Is Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) just a carbon copy of Vice President Kamala Harris? Is Sam Brown just Donald Trump reincarnated?

The Nevada Senate campaigns (and supportive outside groups) are each spending millions of dollars to try to get voters to think of their opponent in the same breath as their party leader. Each candidate has tried to brand the other with the moniker of their party leaders — Rosen rarely mentions Brown without adding the “MAGA extremist” label, while Brown has sought to portray Rosen as a rubber stamp for Biden, and now Harris’, economic agenda. 

But the nature of Nevada’s electorate often makes Senate contests a race to the middle. The state’s latest active voter registration numbers demonstrate the political power of registered nonpartisans, who are 34 percent to Democrats’ 30 percent and Republicans’ nearly 29 percent. 

“The thing about Nevada politics is it's always in the middle,” said UNLV political scientist David Damore. “We generally don't have ideological candidates win here, be it the governor or the U.S. Senate. They all tend to be pretty moderate, mostly bipartisan.”

As such — and given Nevada’s swingy nature — incumbent senators tend to try to keep their distance from the top of the ticket. Then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) successfully distanced himself from GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, but then struggled in 2018 with his changing positions on then-President Donald Trump. 

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) embraced nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, and narrowly won her 2022 re-election while distancing herself from the White House (and while her GOP opponent, Adam Laxalt, closely aligned himself with Trump.)

This cycle, the same playbook from 2022 and 2018 has applied — Rosen has at times kept the White House at arm’s length while embracing many of the party’s top policies, while Brown has tried to tie himself closely to the former president who he endorsed in January. 

“It's a strange dance,” Damore said of the trend of Nevada Republican Senate candidates embracing Trump. “You guys lost the state twice.”

The dynamic is partially explained by polling. Rosen has run ahead of Biden and Harris all cycle, while Brown has consistently polled behind Trump. Polling averages show the presidential race in a dead heat but Rosen ahead by an average of nearly 10 points. 

Party insiders and experts alike expect the margins to more closely resemble one another as the election approaches. In the meantime, Brown has championed much of Trump’s messaging, sending out mailers with pictures of the two of them highlighting Trump’s endorsement and saying at a recent event that his first Senate priority would be to confirm Trump’s Cabinet officials, according to the Nevada Current.

Rosen has attempted to thread the needle. Her first ad of the cycle, “Never Have,” focused on instances where she bucked her party, and she skipped the Democratic National Convention and avoided Biden on the campaign trail in the days before he dropped out.

Still, Rosen has shown up for administration and presidential campaign events, speaking at campaign rallies with Harris before and after she became the nominee.

In ads, each Senate candidate and their allies have sought to tie the other to the presidential campaign. A Republican ad noted how often Rosen voted with Biden, faulting both for higher prices, while a Rosen ad called Brown “another MAGA extremist trying to cut Social Security and Medicare.” 

And in their fundraising appeals, Brown has attacked Rosen for her refusal to call on Biden to step down, saying she has “tepidly followed” her party leaders and not pushed back on their border or economic policy, while Rosen has called Brown her “Trump-obsessed opponent.”

Beyond the rhetoric, each candidate’s policy positions help sketch out where they align with Harris and Trump, respectively, and where there is ideological distance. 

Rosen

Rosen’s record as one of the more moderate senators in Washington — she has ranked in the top 10 in the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index every year since Democrats took the majority — reflects a legislative approach that includes breaking with her party on a handful of certain issues.

During the two years they overlapped in the Senate, Rosen scored more moderate than current Vice President Harris. Voteview, which scores members of Congress’ partisanship through the votes they take, ranked Harris the second most liberal senator and Rosen the 31st in that time period. The Rosen campaign noted that the senator broke with Harris during the 116th Congress on 87 occasions, including on votes for Trump nominees such as secretary of defense and small business administrator.

An analysis from FiveThirtyEight found that Rosen has voted with President Joe Biden’s stated position about 98.6 percent of the time, with the number falling to 93 percent when judicial nominations are excluded. Throughout the current session of Congress, encompassing the past two years, VoteView found that Rosen voted with Senate Democrats 97 percent of the time; the median Senate Democrat stood at 98 percent.

Rosen has broken with the Biden administration on several noteworthy occasions. 

In the waning days of 2022, with a government funding bill necessary, she and several other moderate Democrats supported an amendment to restore a Trump-era immigration policy used during the pandemic to quickly turn migrants away at the Southern border. This year, she has bucked her party to vote to nullify police reforms in the District of Columbia, to overturn Biden administration water regulations for what land qualifies as a wetland and spoken out against the Biden administration’s recommendation that Congress impose a mining royalty.

But on many of the key issues Harris is campaigning on — abortion and housing among them — Rosen is in alignment. Rosen supports Harris’ proposals to provide $25,000 in downpayment assistance to first-time homebuyers, expand the child tax credit and not raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000. While she has been an active advocate against consolidation in the grocery sector, including opposing the Kroger-Albertsons merger, her campaign said she is still studying Harris’ idea to ban price gouging in the food industry.

And much of her legislative accomplishments are the ones Harris is running on — including passing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. And the two campaign organizations have a joint fundraising platform, in which Rosen appeals to donors by saying Harris “has my full support as she works to defeat Donald Trump and make history.”

In a debate-related fundraising appeal, Rosen blasted out a photo of her and Harris to supporters and said the two were “standing side-by-side in the fight of our lives to win this battleground state.”

Brown

A former volunteer on Trump’s 2020 campaign, Brown has name-checked Trump throughout his Senate campaign. 

In his fundraising appeals, he calls himself an “the America First warrior that President Trump needs” and portrays the Senate race as having the potential to make or break Trump’s ability to enact conservative policy if re-elected. He has touted Trump’s endorsement (“In his first speech since the Butler, PA rally…Trump thought of ME?” one subject line reads) and pledged to “stand strongly behind President Trump.” In media appearances, Brown has referred to Trump as his political inspiration.

“President Trump and his leadership is what has driven me to try and join him in D.C. and help flip this seat,” he said on Fox in April.

On policy issues, Brown has embraced several Trump proposals, including ending taxes on tips and on Social Security benefits and cutting regulations and spending. Brown and Trump are optimistic about cryptocurrency, wanting to make the country (and Nevada) a hub for the crypto industry. 

On education, each has advocated for expanded school choice, federally guaranteeing families the opportunity to use public money to send their children to private schools. While Trump has called to ax the Department of Education, Brown — who previously advocated for such a policy — said his approach would be to cut duplicative programs within the department’s budget.

The Brown campaign did not respond when asked if he supported Trump’s plan to enact a 10 percent tariff on all imports, to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history or rescind unspent federal clean-energy funds. In a statement, his campaign reiterated his platform and promised to "rescue Nevadans from the Biden-Harris-Rosen agenda."

This story was updated at 7:45 a.m. on 9/17/24 to add a statement from Brown's campaign.