Meet Jacky Rosen, the congressional newcomer hoping to help Democrats retake U.S. Senate Rookie congresswoman hopes to unseat GOP Senator Dean Heller in November

James DeHaven | Reno Gazette-Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Politics & Pints: Why Nevada has (arguably) the most important Senate race in the U.S. Our weekly breakdown on politics in Nevada from the race between Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Jacky Rosen to local politics in Reno.

From Southern Nevada synagogue president to U.S. Senator in three years.

That’s the unlikely career trajectory U.S. Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., hopes to achieve by Nov. 7.

She’s received no shortage of support.

Nearly $40 million has been spent to aid the freshman congresswoman’s bid to take perhaps the nation’s most highly coveted U.S. Senate seat, one Democrats will need if they hope to reclaim a majority in the chamber.

MORE: Records reveal little about consulting business Jacky Rosen trumpets on campaign trail

Also on Rosen’s side: Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the architect, if not the present operator, of a fabled Democratic political organizing and voter turnout machine that could help give Rosen an edge in November’s highly competitive Senate race.

Standing in her way is U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev. — a better-known, and almost equally well-funded, campaign foe who hasn’t lost an election over a nearly 30-year career in politics.

Heller’s repeatedly hit Rosen over her relative lack of legislative experience and questioned her oft-touted claim to have built a business after moving to Nevada in 1980. He’s also accused her of campaigning on the public dime, highlighting Rosen’s release of an August campaign ad centered around a taxpayer-funded visit to the Southwest border amid the national uproar over immigrant family separations.

Tellingly, opponents have rarely accused the Democratic Senate hopeful of being a political radical.

RELATED: As Heller, Rosen point fingers over Super PACs, dark money pours into Nevada Senate race

Rosen, 61, cuts a polite, sympathetic figure on the campaign trail, though it’s unlikely anyone would mistake her for a progressive firebrand. When talking to reporters, she’s been nothing if not disciplined, rarely straying from firmly established, mainstream Democratic talking points about protecting Obamacare, preserving abortion rights and reuniting immigrant families separated at the U.S. border.

Nor does she over-emphasize her brief legislative career, preferring to bash Heller after his long summer of high-profile reversals on health care policy.

It’s a strategy that plays to Rosen’s strengths. She may not may be as well-known as her GOP opponent, but some polls show she’s also not as disliked. Three weeks ahead of Election Day, their race remains a toss-up.

Business background

The Henderson congresswoman representing Nevada’s 3rd Congressional district was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs. She attended the University of Minnesota, where she picked up a degree in psychology. It was there that she first started tinkering with computers, kindling an interest in programming that would grow into a career.

Rosen moved to Southern Nevada after graduating in 1979. She soon landed a programming job at Summa Corporation, the Las Vegas-based holding company founded by reclusive industrialist Howard Hughes. She also spent a summer waitressing at Caesars Palace, where she was briefly a member of the politically powerful Culinary Union Local 226.

In 1985, Rosen earned an associates degree in computing and information technology from Clark County Community College, now known as the College of Southern Nevada. She took a coding job at Citibank, then Southwest Gas, where she worked as a programmer from April 1990 to January 1991. That’s when she met her husband Larry, a longtime radiologist in Las Vegas. The pair have a college-aged daughter named Miranda.

In 1993, Rosen said she started an independent software consulting shop serving two main clients, Southwest and Radiology Specialists, a physician group where Rosen’s husband was then a partner.

MORE: Rosen's $7.1 million fundraising haul overshadows Heller's $2.2 million in latest report

For months after announcing her Senate bid, the rookie congresswoman touted her efforts to build that business, referencing it in nearly a dozen campaign interviews with C-SPAN, NBC Reno and other media outlets.

Then, in July, a Reno Gazette Journal review of public records found no evidence that Rosen held a state or local business license for the unnamed, one-woman consulting operation. Heller backers wasted little time before attacking the consultancy as “an imaginary business” that “didn’t exist.”

State officials said that prior to 2003, Rosen would not have been required to seek a state license for her Henderson-based consultancy, provided she didn't hire any employees.

But officials in Rosen's adopted home of Henderson said she would've needed a local license to operate a for-profit business within city limits. David Cherry, a city spokesman, added that a city policy requires business records to be destroyed one year after a business closes or one year from when a license is not renewed.

Heller, too, has faced scrutiny over past business filings.

