a significant business. Nothing wrong with that per se, unless she’s overstating its significance. The only way to know if that’s true is if she would release some documentation because it seems no one else has any to offer.

Sen. Heller has already created a web ad critiquing Rosen’s claims (h/t Comfortably Smug):