U.S. Senate hopeful Jacky Rosen looks to Reno to help swing the balance of Congress

U.S. Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., was stopped by an adoring fan at a Reno casino last week, en route to a campaign event held more than 400 miles away from her home district in Henderson.

This, her campaign agrees, bodes well for Rosen’s chances in Washoe County and, by extension, her hopes of taking the highly prized U.S. Senate seat Democrats’ need to level the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

The 60-year-old Democratic congresswoman was a political no-name by the time U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, a Republican and Northern Nevada native, first won that spot in 2012.

But Rosen’s meteoric rise — from consultant to congresswoman in the span of just a few years — has turned plenty of heads since then, including several dozen gathered to watch her last week at a trendy downtown Reno restaurant, where Rosen rallied pro-choice advocates around a frothy anti-Heller message.

“I’m running to repeal and replace Dean Heller,” she told the friendly crowd organized by Rosen-backers at NARAL Pro-Choice America, a Washington D.C.-based abortion rights advocacy group. “He’s guilty of probably one of the biggest broken promises in political history, when he stood next to Gov. Sandoval and he said he wouldn’t vote to take away healthcare, and then he put his name on that Cassidy-Graham healthcare bill.

“He broke promises. He caved to (U.S. Senate majority leader) Mitch McConnell and the Super PACs and he’s doing it over and over again.”

Heller's campaign has hit back, frequently highlighting Rosen's lack of experience and her opposition to a sweeping December tax overhaul the GOP credits for the creation of thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars in recently awarded employee bonuses.

But there’s no guarantee Rosen, who is expected to brush off a pair of primary challengers in June, will face Heller in November.

Some pundits and political observers suspect she’s in for a rematch with Danny Tarkanian, the Heller primary foe and pro-Trump Las Vegas Republican she bested to win Nevada’s third congressional district two years ago.

Both Tarkanian and Heller arguably enjoy a name recognition advantage over Rosen, who is still a relative newcomer to politics.

The Chicago native is a computer programmer by trade, and had zero political experience by the time Harry Reid, the former U.S. Senate majority leader, tapped her to run for the U.S. House seat vacated by Republican Joe Heck in 2016.

Eight months after narrowly topping Tarkanian to take that post, Rosen announced her bid to unseat Heller — throwing herself into the most closely watched U.S. Senate race in the nation.

When the call came to take on that task, Rosen admitted she was a little scared, but mostly grateful for the opportunity.

After all, the pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-Obamacare Democrat has waged, and won, an uphill battle against a more recognizable Republican opponent before.

Rosen said that she’d be glad to beat Tarkanian again, but equally happy to face Heller, especially in light of his support for President Donald Trump’s “fradulent” tax reform package.

Besides, she said, the path to becoming Nevada’s next U.S. Senator runs through her own congressional district, a massive battleground spanning a wide swath of Southern Nevada between the California and Arizona borders.

Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Rosen’s path to winning Clark County may run through her district, though he suspects Washoe County holds her key to the Senate.

“Washoe is absolutely vital to her chances,” Herzik said. “Democrats make a mistake when they think they can win the race in Clark County. … I would say any successful (Senate) candidate needs to win Washoe County.”

Casino well-wishers aside, Herzik said Rosen remains a relative unknown to Washoe voters — something he said she’s right to try and rectify as soon as possible.

“I think she’s pretty invisible (in Washoe County),” Herzik said. “That’s no surprise, as she’s fairly new to politics and, up to this point, hasn’t had a reason to be known up here.

“So she needs to go out and meet with as many groups as possible, and not just the friendly ones.”

Democratic voters are set to settle on a candidate for U.S. Senate in a primary election scheduled for June 12, 2018.