In February, he told the RGJ he didn't need the state's OK to sell hay out of his 180-acre farm in Smith Valley, explaining the farm was exempt from licensing requirements because it’s a household business that has never turned a profit.

Still, the politically vulnerable GOP senator filed for, and received, a business license on Feb. 5, the same day a reporter first asked state officials about Heller’s business credentials.

Policy positions

Opponents’ questions about Rosen’s background didn’t stop with her business chops.

Heller, buffeted by attacks over his gymnastics on health care, has charged Rosen with accomplishing “zero” over her brief stint in Congress.

Rosen has countered by pointing to eight pieces of co-sponsored legislation that have passed into law, among them two bills focused on science and technical education and two others focused on combating human trafficking.

The former computer programmer has also supported bills to prohibit public school discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. Last year, she sponsored legislation that would protect Obamacare provisions preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions.

A self-described progressive, Rosen favors an assault weapons ban and a $15 dollar minimum wage, though the bulk of her policy positions are decidedly moderate.

She supports the creation of a public health insurance option, but not a single-payer, Medicaid-for-all plan. She’s criticized, but not called to repeal, last year’s sweeping GOP tax code rewrite. Rosen’s an outspoken supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, though she’s stopped well short of calling to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

MORE: U.S. Senate: How Heller, Rosen, feel about guns, immigration and more

Rosen has endorsed efforts to overturn Citizens United via a constitutional amendment, helping her win the backing of Ends Citizens United, a traditional PAC founded to support pursue anti-dark money causes.

Since then, her campaign has been called out for benefiting from some $26 million in anti-Heller spending by outside political advocacy groups — including funds from dark money organizations that don’t disclose their donors.

Rosen’s also come under fire from opponents who say she used a taxpayer-funded border trip as a campaign prop.

The Democratic Senate hopeful has been a vocal critic of politicking on the public dime. In March, she sponsored a bill meant to prevent campaigning via taxpayer-funded congressional mailers, writing in a statement that she and her colleagues should be using their office budgets to fight for constituents, and not to “help themselves get re-elected.”

Then, in July, she released a Spanish-language campaign ad highlighting a taxpayer-backed congressional office trip to the Southwest border, where she visited facilities holding children separated from their parents after crossing into the U.S.

Heller’s campaign immediately latched on, happy to highlight Rosen’s past opposition to using public dollars for campaign purposes. Rosen defended the trip in August, telling the RGJ that she was “just doing my job.”

Political experts suspect the jabs over Rosen’s consulting gig, and her comparatively light legislative record, will leave a bigger mark on her campaign.

“For a negative ad to be effective, people have to walk away with one idea that they remember,” said Eric Herzik, a registered Republican and professor of political science at UNR. “With Rosen, it’s her business.”

Political newcomer

Such attacks highlight perhaps Rosen’s greatest weakness, as well as her biggest strength — she’s simply not that well known.

Rosen had zero political experience at the time Reid, the former Senate majority leader, tapped her to run for the U.S. House seat vacated by Republican Joe Heck in 2016. She was not Democrats’ first choice for the job, but she was the one that said yes (albeit only after some significant soul-searching).

Just eight months after narrowly topping perennial GOP candidate Danny Tarkanian to take the congressional post, Rosen announced her bid to unseat Heller — hurling herself into a race that sits at the very core of Democratic efforts to retake the Senate.

Even Reid, Rosen’s biggest political patron, has acknowledged her newcomer status, telling colleagues in a November 2016 speech from the Senate floor that the Democratic candidate “didn’t have a really long resume, other than being a wonderful person who had a great family and was involved in community activities.”

That lack of familiarity has made it easier for Heller to raise questions about Rosen’s personality, but harder for him to counter her own efforts to turn the campaign into a policy-focused referendum on Trump.

Rosen has repeatedly cast the contest in even simpler terms. In many ways, she says, it’s about who is a better listener.

“People across the state are mobilized and they’re ready for someone who’s going to pay attention and listen to them,” Rosen said after a January campaign stop in Reno. “I think that’s something Senator Heller hasn’t been doing. He hasn’t been present and he voting with the values of our families.

MORE: Trump, Biden campaign on opposite sides of Senate race during Nevada rallies

“I think people feel that they can’t trust Dean Heller. He hasn’t put Nevada first. He puts himself first. They see him flip-flopping on television, I think people feel disappointed in his reaction to issues.”

Nevadans head to the polls for a general election scheduled on Nov. 6.