Harris-Rosen? Brown-Trump? Do Nevada's Senate candidates reflect the presidential candidates?

Is Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) just a copy of Vice President Kamala Harris? Is Sam Brown just the reincarnation of Donald Trump?

Nevada's Senate campaigns (and supporting outside groups) are spending millions of dollars to get voters to mention their opponent in the same breath as their party leader. Each candidate has tried to brand the other with the nickname of their party leaders—Rosen rarely mentions Brown without adding the “MAGA extremist” label, while Brown has tried to portray Rosen as a rubber-stamper for Biden's and now Harris' economic agenda.

But the makeup of Nevada's electorate often makes Senate races a race to the middle. The state's most recent active voter registration figures show the political power of registered independents, who make up 34 percent of the electorate, while Democrats make up 30 percent and Republicans nearly 29 percent.

“The thing about politics in Nevada is that it's always in the middle,” says UNLV political scientist David Damore. “We generally don't have candidates here who win on ideology, whether for governor or for the U.S. Senate. They're all fairly moderate and mostly bipartisan.”

For this reason – and given Nevada's fickle nature – incumbent senators try to keep their distance from the top candidates. Then-Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) successfully distanced himself from Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, but then struggled with his shifting positions on then-President Donald Trump in 2018.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) endorsed candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 and narrowly won her re-election in 2022 while distancing herself from the White House (and while her Republican opponent Adam Laxalt closely aligned herself with Trump).

This cycle followed the same script as in 2022 and 2018: Rosen kept the White House at arm's length at times but supported many of the party's core policy goals, while Brown sought to build a close bond with the former president, whom he endorsed in January.

“It's a strange dance,” Damore said of the trend among Republican Senate candidates in Nevada to support Trump. “You've lost the state twice.”

The dynamic can be explained in part by polling. Rosen has been ahead of Biden and Harris throughout the election cycle, while Brown has consistently trailed Trump in polls. Polling averages show a neck-and-neck presidential race, but Rosen is ahead by nearly 10 points on average.

Party insiders and experts alike expect the gaps to narrow as the election draws closer. In the meantime, Brown has supported much of Trump's messaging, sending emails with pictures of the two highlighting Trump's support and saying at a recent event that his first priority in the Senate would be confirming Trump's Cabinet members, according to the Nevada Current.

Rosen has tried to take the high road. Her first ad of the cycle, “Never Have,” focused on instances where she opposed her party, and she skipped the Democratic National Convention and avoided Biden on the campaign trail before he dropped out.

Nevertheless, Rosen attended administration and presidential campaign events and spoke with Harris at campaign events before and after she was named the candidate.

In ads, the two Senate candidates and their allies tried to link each other to the presidential campaign. A Republican ad pointed out how often Rosen voted with Biden and blamed both for higher prices, while a Rosen ad called Brown “another MAGA extremist trying to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

And in her fundraising appeals, Brown attacked Rosen for her refusal to call on Biden to resign. He accused Rosen of “lukewarmly following” her party's leadership and of failing to push back on its border or economic policies. Rosen, in turn, called Brown her “Trump-obsessed opponent.”

Beyond the rhetoric, the political positions of the individual candidates help to clarify where they agree with Harris or Trump and where ideological distances exist.

Roses

Rosen's record as one of the more moderate senators in Washington – she has finished in the top 10 on the Lugar Center's bipartisan index every year since Democrats took the majority – reflects a legislative approach that also includes a break with her party on a handful of specific issues.

In the two years they overlapped in the Senate, Rosen performed more moderately than current Vice President Harris. Voteview, which ranks the party affiliation of members of Congress based on their votes, ranked Harris as the second-most liberal senator during that period and Rosen as the 31st most liberal. The Rosen campaign noted that the senator broke with Harris 87 times during the 116th Congress, including on votes on Trump's nominees such as secretary of defense and small business administrator.

An analysis of Thirty-fiveEight found that Rosen has voted with the position advocated by President Joe Biden about 98.6 percent of the time. When judicial nominations are excluded, the number drops to 93 percent. During the entire current session of Congress, which spans the past two years, VoteView found that Rosen has voted with Senate Democrats 97 percent of the time. The median vote for Senate Democrats was 98 percent.

Rosen has broken with the Biden administration in several notable cases.

In the final days of 2022, when a bill to fund the government was needed, she and several other moderate Democrats supported an amendment to restore a Trump-era immigration policy used during the pandemic to quickly turn away migrants at the southern border. This year, she has bucked her party and voted to repeal police reforms in the District of Columbia, repeal the Biden administration's water regulations that determine what land is considered wetlands, and opposed the Biden administration's recommendation that Congress impose a mining levy.

But on many of the key issues Harris is raising on the campaign trail, including abortion and housing, Rosen is aligned with Harris. Rosen supports Harris' proposals to give first-time home buyers a $25,000 down payment, increase the child tax credit and not raise taxes on those earning less than $400,000. Although she has actively opposed consolidation in the grocery sector and has opposed the merger of Kroger and Albertsons, among other things, her campaign team says she is still studying Harris' proposal to ban price gouging in the grocery industry.

And many of her legislative successes are the ones Harris is touting on the campaign trail – including passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Anti-Inflation Act. And the two campaign organizations have a joint fundraising platform, where Rosen addresses donors by saying, “Harris has my full support as she works to defeat Donald Trump and make history.”

In a fundraising appeal related to the debate, Rosen sent her supporters a photo of her and Harris and said the two “stand side by side in the fight of our lives to win this swing state.”

Brown

Brown, a former volunteer in Trump's 2020 campaign, has mentioned Trump by name throughout his Senate campaign.

In his fundraising appeals, he calls himself “the America First warrior President Trump needs” and portrays the Senate race as a battle that can make or break Trump's ability to push through conservative policies if re-elected. He has touted Trump's support (“In his first speech since the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally… was Trump thinking of ME?” reads one subject line) and pledged to “firmly support President Trump.” In media appearances, Brown has called Trump his political inspiration.

“President Trump and his leadership have motivated me to try to join him in Washington and help win this seat,” he said on Fox in April.

On policy issues, Brown has supported several of Trump's proposals, including eliminating taxes on tips and benefits and cutting regulations and spending. Brown and Trump are bullish on cryptocurrencies and want to make the country (and Nevada) a center of the crypto industry.

On education, both advocated for greater school choice, guaranteeing families the opportunity to send their children to private schools using public funds. While Trump called for cutting the Department of Education, Brown – who has previously advocated such a policy – said his approach would be to cut overlapping programs within the department's budget.

When asked whether Brown's campaign team supports Trump's plans to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imports, carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history or cut unspent federal funds for clean energy, there was no response.